Counties could be breaching Anti-Doping law
Using his Australian experience for comparison, Gaelic games and legal expert Jack Anderson analyses where the GAA have got it right, and confusingly wrong, with the Covid crisis
COUNTY teams training during the club window when the GAA’s guideline stipulates no inter-county return until September 14 could be in breach of Anti-Doping regulations and potentially threaten the GPA player grant scheme.
When contacted by the Irish Mail on Sunday, a spokesperson for Sport Ireland didn’t want to comment publicly, only to state that there are ‘legitimate questions’ around the two issues if such breaches of the GAA guideline are proven to have taken place.
In an extensive interview with this paper, sports law professor Jack Anderson tackles the club and county controversy, pointing out that the GAA is bound by Sport
Ireland’s Anti-Doping Rules and therefore any county team proven to have trained prior to the official return date of September 14 might in theory also be held to have acted outside such rules.
Under the current antidoping arrangement involving the GAA, GPA and Sport Ireland, teams are obliged to report their whereabouts for training in order to be available for testing. There is the question then if such training, if proven, could in any way threaten the player grant scheme, funded by the government and funnelled through Sport Ireland to GPA members. The payment of the 2018 grants was initially withheld by Sport Ireland until agreement was reached with the GPA to provide player addresses as part of the anti-doping policy.
‘MANAGERS WILL LOOK AT EACH OTHER AND WHAT’S GOING ON’
HIS heart may beat in rhyme with the GAA season but when it comes to sports law, Jack Anderson offers a detached, unemotional eye. It comes with the territory when you have letters after your name in the same area of expertise and reside as Professor and Director of Sports Law at the University of Melbourne and the Law School whose alumni include various prime ministers and chief justices.
Even on the other side of the world, his roots in Gaelic games are so deeply ingrained – he hurled with his father in Doon back in the day that he was recently given the onerous responsibility of curating the Limerick Mount Rushmore on Newstalk. And survived to tell the tale, educating the audience about hurling great Mick Mackey along the way.
When there is a hot topic in the sphere of sports law, he is a frequent contributor to the debate, whether in newspaper columnist mode with the Irish Examiner or as Off the Ball radio guest.
And there is no hotter topic right now than the club and county debate that has enveloped the GAA’s Return to Play roadmap with its club competition-first approach, before inter-county competition restarts from October 17 ahead of winter All-Ireland championships in football and hurling.
Battlelines have been drawn over the GAA’s guideline that stipulates county teams can’t train until September 14, with the Player Injury Benefit scheme cancelled until that date.
The problem being, it’s an open secret that multiple county teams are breaking that ban, gathering players for collective training with all sorts of anecdotal reports of county players then stepping out of club sessions as a result.
For a half an hour or so over Zoom, Anderson gives his own take on the rolling controversy that has the Club Players Association calling for counties to be thrown out of the All-Ireland if in breach of the September 14 date, for managers to be banned.
The issue has Offaly county chairman and Irish Mail On Sunday columnist Michael Duignan going viral and being tagged as a future GAA president for publicly calling out the whole farce. Eddie Brennan, the current Laois hurling manager and an eight-time All-Ireland winner with Kilkenny, also slammed what is going on, and the Gaelic Players Association’s ‘weak’ and ‘timid’ response and statement on same.
Before he gets to the Sports law implications and the details of whether the GAA could – or should – act to resolve this, he lays out the value in how the association has reacted to Covid-19. The e-learning resource that every club member had to complete before returning to the field, along with the Health Questionnaire form that has to be filled out once and then reconfirmed for every session. ‘The GAA have done well with the whole Covid-19 regulations. The Return to Play protocol was tremendous, compared to anything they’ve had in Australia. So they’ve done that well.
‘On paper, it looked a good idea. Have the club first, then have a bit of a county scene afterwards. What they’ve done is set that mid-September date for a return to training. Which is all fine. You delegate to the county boards. John Horan [GAA president], and Tom Ryan [director general] as well, they said, “Well, we’re not actually going to impose any sanctions. Or at least that’s not the way we’re thinking”.
‘And you kind of go, “Well what’s the point in having a window type situation if you’re not going to impose any sanction?” Once the draws are out, and you see Limerick are drawn against Clare in the first round of the Munster hurling championship, obviously managers around the country are going to look at each other and what is going on.
‘From all reports, they have been doing it already. The little bit of frustration that I have is this suggestion that there is nothing you can do.
‘Well actually, there is provision in the rulebook which is called “discrediting the association”, which is a catch-all. Bringing the association into disrepute, that type of scenario. You could apply that. And the minimum is eight weeks. In effect then, that’s your Championship gone.
‘The GAA probably said centrally, “ultimately it’s up to county boards to do this. It’s kind of too much bother if we take it on.
‘That we’re looking at the training ban type thing. That if we take on an inter-county manager and it’s reported to us, all that that would bring on. It could end up in the DRA. Do we need all that?”
‘But ultimately, you are the regulator. You’ve given the guidelines. You have to impose sanctions. What’s important, is not even so much this year, when it comes to fixtures and club and county, it’s going to come down to a windowtype situation. Where the club either comes first or the inter-county comes second.
‘And you’re going to have a hard border between the two at some stage. And if you haven’t imposed it now, when are you going to?
‘When some cut-off date comes next year, and the fixtures are made, haven’t you lost a bit of moral authority now by saying, “Ah well, we kinda, we might… actually, we don’t fancy it”.
‘It’s a strange thing to say and a strange way to approach it. More so for the future, for the club and county thing.’
Anderson’s take is timely and on the money as the GAA’s conference call with county chairpersons on Friday revealed that the penny had dropped – now the association would be actively exploring that very sanction for counties breaking the training ban, namely Rule 7.2 (e) which deals with misconduct considered to have discredited the association.
Especially given people’s sensitivities are at an all-time high due to coronavirus pandemic. People have very genuine health concerns and have been following other healthrelated guidelines.
The country has gone through a process where guidelines have been vital to how the country and how Irish society has operated. The GAA has been at the heart of all the community work.
At such a heightened time in terms of the stakes, is there not even more of an onus on the GAA to make this work?
‘One way of looking at it is, when they had the Return to Play protocols, which are very detailed, very prescriptive and very good, everyone was on board with that.
‘People like Colm O’Rourke were complaining that it was too strict, that it would put a lot of emphasis on club but, by and large, GAA clubs have stood up.
‘Then you come to the situation where we say to the inter-county teams, “Will you just hold off until mid-September, then off you go. You’ve a whole championship”. ‘And we’ve been kinda lax about that. The GAA has said, “we’re not really going to proceed with sanctions”. It’s just a strange emphasis on clubs being regulated to county not.’
In an interview with Sportsmail,
Club Players Association chairman Micheál Briody pointed to the example of Manchester City, how at the upper echelon of pro sport, UEFA hit the Premier League champions with a two-year ban from European competition for breaking Financial Fair Play rules.
And yet here, the GAA don’t want to take action to uphold their own guidelines for an amateur, community-based organisation? When Tyrone native and AFL player with
Essendon, Conor McKenna tested positive, it prompted huge debate and swift sanction.
‘Even in the AFL here where we’ve had all the debate about Conor McKenna, Conor has been banned for a week. Now it’s backdated – but he was banned. Other players we hear have broken Covid regulations and will be facing sanctions as well. It’s pretty straightforward.
‘Certainly in Australia, they do similar, and they would be strict about it.
‘Maybe not so much in Ireland but in Victoria, we’re probably going into a second wave. So if sports aren’t behaving properly, you don’t want to be accused then of being in some way part of the problem. You want to be very mindful of that.
‘Even that aside, just in a general regulatory sense, if you say there is a cut-off period, and you say that’s for the good of the GAA as a whole, which it is, then just implement it. Just do it. You have a full disciplinary process. If people feel they have been wronged, they have multiple opportunities to appeal it. So let them. It just seems a very strange thing to do.’
Every club member participating in a field session has to fill out the GAA’s Health Questionnaire. Reconfirm for every subsequent session – a simple process involving a few online clicks. Again, it’s an important element in the event of contact tracing. As Anderson notes, this raises the question, if county teams are training off the books, how do you operate contact tracing? How do you go through that important public health process for a session that is not meant to be happening?
‘It’s been a strange attitude about the insurance issue. That if the GAA insurance doesn’t cover it, maybe they can sort it privately. But then, you’re training for what purpose? Are you training in the shadow of the GAA regulation or what?
‘It’s all very strange.’
The role of the Gaelic Players Association is an issue also.
GAA president John Horan also made a statement in Croke Park last Friday week when he was asked about potential sanctions and follow-up. His direct words were: ‘We’d like people to call them out but we’re not actually intending to impose any penalties’.
The GPA have a line of communication to every unsanctioned training session via players and any requests being made. Would it not do a service to pass that information on to the GAA or ask their members to abide by the guidelines, or unite as one to support the GAA? Yet none of that has happened, bar a statement which complained of the ‘negative discourse’ and addressed none of the substantive issues? Anderson agrees it is a complex area.
‘Look, on reflection, John Horan will say, that might not be the best way to phrase it. It’s a very Irish solution to an Irish problem. Tell us, but don’t show us, if you know what I mean. Wow!
‘The one thing I’ve noticed worldwide with players unions is that they have been rightly very strong – and you see it with the Premier League where they were reticent to return until certain medical protocols and assurances – not money, funnily enough – were given. In this scenario, it seems almost the opposite applies. No insurance. Strange.
‘To be fair to the GPA, if the GAA got them notionally to sign a waiver to go back, the GPA would be entitled to say that’s unlawful.
‘We will only go back under certain conditions.
‘If teams are back, now, they are effectively waiving certain rights themselves. Which is a very unusual thing to do.
‘It’s very unusual, that, in the absence of the organising body’s insurance being in place, that they would go back.
‘I think all stakeholders involved have to look at themselves and go, “Whatever about the narrow legal and technical issues, morally and ethically, going forward, is this the way we want to run things?”
‘Look, I’m born-and-bred GAA. It’s full of these things. Paying managers at club level, at inter-county level.
‘Sometimes the GAA wrestles with its conscience – but the GAA always wins.’