Maybe, just maybe, the GPA have a point

IT didn’t take long for the reaction on social media – and, yes, we know social media is as social media does – to fall into a familiar pattern. Just who do these guys think they are? Cheeky upstarts. Enfants terrible and, worse than that even, unrepentant elitists. The Gaelic Players Association certainly provokes strong reactions in people and definitely did that with their statement reacting to comments by the Director General of the GAA, Tom Ryan about the cost of running inter-county teams, which topped €30m for the first time in 2019.

“It is disappointing,” they wrote. “That the inter-county game... is once again being presented as the GAA’s problem child.”

To be fair to the critics of the GPA it is a bit of a stretch to see what Mr Ryan said as presenting the inter-county game as a problem child, but we do see where the GPA are coming from at the same time. Yes the costs of preparing inter-county teams are up, but so too are gate-receipts. The two are not unrelated.

Naturally there’s a political game being played out here – the GAA and the GPA are in the middle of negotiations about the next three or four year funding period – but the point the GPA make is not without merit.

It’s fashionable to a degree amongst a certain set of people to paint the inter-county game as some sort of monster that will overwhelm all before it. We’ve even seen arguments that the inter-county season should be curtailed further than has even been proposed to date in order to allow more time for club competition.

Well if you want to dilute the influence and popularity of the GAA, of football and hurling, then that certainly is one way of going about it. Don’t get us wrong here, the club game is hugely important, club football and hurling is brilliant, it’s GAA at its most pure, but to quote former Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, it’s not going to butter many parsnips. The inter-county game is the engine of the GAA. It’s the thing that draws the eyeballs and puts bums on seats. Club is family as the old advertising slogan went, which is another way of saying it’s relatively niche.

People are interested in their own club. Outside of that their interest wanes. That’s why you can only get a crowd of 25,000 for the All Ireland club finals and can sell out Croker twice in a fortnight for a senior final and replay. Call us crazy, but maybe, just maybe, the GPA have a point?