It’s high time we scrapped all the subsidiary competitions: Brolly

FORMER Derry All-Ireland winner and high-profile RTE pundit Joe Brolly is urging the GAA to scrap all subsidiary competitions and thus reduce the workload on inter-county players in particular.

The demand, which was also made in the recent past by Oisin McConville, has already sparked debate and is certain to ruffle feathers within the corridors of Croke Park.

Brolly (inset), never one to mince his words, claims that subsidiary competitions “needlessly prolong the season”.

Brolly claims there has been a “leadership vacuum” in the GAA and believes that this is one of the major issues the new director general must address when he or she succeeds Paraic Duffy at the end of this month.

“Leadership is the key now. We need to strategise. We’ve drifted now for the last 20 years. The last great leader of the GAA was Peter Quinn,” maintains Brolly.

Fermanagh businessman Quinn was a driving force behind the refurbished Croke Park and has been involved in other major initiatives within the GAA which he served as president from 1991-1994. Brolly believes reducing the inter-county season to four months and scrapping all subsidiary competitions would be a step in the right direction.

“We can do everything we need to do in four months,” he asserts. “We get rid of the subsidiary competitions, which no one’s interested in anyway as all they do is needlessly prolong the season. We reduce the workload on players — that’s real player welfare.”