Clubs in need of a reality check...
ONE hundred days have come and gone and the Club Players Association has admitted that it ‘underestimated’ the scale of the problem in attempting to calmly lay out a new fixtures calendar, and has further admitted it is in far less of a rush about going to war with the GAA. Pheeewwwww.
Meanwhile, nine days from now, Donald Trump will get out of bed on his 100th day in The White House, if not before then, an awful lot closer to ridding the world of North Korea’s nuclear programme and incinerating a few hundred million people into the bargain quite possibly.
Clearly, the CPA does not have its mind on world events — get a move on lads. We might not have all the time in the world.
I’ve absolutely no idea why the CPA decided to be all ‘President or Taoiseach-like’ in doing the whole friggin’ 100 days thing. Truth is, we had all forgotten they ever set themselves such a ticking bomb timetable. However, it might be better if the lads just now relax.
We need the CPA exercising themselves as much as we need Kim Jong-un doing his thing jollying up our nightly Sky News.
Apart from the factor of sheer boredom, why did the CPA ever come into being in the first place? Boredom was not a good starting point.
Instead of taking their hands out of their pockets and deciding to form an association that would represent every footballer and hurler of every shape and size and ability all over the country, why didn’t the lads just make a cup of tea to begin with?
On ‘Day One’ rather than ‘Day 100’ they could have answered a lot of questions for themselves and quickly come to the realisation that, in fact, club footballers and hurlers are already the most represented group of people in the whole of Irish sport.
In a maddening form of democracy, from clubrooms to county boards to the inner sanctum of Croke Park where there’s dozens and dozens of committees talking things over day and night, there are men and women to be found who will always put the parish before the county.
Our clubs do not need more representation. They need less.
Our clubs only need Páraic Duffy, who’s a Castleblaney man first and foremost, a Monaghan man secondly, and Director-General of the GAA after that. Duffy knows what Castleblaney needs, same as I know what Skryne needs, same as you know what your club needs.
Games, games and more games, and that could happen in a flick of a switch. Though Duffy values prudence more than I do, and would not flick it.
I would, however — perhaps I’ve more ‘Trump’ at work inside me than the DG. And that’s because I believe the GAA has run out of time. It has driven the vast majority of its membership to such levels of desperation that they have come close to losing their minds. A creeping insanity that has a good number within the CPA wanting to go on strike. Think about it. Because the lads in the CPA are getting no games of football or hurling, they’re whispering to one another about going on strike and, besides not playing whenever they might be asked to in the distant future, they’re not going to train if that’s the case. They’re going to stop paying their gym memberships. They’re going to ignore their own children’s wishes to play our native games, and when those children arrive at the gates of the local GAA club the CPA will dare those children to cross the picket lines.
It’s crazy. But, luckily, mostly the CPA is also laughable.
It’s not a strike that’s needed. The CPA simply need to direct their ham-fisted intent elsewhere and stubbornly start playing games. Football teams and hurling teams all over the country just need to get on with their own lives — and do so without their county players.
Counties and clubs divided a long time ago. We’re talking parallel universes. Duffy knows this as well as I do, and that is why he was more than prepared to bulldoze through his proposal for a ‘Super 8’ conclusion to the football Championship. Indeed a ‘Super 8’ or perhaps a ‘Super 12’ (just to be on the measured side) could start and end the football Championship and everyone would be better off.
The natural order of every sport on the planet is for an elite level to exist. Football and hurling are no different. Duffy is ensuring that this will be the case in football from 2018 and beyond. Hurling will also have its top tier of competing teams in the very near future who will not need to be distracted or compromised by vastly inferior opposition.
The GAA is committed to a ‘natural order’ for good reasons, and reasons some people think bad (but not me). They are doing it to entertain the masses with the greatest exhibitions of football and hurling possible, and they are doing it in order to further build our games into brands that can stand alongside the best of international sport. They’re doing it too to make a tonne of money, if possible.
But, this money will always belong to the people who are the GAA, the men and women in our clubs. The money is for them.
The CPA should stop counting out days of boredom, and simply encourage clubs to get on with things. Play their games, and play them without county footballers and hurlers who, because of their demanding careers at an elite level, have so little to offer their own clubs anymore. Clubs lost their star countymen a long, long time ago. All they need to do now is to forget about them.
Enjoy life without them while we can. Because Donald Trump has only nine days left on those short fingers of his.