CLUB PLAYERS ASSOCIATION SAY THE GAA IS ENGAGING IN TOKENISM
CPA SAY CONTACT IS ‘TOKENISM’
“Democracy
is certainly failing the GAA” “There could
be a festival of football”
THE body representing club players in the GAA claim their discussions with Croke Park on the plight of their members are at a ‘standstill’, and accused Croke Park of ‘tokenism’ in their dealings.
The Club Players Association have reiterated their demands for radical change in the association to address the disaffection among club members over the availability of games for rank and file footballers and hurlers.
‘It’s easy when you stand in Croke Park to feel you’re invincible,’ said leading CPA figure Liam Griffin, as he highlighted the dislocation between the headline inter-county Championships and the hundreds of thousands of players with clubs whose seasons are unpredictable and irregular as they are prey to the whims of managers of county teams who can cancel fixtures in order to protect their squads.
The CPA revealed a membership of almost 24,000, and cited surveys of their members in March and April that drew 4,984 and 3,739 responses respectively.
Central to the club body’s plans for a redrawn schedule is keeping the month of April entirely free of inter-county action, either matches or training, to facilitate club matches.
They shared three plans for alternative GAA seasons yesterday. The three plans proposed by the CPA define the club season as running for the month of April, and then from August 1 to December (December 1 in two of the plans, and until December 31 in the third example).
‘We are them and we are us as well,’ insisted Griffin, arguing that the CPA did not see themselves in opposition to the inter-county game.
However, their frustration with Croke Park was palpable, and their meetings with the GAA leadership to try and press their plans for reform have not assuaged them. CPA chairman Micheál Briody described the official attitude as ‘tokenism rather than a real interest in what we had to show’.
The CPA designs for a new championship are planned with the club and the inter-county games in mind, this holistic approach not something they see reflected in the official attitude, with Briody claiming Croke Park have no similar master-plan for tackling the fixtures issues afflicting clubs.
Summaries of three of the CPA calendar proposals were produced yesterday.
The first replaced the National Hurling League with a provincial league, split the Liam MacCarthy Cup into two groups of five, and had a two- tier football championship. This guaranteed county teams a minimum of nine games in hurling and seven in football; and a maximum of 14 in hurling and 17 in football.
The second plan played out the hurling and football championships on a league basis, running from February to June/July, before the top teams played off in semifinals and finals for the All-Ireland championships. Both championships would be tiered. It guaranteed a minimum of seven games in hurling and 14 in football, and a maximum of 10 in hurling and 16 in football.
The third plan built on the previous one with the addition of a Provincial Cup based on the current provincial championships, open to teams from all tiers and running concurrent with the new structure.
None of the proposals, Briody stressed, were final, describing them as ‘tentative rather than definitive’. The point of the exercise was to prove there was another way of structuring the season that gave a definite window to clubs, while guaranteeing more inter-county games and all the while concluding the All-Ireland club championship by the end of the calendar year.
Their case was persuasively made, but there was a recognition, too, that this is a battle which will take some fighting. In that connection, it was interesting to hear Briody (left) refer to the CPA as a ‘lobby group’.
If their ambitions are to be viable, they will have to build support throughout the association and in a body with as many democratic manifestations as the GAA that will take painstaking work. ‘Democracy is certainly failing the GAA,’ said Briody.
Aaron Kernan spoke of the relationship between successful club championship runs and counties suffering as a result, this illustrative, he said, of the damage caused by not accommodating all GAA fixtures in a calendar year.
Because his club Crossmaglen were so successful for so long in the club championship, it meant these players missed practically entire League seasons with Armagh.
‘I not only missed out what is the busiest months of the intercounty season,’ said Kernan, ‘but worse still the Cross squad suf- fered because we missed out on developing a bond as a group with the county set-up, and we believe the county were not as successful as they might have been. At times there were even suggestions we didn’t want to play for our county; nothing could be further from the truth.’
Kernan cited relegations Armagh suffered in the National League in 2011 and 2012, years when Crossmaglen won the club championship and their players were not available for the county.
He also instanced Slaughtneil reaching the club final and hurling semi-final this year, coinciding with Derry getting relegated in the National Football League.
Kernan insisted moving the club finals to a pre-Christmas date would not affect their importance. ‘These matches could be played in a festival of GAA before Christmas, and afterwards players could go home to their families and enjoy a holiday.’