GAA inter-county system reinforces inequality
Players from lower-ranked counties continue to be underappreciated
ATALE OF two footballers, one from a superpower, the other from a county which, apart from occasional spurts, has spent much of its GAA life with a bottom 16 ranking. Diarmuid Connolly’s career with Dublin lasted 13 years, during which he won all the big prizes on multiple occasions. Adrian Marren played for Sligo for 16 years, with his career high point coming in 2007 when they won the Connacht title.
Connolly and Marren announced their retirements last week, having decided they didn’t want to hang around for the ‘Pandemic Games’. What followed was predictable.
Connolly’s exit launched days of detailed assessment and analysis of his years in blue. Marren’s departure was noted briefly.
Such is sporting life. The top stars attract the limelight, both in their playing days and when they leave. That’s understandable, but what separates the GAA from the rest is that the limit of what a player can achieve is influenced as much by geography as talent.
It can even happen within the same county.. Take the case of the Colm ‘Gooch’ Cooper and John ‘Tweek’ Griffin. Their Kerry careers overlapped for 13 years, before retiring around the same time in 2017. ‘Gooch’ generated superstar status with the footballers, while ‘Tweek’, a talent who would have thrived in a stronger hurling county, had Christy Ring Cup wins and promotion from Division 2 as his biggest achievements.
The inter-county structure makes inequality inevitable, but not to the degree that currently exists.
That’s the crux of the issue. For example, take team holidays. They have become an automatic perk for All-Ireland winners and, in most cases, beaten finalists too. It’s a nice reward, but should they be subsidised, as they are, by Croke Park? Introduced as a ‘thank you’’, it seems fair enough at face value until you consider how few have any chance of enjoying it.
In reality, it’s an indirect payment to players from the stronger counties. Suffice to say, Adrian Marren never sat on a plane heading for an exotic location for a holiday partially funded by Croke Park.
That might seem like a small point, but it’s hugely symbolic as it shows up a manufactured inequality which favours the strong. Why should Croke Park subsidise holidays for players who already enjoy huge privilege because of their counties’ strength?
And why should counties, who are capable of generating high finance because of their success, be allowed to spend lavishly on teams while their neighbours struggle to meet modest budgets? Even some of the championships are loaded against the lower-ranked.
Leinster football keeps the previous year’s semi-finalists out of the first round draw and also ensures that they can’t be paired against each other in the quarter-finals.
Munster football keeps the previous year’s finalists, usually Kerry and Cork, out of the quarter-final draw.
Thankfully, football championship reform is now on the agenda, but only time will tell if it actually does
anything to tackle inequality.
Some counties will always be stronger than others, but it shouldn’t be institutionalised. Playing minor championships alongside the senior games might have seemed a good idea decades ago, but all it succeeded in doing was widening the divide.
It offered U-18s (U-17s more recently) from the stronger powers the chance to enjoy the glamour occasions, whereas long-serving seniors from lower-ranked counties rarely, if indeed ever, got to play in Croke Park.
The argument that strong and weak will always be part of the GAA framework is no justification for simply ignoring it or, worse still, adding to the problem.
Because something was deemed acceptable 50, 40 or even 20 years doesn’t mean it can continue indefinitely. Will players from less successful counties continue to put in huge effort, knowing that the cards aren’t just stacked against them but are marked as well? It cannot be taken for granted.
Nor should it be.