United front is vital for players’ bodies to achieve their goals
IT WILL hardly come as a surprise to Dermot Earley, the new chief of the Gaelic Players’ Association, that when it comes to next month’s Annual Congress, procedure comes before progress in the GAA.
Both the GPA and the newly formed Club Players Association (CPA) will take an interest in a couple of motions which, ultimately, would enable them to do business in the future rather than getting it done right now.
A motion will go to the floor which will seek to give the GPA the right to submit motions of their own from 2018 onwards, while a separate proposal will seek to have the CPA officially recognised as the voice of the club player.
The irony, though, is while both players’ bodies are reduced to shuffling their papers and clearing their throats for the right to be heard, they will be silenced on the issue which exercises them most.
Should Páraic Duffy’s proposal to reform the football Championship be passed – and with it the acceptance of a modestly tightened intercounty calendar – then Championship reform is likely to be off the GAA agenda for the bones of a decade.
Yet, while both the GPA and CPA have to take an official line on the latest bid to reform, the evidence is that they will be underwhelmed by it.
It falls well short of the GPA’s own rejected proposal which sought to introduce a Champions League proposal allowing more games for all and not just the top eight. The CPA, it appears, will require more than a modest adjustment to satisfy their core demand to ‘fix the fixtures.’
But irrespective of whether Duffy (above) gets the green light for his proposal or not, the biggest ace that both Earley – who has identified this as his most pressing issue – and CPA chairman Michael Briody have to drive change may well be each other.
‘We can all sit down and draw up a fixture plan; that’s not the hard bit. The hard bit is looking at the approach we need to take at getting it through Congress,’ admits Briody.
The reality is that even if they are allowed submit motions in the future at Congress, the GPA’s name alongside any proposal is unlikely to receive support from the body politic.
Going solo on this is not an option, which is why timing and the birth of the CPA may prove to be Earley’s best friend.
While some of the CPA’s body language towards the GPA has been less than warm – not least secretary Declan Brennan’s assertion that their presence had been ‘a disaster’ for the GAA – there is also recognition that there is far more to be gained from co-operation than conflict.
Both seek a shorter, condensed inter-county season and a clearly defined club one, which points to both working closely together in the months ahead. ‘There is a fixture mess that needs to be addressed and this is another voice at that table. Our players have to go back and play with their clubs as well, so any improvements in the club structure is an improvement to the GPA but also to the overall structure of the GAA as well,’ said Earley this week.
That they bang heads on a blueprint seems inevitable, given that any future proposal that has both their names on it will be given serious momentum.
Briody believes that if the CPA can recruit heavily enough, it will provide them with the ‘moral authority’ to seek change but the GAA won’t slaughter the cash cow that is the inter-county game on a whim.
If the CPA can boast of a ‘moral authority’, the GPA can claim a strategic one, especially with funding linked to the GAA’s commercial earnings, ensuring a condensed season wouldn’t damage the Championship’s profile and potential.
If together they can come up with a plan that serves both, it may build the kind of momentum that will be hard to resist.
‘It would certainly be embarrassing for the GAA if they could not in those circumstances get it through the mechanics of the bureaucracy that exist, if that is what the basic essence of the organisation wants,’ suggested Briody.
The prize for working as one is there to be seized.