The players deserve 100 million thanks

IT’S not by accident that GAA income has hit the €100million mark. For an amateur organisation this is an astonishing sum of money. But the full total of €100,986,508 accrued during 2016, and which was announced last Wednesday, would not be so impressively healthy without the backbreaking work of players, volunteers and supporters.

Counting blessings, and thanking the likes of RTÉ and Sky Sports – while acknowledging the GAA’s ability to compete more effectively than ever before against other sports – should be secondary to the GAA showing gratitude towards its own.

Chief amongst our ‘own’ are the greatest hurlers and footballers in the association. These men, who would be largely forgotten if it were not for the efforts of the Gaelic Players’ Association, are often taken for granted and occasionally pilloried.

It was interesting to note that at the GAA briefing this week, the association’s finance director Tom Ryan (right) admitted that the giant haul in takings was significantly aided by the luck of having three replays at the tail end of three of its biggest competitions. But almost in the same breath Ryan voiced his concern over the rising costs of supporting county teams. ‘Are we feeding a monster in generating more and diverting it towards counties so that they can put it into county teams?’ he asked, with what we can only presume was with sincerity and genuine worry. Are the men at the GAA top table too busy eating their giant cake that they forget who is actually responsible for putting the food in front of them in the first place? Without our greatest hurlers and footballers (ie our ‘monsters’), giving five and six days a week to be as great as they can possibly be, would the GAA be able to fill Croke Park and its many fine stadia dotted around the country? Too often they seem to forget that without its athletes the GAA might still be a two-bit association in ramshackle housing.