A VITAL VOICE
This week reminded us that the CPA are about much more than simply fixing the fixtures — they represent the tens of thousands let down by a broken system
THEY still don’t get it. Those convinced that the bothersome Club Players Association can be slowly, steadily reduced to a dispirited husk by the arcane machinery of the GAA still cannot understand what is going on.
For the CPA represent more than an alternative vision on fixtures: they also embody the frustrations of ordinary members, and the startling sense of neglect that pervades the club game.
What has been apparent since their return to the news agenda this week, though, has been the failure of tired and complacent thinking to understand that this movement is about more than merely fixing the fixtures.
It is, finally, an outlet for the tens of thousands of people who love Gaelic games as much as any president or All Star, but who find their attempts to bring their passion to a playing field stymied by a broken system.
Official GAA – not just administrators in Croke Park or on county boards, but also the journalists and pundits minded to dismiss contrary views as radical or terminally misguided – would do well to heed not just the opinions of the CPA figureheads, but the voices they represent, too.
The feeling that this is a time of fateful change in our native games grows every week, evident most recently in the revival of the Sky Sports argument by the intervention of Michael Duignan.
Even those of us disposed to believe that an organisation should have the freedom to decide its business for itself, should pause and have regard for the impact of Duignan’s comments.
If there was a commercial logic to the GAA being able to do business with whomever it pleases, that has been overpowered by the emotional force of tens of thousands of people adamant the Sky deal is making the sport they thought was theirs seem distant and unfeeling.
As of this weekend, footage of Duignan’s comments had attracted almost 800,000 views on The Sunday Game Facebook page. That should not be ignored.
Many of those disillusioned find in the Sky deal just the latest example of a body they think cares not about them but about the elite levels only. Their estrangement started long before any broadcast agreements were struck, and the problems invariably trace back to the plight of clubs.
Liam Griffin was right when he said that the structures in which the GAA fixtures programme is administered is the problem, yet the CPA are expected to push for change within that system – and one, to boot, that everyone knows is antithetical to change.
There was discreet but energetic spinning in reaction to the CPA’s reform proposals, which depend on club fixtures being accommodated within a larger dramatic reorganisation of the inter-county calendar.
The number of weekends dedicated to club fixtures from next year within current GAA plans was noted, for instance, while the need for the club advocates to learn patience was repeated.
If it should be noted that there is a will among some individuals in the GAA leadership to try and provide a fairer schedule for club players, there is also a dismissiveness that the CPA have felt palpably in some of their meetings.
Implicit in some public commentary is the wish the CPA would slip away and let the experts sort the problem, in that laborious, incremental way unique to the GAA.
No, they should not, because the importance of the CPA goes beyond fixtures. They represent the forgotten thousands.
Furthermore, they understand that they are not fighting a dastardly body intent on damaging the club game. There is nobody more effusive about his club than the man in the árd comhairle on AllIreland final day, after all.
It is not the wish of the long-serving official, a volunteer, to leave club players months without a match, driven to other sports.
Yet that is the consequence of a system controlled by the intercounty game. The tension between the hundreds of thousands of grassroots members, and the few hundred who attract the millions in sponsorship and will ensure Croke Park is full for the next two months has been growing for years.
An All-Ireland-winning captain of recent vintage told this column in reaction to the CPA proposals that they cannot come soon enough; he spoke of friendships with his clubmates straining because he does not see them, let alone get to play with them, between mid-winter and late into the following autumn.
This is unsustainable. Change is desperately needed. Clubs cannot be sacrificed much longer.
The silent people are finding their voice.
THE dignity with which Kevin McStay conducted himself is exceeded only by the coaching nous displayed to turn Roscommon into contenders in Croke Park. McStay was class personified when some ignorant criticism was sprayed his way during a tough League campaign. He didn’t seek to gloat or ram words down any critic’s neck after they thrashed Galway in the Connacht final. They now enter the quarter-finals with credible hopes of making the last four. Given how he was treated by his own once, this tantalises as another big McStay day.