The GAA must change and Ryan can be the catalyst
HE WAS, said his promoter of the late Big Tom McBride, ‘Ireland with a suit on him’. Of the thousands of words devoted to his memory this past week, none were as precise.
They captured the plainness of the man, which made him relatable and helped to make him a star.
One of the photographs that appeared in the days after his death showed Big Tom in a Monaghan jersey, and the common perception would be that an interest in country music overlaps with a devotion to Gaelic games.
The fan-bases are more diverse than that, especially in the GAA, but both movements would pride themselves on their identification with the plain people of Ireland.
Knowing what his fans wanted distinguished Big Tom and other performers like him. They made the people happy.
Whether those administering Gaelic games are so attuned to the wants and needs of their followers is much less certain in this time of flux.
Tributes to Big Tom centred on his importance to emigrants. Singing in venues like London’s fabled Galtymore dance hall, he brought a flavour of home to the tens of thousands forced to abandon Ireland through the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
A concern for the diaspora was one of the arguments made in favour of the deal the GAA made with Sky television, and it continues to be used in defence of a contentious agreement.
In putting some of its matches behind a paywall, the GAA was accused of forgetting its roots, abandoning those who relied on football and hurling as entertainments in their lives.
In the hours after Big Tom’s death, radio shows were consumed by the reaction. Schedules were cleared, in itself illustrative of the importance of a cultural phenomenon that moved swathes of the population.
Later that day, Tom Ryan sat down to make his first public appearance as the head of the most powerful cultural force of them all in this country.
More than any musical genre, the GAA can claim to represent the people of Ireland.
Loyalty to the sports mobilises volunteers in numbers running to hundreds of thousands every week. And at the elite end, the games provide the sporting highlight of the Irish year.
But Ryan is peering into a chasm. All the seeming disparate problems confronting the GAA have a common root: the growing distance between those ordinary members, and the narrow, elite end of the organisation.
The Sky deal is about monetising elitism. The GPA deal is facilitating growing elitism. The problems assailing clubs are a direct consequence of elitism.
Trying to reconcile those competing forces looks impossible — but that is what Ryan is now expected to do.
The interviews he gave at his unveiling conveyed the image of a solid, serious man, who understands the sources of aggravation.
But then his predecessor recognised them, too; knowing what is wrong is not the issue. Fixing it is.
It was encouraging to read his apparent scepticism at the prospect of paying inter-county managers, but his desire to see everyone commit to a common principle is naïve.
‘The answer is in the whole lot of us signing up to a collective set of values and vision for what we want the GAA to be, and when I say the whole lot of us I mean every county and every unit striving towards achieving that.’
His idealism is admirable, but it won’t survive long on contact with the self-interest of counties.
More relevant was what he said at the launch of the association’s financial report in 2017, in his previous role as director of finance.
‘You’d be worried that it’s a bit of a vicious circle to some degree,’ he said of the cost of preparing intercounty teams.
‘Are we feeding a monster in generating more and diverting it towards counties so that they can put it into county teams?’
Yes, must be the answer. The power wielded by the managers of county teams must be challenged.
So too must the passive attitude to fundraising by the GPA in North America. It does nothing to soften the image of the players’ body as money-mad elitists.
Most important of all is addressing the concerns of the Club Players’ Association. Ryan did say their ambitions are ‘not unreasonable’.
But the attitude towards the CPA from many within positions of power in the GAA has been dismissive or plainly hostile.
That has to change, and Ryan can initiate it.
The GAA relies on the plain people of Ireland. They are in danger of being forgotten.