An Moltóir cannot claim to have read, or even seen, the report of the GAA’s Strategic Review Committee… However, if the elements of the report which the national ‘meeja’ have focused on are anything to go by, then one has to conclude that Croke Park has completely lost the plot.

As far as An Moltóir is concerned, the key issues facing Gaelic games are how to best exploit (or satisfy, depending on your point of view) the massive popularity of the games; how to provide a regular showcase for the top football and hurling players; how to provide proper competitive structures for players at all levels; and how to counteract the growing problem of getting more volunteers to help out with the running of clubs and the coaching of players.

These crucial questions do not appear to have been asked, never mind answered, in the Review Committee’s report. Instead, we have got fanciful suggestions about splitting Dublin in two (but not Cork or Tipperary, much more successful counties, both of whom are already divided into GAA ‘divisions’), placing an age limit on officials (an idiotic and presumably illegal or unconsitutional idea), and requiring county chairpersons to double up as county delegates to Central Council.

Gaelic games has been facing intense competition for the attention of sports players and followers from soccer since the advent of Sky Sports and their wall-to-wall coverage of English soccer. Huge salaries and media hype act as powerful magnets for young sports players. Wide-eyed kids (and lots of adults too) can indulge their fervent devotion to their chosen soccer idols on virtually a daily basis. Meanwhile, rugby has gone through extraordinary evolutionary changes in a very short period of time. Rule changes, professionalism and new competitive structures have generated an unprecedented level of popular interest. Last week An Moltóir was in a pub packed with people watching the Munster-Stade Francais game, roaring the Munster men on from start to finish and raising the rafters with each score and bone-crunching tackle. This would have been unthinkable even five years ago.

So what should the GAA do? The answer is obvious: televised top-class games every weekend at least from April to October, with the top players given regular opportunities to strut their stuff and become hurling’s and football’s alternatives to Ryan Giggs and Michael Owen. This means a league-style structure with lots of games for each team. The problem is that this kind of structure is inherently incompatible with inter-county competition, unless county players become completely separated from their clubs (at least during the peak playing season). It is also incompatible with the GAA’s provincial structure. What did the Strategic Review Committee have to say about this outdated structure whose continued existence is proving to be a major stumbling to the evolution of Gaelic games?

The inter-county competitive system evolved at a time when playing for the county was a pleasant diversion for top club players and involved a few weeks light training at most. It was also a time when most families couldn’t afford more than one big sports outing per year. With the intense involvement of players in county teams nowadays, and the rise of general affluence and popular support for regular games, the old inter-county setup has to come under the spotlight. A further problem here is the inherent imbalance in the county structure, with small counties generally having less chance of competitive success.

Merging or splitting counties is no answer to this problem. One cannot envisage the seething masses in the stands screaming “Up Dublin South!” or “Come on Longford-Westmeath” of “Sligo-Leitrim”. The inevitable answer, and one previously advocated by An Moltóir, is for the GAA to move to a club-based structure for its premier competitions. The idea would be for an elite group of clubs to emerge from within the county structure. This elite group would play in a premier league championship throughout the summer months, with promotion to the league via the regular club championship in which the premier clubs would not be involved.

This system would allow a county to have two or more clubs in the premier league, if they were good enough. Thus Dublin might have Na Fianna and Ballyboden in the premier football league. These clubs would provide a better focus for popular support than artificially-created North and South Dublin county teams. This system would also offer a better route to national success for weaker counties than the intercounty structure. Éire Óg of Carlow or Castletown of Laois certainly would seem to offer better prospects than their respective county teams.

Of course, this system would inevitably lead to the movement of top players to the top clubs and the introduction of professionalism. So what? The GAA needs some system for providing regular top-quality matches featuring all the best players, not just as a worthy ideal in itself, but in order to compete with soccer and rugby (not to mention drugs and Play Stations) for the hearts and minds of our young people. The proposed system would also generate much more revenue, in terms of gate receipts, broadcasting rights and advertising, which could be ploughed back into professional coaching and administration at club and school level.

There could still be room for an inter-county competition, to be played off in A & B divisions with 16 counties in each. This could provide for three pool matches, two semi-finals and a final to be played off in September and October, with the premier club championship being completed in August.

The Irish Rugby Football Union survived for one hundred years on a diet of mainly friendly club matches with a provincial cup competition tacked on at the end of the season. The game itself was deadly boring, with the drinking taken more seriously than the training. The games were essentially a social event which allowed male bonding among the country’s social elite. Then all of a sudden things started to happen. Professionalism was introduced. Rule changes made the game much more attractive as a spectacle. The All-Ireland club league was set up and looked like becoming a real winner until being superceded, to a considerable extent, by the European Cup and Celtic League competitions, which shifted the focus to the provincial teams. The results are obvious: there are more people playing rugby, attending rugby matches and watching them on TV.

If a game so weighed down with tradition as rugby could make such revolutionary changes, then why not the GAA? In the absence of an international dimension to the games, the aim should be the creation of an All-Ireland Club League along rugby lines. Croke Park will have to start moving in this direction in the near future, or risk falling further behind in the priorities of a growing number of sports players and fans. There are undoubtedly too many people in the GAA with too much influence who remain stuck in the past and who, to paraphrase a celebrated comment made at a GAA Congress many years ago, would prefer to play with a square ball in order to differentiate the GAA from soccer. Rooting these people out by creating an age limit is no way of going about tackling this problem. Maybe we need some sort of forward-thinking association of young turks who would set about wresting control of this Great Assoooosheeaaation of ours from the ould fogies who currently rule the roost around the country.

Related Topics:
Clubs Should Get Pride of Place in Competitions
Time for GAA to move Club Championships to Centre Stage
GAA = The ‘God-help-us Association of Amateurs’
Last Death Throes of Narrow-Minded GAA Has-Beens?