“LEAGUE of Ireland clubs are in financial meltdown. Chasing an impossible dream fuelled by spoofer coaches lining their pockets with cash. Most of them need an extra bus now to bring the backroom staff. They even have their own language that is impossible for people to understand. Inter-county GAA is becoming more and more like this. The championship is like Celtic and Rangers in Scotland. Dublin v Kerry. County boards are wasting hundreds of thousands of euro on literally nothing. It is lunacy.”

Roddy Collins,

ex Shamrock Rovers, Cork City,

Derry City manager.

“The truth is that covid has been really, really good for us. Without it we would be on the verge of bankruptcy.”

Kieran McKeever, Derry County Board vice-chair.

“Someone has to have the balls to say stop, enough is enough, then other counties will follow suit. It will be financial suicide to keep going the way we are.”

In dreamland, there is a provincial and All-Ireland Football championship. In reality, there is merely a competition between Dublin, Kerry and maybe one other.

In Derry, the board is currently in serious discussions about whether to enter a senior team into next year’s championship. I spoke to board members during the week and the message was the same. “We are custodians of Irish culture and the games in this county. We cannot spend what we do not have.” “We have a duty to be responsible.” “If we have to sacrifice the senior county team for a year, or longer, then so be it. Things are totally out of control, chasing an impossible dream.” One county board member told me “We may be able to put a team out, but we may have to sacrifice the manager to do that and bring in a local volunteer as caretaker.”

Sad to say, but if Derry had not fielded a team in league or championship over the last five years, our absence would have been as memorable as Kilkenny footballers. In common with the majority of counties, we are spending money we do not have on the pursuit of a title we have zero chance of winning. The whole point of any competition is that there is the possibility of being able to compete. In American pro sports they do this by giving the number one draft pick from college each year to the lowest placed pro team from the previous season. This doesn’t work in an amateur game. Leitrim will not get Con O’Callaghan, and yet they will train five times a week, do their S&C, borrow, beg and loan hundreds of thousands of euro so they can hopefully lose to Mayo or Galway by less than 20 points in the first round.

The possibility of not entering a senior team in the championship may sound radical, but it is the inevitable outcome of the dysfunction that is the modern GAA. As soon as the GAA permitted a professional sports model to be imposed on an amateur game, we were in serious trouble.

Teams that are performing to the ability of their counties are sustained by big spending benefactors, in the same way that a League of Ireland soccer team depends on a multi-millionaire owner. Donegal has KN Group. Roscommon has Ballymore. With no one to feed the hungry mouths of the GAA’s pseudo professionals, it is a bank loan.

In Derry, we have borrowed a £300,000 government Covid bouncebank loan on preferential terms. We are currently £200,000 in the red. Our new, progressive, high capacity board are merely doing their jobs rationally and, as McKeever puts it, “focussing on creating and preserving a manageable GAA for the people of the county.”

Derry is merely a prop in this argument. The vast majority of counties are in the same situation. A public pretence that it’s ok when in fact the situation is dire. I spoke to one county treasurer last week who asked me not to name him but told me that their county players have been informed there will be no expenses paid for the foreseeable future.

At a Zoom meeting with all of the county chairmen last week, the extent of many counties’ plight was set out. They were informed by Croke Park that the GAA have managed to secure a grant from Sport Ireland. The GAA are also to take out a substantial bank loan and the money will be split between the counties to allow them to pay their vital costs. A precise figure was not available. If the inter-county season proceeds, Croke Park are going to agree a specific budget with each county and administer it themselves to ensure budgetary discipline.

This is what we have come to. Look lads, do not panic. You need to put out a team in the championship. We will borrow from the bank and bankroll you in the meantime. Do not panic. It will be ok. Instead of pressing pause, and concentrating on creating a sustainable, logical, future proofed Association, we are running to the bank to feed the monster, like a gambling addict who has spent his wages and desperately needs that hundred euro on the number 6 at Doncaster to turn everything around.

It was of course inevitable, but as always when it comes to the big picture, the GAA shrugs its shoulders and hopes for the best.

Derry’s dilemma is sending out alarm bells, but again, it was always going to come to this. In a small dual county, in a vain bid to keep up with the Joneses, we have been spending over £45,000 a month on our senior teams. I am reminded of Gerry Donnelly’s remark that “The only thing we do not have in our backroom team is a gynaecologist.” What has all of this expenditure brought us? To Division Four. And now, Division Three mid-table mediocrity.

Derry has a bumper club championship, with a vibrant club scene. We had 10,000 people at last year’s county football final between Glen and Rossa and 8,000 at the semi-final between Slaughtneil and Glen. But that £200,000 a year wasn’t enough to prevent our heads going beneath the water. Think of how many better things we could have spent this on. Real investment in the long-term health of the GAA in the county. Instead, it has been going down the hole that Alice fell down to Wonderland.

I have previously argued for a new, no cash regime. Cash comes via gate receipts. There should be no cash sales. Use a card or a Myticket app. There should be strict spending caps for each team. An auditor should be appointed in each province to oversee and monitor spending and ensure compliance.

As for Derry, our Gaels should be hopeful. The new board and committees are populated by strong, honest characters that have the county’s best interests at heart and are not afraid to speak the truth. The years of hiding in the shadows are gone. Our finances are being brought under control. New structures are being put in place. The yes men are mostly gone and as we all know, there is nothing worse than yes men.

The board and finance committees are holding a series of meetings to make crunch decisions. As McKeever puts it, “We have lost ourselves altogether. We have forgotten the point of the GAA. It is not to run a professional county team. It is to promote Irish culture. To get on the pitch and play our games. To play to win of course, but not to bankrupt ourselves doing it. Someone has to shout stop. If we are the first to do it, then so be it.”

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