Battle lines are being drawn

THE 2020 season was meant to be a year when we all accepted that things were not going to be normal and that we had to work together to ensure some sort of action for both clubs and counties. However, some county managers (note: NOT ALL) seem to be taking advantage of the situation and have pulled their players into train while some county players have not been training with their club. It’s a real pity and it is leading to a real rise in tensions. The CPA have ramped up their rhetoric and this week Offaly chairman Michael Duignan, on Newstalk’s Off The Ball, gained plenty of traction after saying that the GAA needs to “grow a pair of balls” over the issue. There is a real split forming, but I do think anyone who says that players need to stand up to their county managers need to have a rethink. Just how easy do you think that is? Regulation needs to come from the Association, not the players. PS, plenty of club managers have been breaking the rules during lockdown, so the club nose isn’t completely clean either.

NIALL MCCOY

Is a massive crowd important for the GAA?

I DON’T buy the argument that the GAA needs massive crowds. I watched Manchester United play last weekend, and in the stand they had a huge poster that said ‘football is nothing without fans’ which was attributed to Sir Matt Busby. I agree that without the fans, the club would be unlikely to pay the large wages of their players, but I’m not sure that that’s the sentiment they were going for. The concern for a lot of folk in the GAA is that there will be games without fans, and that would be unthinkable. Just because the GAA can draw the biggest crowds in Ireland does not mean that that is what the Association is built on. Professional sport wants fewer teams and big crowds. But the GAA is the opposite, it wants a team for every village in Ireland, and a modest crowd for each. Bigger numbers spread wider. The demand for big crowds comes from the fans who like that atmosphere. If you take a junior club who wins their county title, they are unlikely to do so in front of a four-figure crowd, but they celebrate like they had. It is not the size of the crowd that matters, but the make up of it. Those players enjoy winning in front of the people they love more than they would in front of 80,000 strangers. So perhaps the phrase is ‘the GAA is nothing without the fans, as long as the fans are family and community.’

RONAN SCOTT

Team size matters

THE most recent podcast I listened to was the ‘30 for 30’ episode about two American ladies basketball players who went to Russia in the off-season to help supplement their income. One of them said that they needed to go make more money because they were only getting $45k to play in the women’s league. In their world professional sport has been legitimised as a career, but not a run-of-the-mill career. No, they see sport as a career that should provide them with enough wealth to make sure they live carefree for the rest of their lives. One of the reasons why the GAA perhaps doesn’t foster this attitude in players might come down to numbers. Games that rely on individual players will foster a sense of self-entitlement. Professional golf, for example, is played by single-minded, self-important players. In basketball, a single player can win a game, so that can lead them to feel entitled. However, in Gaelic games, in which there are so many players on one team, one player cannot win a match. Therefore, I like to think that the byproduct of playing larger team sports is players who think less about themselves, and understand that they are not entitled to great riches just because they put the ball over the bar.

RONAN SCOTT

Clubs deserve immense credit

I HAVE been helping out with my local club to try and get things right for the GAA comeback and I paused for a moment on Tuesday evening and just looked around at what was happening. Members were dotted across the facility disinfecting balls, organising drop-off points and generally ensuring that kids felt safe whilst taking their first tentative steps back towards sporting normality. It was a scene that would have been repeated up and down the country as we edge back towards competitive action. Not that we need told again, but the GAA really is an outstanding organisation. Other sports, of course, have the same effort from their volunteers and members, but there is just a special community feel when it comes to the GAA club. Nothing compares, and the last few months have only reinforced that belief.

NIALL MCCOY