JP McManus’s cash injection will go straight to GAA’s grassroots

Groundhog Day, only this time a remastered Christmas special wrapped in shiny gold tinsel and twinkling silver lights.

In September 2018, JP McManus made a €100,000 donation to each GAA county board with the instruction his €3.2 million gift be divided equally among clubs.

On Thursday morning news emerged of an eye-watering €32 million pre-Christmas Gaelic games donation by McManus – €1 million per county with the money again to be divided equally between clubs in each one and to incorporate all three organisations – GAA, LGFA and Camogie.

The exact amount each unit receives will be determined by the number of clubs in their county, so a club in Carlow stands to benefit more than a club in Cork. Either way, it beats selling mince pies at the church gate.

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If one of the more unexpected photos of recent years was Bill Murray sitting alongside McManus watching Limerick in the All-Ireland SHC, then this windfall also came from leftfield.

Raising €1 million, that’s tough work. Having it suddenly drop from the sky into your bank account, now that’s the kind of stuff which usually only happens in movies.

However, one of the eternal problems with money is its ability to complicate matters of the head and the heart. For while hundreds of GAA clubs across the country are basking in this financial injection, there are as many from other sports wondering, “Why is it always the GAA?”

The short answer of course is that JP McManus can do whatever he wants with his money. But that doesn’t mean those who volunteer countless hours of their lives helping soccer clubs, athletic clubs etc aren’t entitled to feel somewhat deflated.

But wouldn’t McManus be better paying his taxes in Ireland?

A justifiable contention? Certainly there are those who will make that argument, some with conviction but more as an emotional reaction.

[ What each GAA club will receive following JP McManus’s €32m donation ]

When you strip it all back, the GAA club in your parish is today better off than it was yesterday.

A club in west Galway might finally be able to push ahead with a new juvenile pitch, a camogie outfit in the Glens of Antrim can now build proper changing facilities or a club in the midlands can kit out their teams with new jerseys for the first time in years.

If this donation was packaged merely as a €1 million gift to county boards, to spend as they pleased, clubs would have been as well off trying to catch rain water in a sieve as expect that money to filter down to the grassroots.

Instead, it would have been used to pay off debts, help redevelop county grounds and most infuriatingly to feed the bottomless pit of financing intercounty teams.

It would have made no material difference in my parish or your parish, but come next year we could rest assured our county footballers would have access to the best sleep coach this side of Tokyo.

That is the real simple beauty behind this donation, a stipulation the money must go to the clubs, cold hard cash direct to the heart and soul of the organisation. In that respect, it’s a rare win for the little man.

It is understandable others might be irked, there are no shortage of sports organisations doing as much good work as the GAA at local level and whose clubs never get as well looked after by Government grants.

However, at its core this is a donation that will have a positive impact for kids in all our communities.

There are currently two books of raffle tickets sitting on the countertop downstairs in this house, both from local sports clubs. Shifting tickets is a drag, the discomfort of having to ask many of the same people several times a year to support whatever the latest fundraiser might be. You know the story, you’ve sold those tickets, indeed there is probably a book of them on your countertop right now.

But folks hand over a fiver because those selling are invariably well-meaning people trying to improve amenities and facilities in the area. That’s why mams and dads sell them for their kids, and that’s why aunties and uncles buy them from their nieces and nephews, and that’s why neighbours buy them too, because without communities what have we got?

Philanthropy can be construed as different things by different people. To borrow and modify a line from Fr Ted, whatever philanthropy is, I know it starts with f. And whatever the motivation behind this €32 million donation is, we know it will do some good in towns and villages across the country.

Is that not something we should be celebrating?

There might still be some who’d rather JP McManus kept his money rather than send it flowing through the GAA.

But to return to that great hurling aficionado Bill Murray, this time from the seasonal appropriate movie Scrooged: Bah Humbug to that.