Croke Park show intent to redress balance between two worlds apart

It’s rare GAA briefings stray into the territory of paradigm shifts but yesterday in Croke Park, director general Páraic Duffy’s discussion document outlined the very different world the association might inhabit.

Despite the cautious reassurance that the proposals to address the over-burdening of young players and the shambolic extremes of club fixture making are “pragmatic” and idealism tempered by practical concerns, the impact of full implementation would be revolutionary.

It would signal an association with the confidence to be itself rather than a slightly harassed version of the professional sports with which the GAA at various times believes it is in competition.

No one should be under any illusions about the prospects of this actually happening. A weary colleague pointed out that he had first attended one of these briefings to “solve” the fixtures issue in 1982.

Even the discussion document presented to the media was itself a précis of no fewer than eight reports presented to the GAA since 2004, some of them exceptional pieces of work with valuable, cogent recommendations – none of which managed fully to overcome the reactionary instinct of an average congress delegation that change in association policy might be personally disadvantageous.

The two issues at the heart of Duffy’s document (Player Overtraining and Burnout, and the GAA Fixtures Calendar) are the over-burdening of players in the 17-21 age group and the lack of decent provision for the 98 per cent of players who aren’t on intercounty panels.

There is a considerable overlap between these problems, most obviously the curse of multi-eligibility, which makes dual players eligible for up to 12 teams in extreme cases.

Clearly, without something more powerful than a congress motion they can’t play for any more than one team at a time and so fixtures are affected.

This is particularly relevant in the later part of the year even though the most extreme impact takes place in February and March when the demands on young players – detailed in the Burnout reports of 2007 and ’08 as well as the GPA Student Report – are at their most insane, hence the proposal to scrap the under-21 intercounty championship.

When counties should be using the good weather from May to October to play championship matches, their schedules are frequently interfered with by the involvement of players in intercounty activity. As was pointed out at the briefing – and experienced by club members in most counties – one minor player can cause an adult championship match to be postponed and they don’t even have to playing the same game.

Feargal McGill, GAA head of games administration and player welfare, drew up a thought-provoking comparison between this year’s fixture calendar and that proposed for 2018.

He pointed out that by implementing just two of the proposals, confining the intercounty minor championship to under-17s and bringing the All-Ireland finals forward by two weeks, there would be a reduction in the number of intercounty fixtures affecting adult club activity from 40 this year to 11 in 2018.

The ideas are not all earth shattering in themselves although the abolition of the under-21 football looks a very hard sell at the moment because even if Duffy is correct to emphasise that under-age competitions are all about development rather than attainment, there are counties – Westmeath, Limerick and more recently Tipperary – who would argue their under-21s had an important developmental role.

Yet, taken as a bundle the ideas illustrate incremental ways to save a weekend here and a weekend there, which adds up to a major shift in the centre gravity from county to club.

Duffy acknowledged he had changed his mind about the required balance between shop-window championship weekends during the summer and autumn.

Whereas originally he had believed these were necessary to prevent rival sports dominating media coverage, he now felt it was more important to address the plight of club players.

It’s hard to argue against this priority. A friend once pointed out the futility of the “promotional” argument. If intercounty fixtures and the focus they are allowed in many counties are wrecking club schedules, what exactly is being promoted?

If there are a couple of weekends during which the Premiership or the Pro12 have untrammelled access to the media, what is the major disadvantage to the GAA if it is compensated with a coherent fixtures list that creates greater certainty for all players?

The list of ideas is delivered without equivocation. All the old jokes about referees arranging lucrative replays would be undermined by the provision that extra time be played in all matches, including All-Ireland finals.

It is however possible to query this in that ordinary replays take place six days after the drawn match and in this age of technology and computerised ticketing systems the arguments about All-Ireland replays requiring two or three weeks to organise don’t appear that convincing given the potential loss of revenue.

How that will play with cash-strapped counties, who in Leinster for instance annually volunteer for the Coliseum in order to husband the few bob at the end of the bloodbath, is open to question.

It is though a statement of intent about how serious Croke Park has become about redressing the balance between its intercounty world and that of ordinary club members.

Change doesn’t come easily to the GAA. There are myriad reasons why delegates and counties my find fault with this document and there are legitimate reservations about how far the control freakery of intercounty management will allow this rebalancing to progress.

Eventually though reforms happen and frequently by no more revolutionary a process than simple statement and restatement of coherent argument.

The GAA’s uniqueness is in its community bases and vast voluntary network of families and administrators encouraging the playing of the games at local level. The big days in Croke Park are celebrations of that reality but not an end in themselves.

smoran@irishtimes.com