By definition, professional means doing something for money. In the GAA, however, professional has become a synonym for seriousness: which, on the face of it, is increasingly resulting in a mutant creation – professionals playing for free: which, by any definition, is stupid.

That was the definition reached for by a hopelessly non-sporty colleague when asked recently to admire one of those self-regarding slow-mo telly ads where the flower of Irish manhood gets portrayed in throbbing epic grandiosity.

It looks great, very slick in a bullshit Riverdancey way, and reeks of the corporate prosperity which comes from a lot of suits having a financial stake, be it advertising, media, take your pick: apart obviously from the players, who are, after all, what the whole thing is supposedly about.

“Eejits,” said our colleague when it was pointed out they’re the only ones not financially benefiting, a verdict so impregnably pragmatic it made trotting out how the GAA’s glory lies in the voluntary and amateur seem plain silly.

Because pragmatically, working for nothing is indeed stupid. Not part-time work obviously. But the kind of full-time work we are assured goes into competing at the top-end of Gaelic games, to the extent it takes over lives that even actual paying jobs don’t.

So the task of explaining to her the growing trend for players to go further, jacking in their jobs in order to treat their amateur sport as professionals – but for no money – is one the rest of us happily left for another day – along with how pragmatism is one thing and the internal logic of the GAA is another.

That’s the logic which makes voluntarism and amateurism the cornerstone of the organisation, the same logic which makes play-for-pay officially beyond the pale, but, you know, without being fanatical about it. We’re not talking divvying up all the gate-receipts here.

Practical realities

It is interesting though to ponder some rather mundane practical realities behind the organisational piety when it comes to players doing nothing else but play. What do they live on? What about bills? What about the cost of all that pasta?

No doubt those who’ve publicly declared they are focusing exclusively on playing for a while have the resources to do so and fair play to them for being able to afford the luxury of choosing to go all professional in an amateur sport.

What it does though is up the pressure on others to do the same. The athletic benefits of a micro-managed lifestyle might veer towards psychobabble sometimes but even so, there’s no accounting for the placebo impact on those involved and perhaps even more persuasively on those who aren’t.

Limboing Because if that professional outlook is going to be the new standards bar, then limboing under it is a no-no: anyone with serious aspirations towards success faces having to up their preparatory game even more.

Since behind all these flagellating legends of GAA self-sacrifice lies the reality that players can step off the treadmill anytime they like, there are limits to the concern which can be appropriately expressed about this. Even the most dedicated Gael can’t be immune to feelings of being taken for a ride.

But it’s not straight-forward as that: no one can expect anyone to live on fresh air and facing Hayes Hotel five times a day. And finding a way to hide a lot of prosaic financial junk behind a fig-leaf of voluntary propriety is as hallowed a GAA tradition as any provincial final.

So it’s fascinating to ponder the potential can of worms this new trend might open up.

Pay-for-play is sacrilege-city but are we looking at a future where the money train continues to make stops at ‘expense-ville’ and ‘mileage-town’ but increasingly also goes to ‘sponsor-borough’ and ‘grant-ington,’ maybe with diversions to ‘programme-place’ and any number of other variations on the job of getting cash into the appropriate hands.

Old-fashioned

It can be argued that would be little more than a variation on an old-fashioned ‘organising-a-job’ theme but it still doesn’t quite sit right, not so much in terms of the organisation living up to what it actually preaches, but in terms of something actually much deeper than that.

It’s hard to argue against top players being the most appropriate people of all in terms of getting remunerated. They are what the whole corporate package revolves around, the ones putting in the work, so no one can be more entitled to some slice of the action.

But how that occurs is important because money surreptitiously circulating has the potential to widen even further the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Inevitably the best and most successful players have the potential to generate and attract the most revenue, no matter how it gets to them, so the capacity to widen the gap even further by allowing them an opportunity to treat the sport as a job is obvious.

Just as inevitably the bigger and more successful county sides have the capacity to generate and attract the most revenue so the task of narrowing the gap between the strong and the weaker counties would become even more daunting.

There’s also the potential for a fundamental shift in terms of the relationship between players and the public, making the old line about the hero returning to his community and the same recognisable stresses and problems as everyone else basically redundant, which is pretty much a challenge to the GAA’s whole view of itself.

The organisation can be accused of many things but institutional stupidity is not one of them.

So since we seem to be getting to the stage where only the flimsiest of fig-leafs cover the issue of pay-for-play, it would surely be in everyone’s interests to whip it away and properly look at it.