Last Sunday, on his first weekend as a retired inter-county hurler, Johnny Pilkington could have watched his county's footballers getting pipped at - and by - the post against Dublin. It's unlikely that he felt twinges of regret, or frustration, that Offaly can come again in the football while the curtain has come down on a memorable hurling team.
Pilkington's interview with Dermot Crowe in last weekend's Sunday Independent reminded us of a few of the paradoxes that have marked a fine hurling career. The notion of Offaly as a bunch of dilettantes surviving on instinct and technique is such a cliche that no one actually believes it anymore. However, the team's mentality has always been interesting and at times anachronistic.
The GAA may well be passing through the last days of amateurism. There will be arguments and hand wringing and shocked denials but pay-for-play in some modified form will surely come. Pilkington's observations are useful in understanding the environment that creates such pressures.
In his interview he recalls responding to a ferocious pep talk: "They said, `listen, hurling is 24 hours a day'. I can't relate to 24 hours a day and I think a lot of the Offaly lads can't relate to it either." Offaly manager from 1991-92, Padraig Horan's stern injunction against any forms of "socialising" was met with blunt rebellion. "Listen, we're not sacrificing our Saturday nights for anyone."
It wouldn't be to the taste of many serious managers but the attitude was perfectly justified in an amateur sport. Before last year's All-Ireland final, Joe Erritty, a colleague of Pilkington at club and county level, said he wouldn't welcome a semi-professional dispensation because he regarded his hurling as essentially recreational and didn't want a deeper level of intrusion into his life.
The demands of the modern game have cranked up the commitment for inter-county players to levels far beyond anything that could be regarded as even vaguely recreational. This season's first steps down the road of a league-based championship in football have illustrated a couple of obvious trends. Firstly, the enhanced promotional opportunities inherent in staging an expanded programme have proved as popular as hoped for.
With the exception of Ulster, whose beaten teams have been drawn to each other as if by centrifugal force in the qualifiers, the new format has been a success. Leitrim - defeated by Antrim in the first round - was as exotic as it got for Ulster teams. But elsewhere the matches have been popular.
Secondly, and in consequence, the first round qualifiers have generated reasonable revenue, although Croke Park didn't expect to make money out of the series until later in the summer. Increased revenue for the central coffers is bound to exert additional pressure for some reward to go to players. It may not be entirely logical in that extreme demands have been made on players for a number of years now. All the qualifiers do is provide an improved outlet for thoroughly-trained players.
Yet, as those efforts become more and more important for the promotion of the games and their wider exposure on television (which in recent years has grown dramatically as a revenue source), arguments for pay will become harder to answer.
There is another good reason for abolishing the rule on amateurism. Its maintenance brings the GAA into disrepute because the rule is being breached regularly. The distaste for "shamateurism", which was expressed at the special congress on amateur status four years ago, came too late because the syndrome goes hand-in-hand with a type of amateurism that gradually ceases to command respect. In other words, it's a virtually ungovernable provision.
This situation would be just about supportable if there were any good reason to maintain amateurism as an ethos. But there's not. There are practical considerations but none are totally convincing. That certain people give of their time for free and coach children without asking for reward is a red herring. Every sport can boast such stalwarts and they are motivated by recreational reasons and the feeling of satisfaction such involvement brings.
Another argument is that there's not enough money to support semi-professional or part-time players. This may be true but as they say in Cork: Nemo dat quod non habet. Any payment will have to be in line with what can be afforded. Will this shut out smaller counties without wealthy benefactors? Maybe - but hardly to any greater extent than a system which pitches Leitrim into the same championship as Galway, a county more than five times as populous.
There is one major uncertainty. How will the public respond to teams featuring players with little or no direct connection to the county? We don't know - Gaelic games are so bound up with a sense of place - but every other sport copes with that loosening of local ties.
Finally Johnny Pilkington made one point that bears repetition. It was about himself.
"Ye have me down as happy-go-lucky," he said. "I would like to think that my performances in my best years were ones of determination and that I never gave up, that's where I excelled. I never gave up, I tried all the time, no matter how badly things were."
That was true. He showed it particularly against Wexford in 1997 and a year later Clare's Niall Gilligan wouldn't have doubted his commitment after the aborted All-Ireland semi-final replay. Johnny Pilkington played hard on the field and what he did off it was his own business. He may be one of the last generation of players about whom that will be said.
e-mail: smoran@irish-times.ie
