On Gaelic Games:Amateurism as a core principle is coming under increasing strain in the modern GAA, writes Sean Moran

IN THE next few weeks we should be seeing the release of the GAA's strategic plan, a blueprint for the association's medium-term future. It remains to be learned how large a space the issue of amateurism occupies. For all its status as a cornerstone or core principle, the question hasn't been deliberated on very much over the years.

The report on amateur status of 11 years ago was a rare venture into the field and led to the sanctioning of various means of ancillary earning but the "big picture" reports of the 1971 McNamee Commission and 2002's SRC didn't engage with the subject at any great length.

Amateurism and the delicate inroads that have been made into its once inviolate territory are at the heart of a host of current controversies. Many coherent arguments have been made on the grounds that the GAA can't afford to breach the principle and that if it did the volunteerism that underpins the association would be damaged. But amateurism has a downside - especially the strained version of it practised within the GAA.

Senior intercounty football and hurling no longer operate on the recreational basis that was a feature of the games for so long. Players presumably always made sacrifices and committed time to their games but the scale of these demands has increased dramatically in recent years.

This partly explains the attraction of having a crack at Australian Rules despite the generally unimpressive financial inducements on offer. Players have been pursuing football careers so intensely that the possibility of a professional lifestyle is far less of a quantum leap than in the days when you pursued a vocational career with football (or hurling) as a sideline, however enthusiastically.

Another spin-off has been restlessness amongst county players both in terms of how their time is used by team managements and also how they might benefit within the guidelines of what's allowed. It may be a mantra but the players' official stance is they don't want pay-for-play but are more than happy to accept sponsorships and endorsement opportunities.

For some otherwise active members of the association there is something off-putting about intercounty players agitating for anything, such is the perception of their status as a privileged elite. But this is a train that left the station long ago.

There have been attempts to turn down the volume on the amount of time being demanded at the top level but it's hard not to see that as futile gestures from a fast receding platform.

Already grumbles have developed over the new directive on observing the close season. Buoyant, newly-appointed managers want to take command from the earliest possible moment and being denied pre-season training in November and December is sufficiently vexatious to have prompted one manager, Jim Greene of the Carlow hurlers, to resign publicly rather than comply.

Teams in search of an edge at this time of the year will have to hone it individually in gyms and presumably many will do so zealously.

The central role of intercounty teams in the activities of the GAA also means there will be no realistic let-up from the counties themselves. Collective training may be prohibited for a couple of months but already there is speculation this ban may be discreetly circumvented.

That there should be even talk about tampering with such a sensible provision is an indicator of how single-minded the pursuit of intercounty success has become.

Further evidence is seen every year and again in the past few weeks in the annual hiring season, as counties chase managers for their senior teams. The lure of success is acute for county boards as well as the public, given that grants and disbursements are performance related and that no promotional tool is greater than a successful county team.

The amateur ethos has proved brittle when set against that imperative and although not all county managers are paid, neither are they all doing it for free. Considering what's involved, why would they? When things go well managers become the most familiar face in a county.

"You don't know us but we're great followers," were the mildly devotional words spoken to the late Bobby Miller by a couple of middle-aged women from Carlow in the wake of the county's All-Ireland B success 14 years ago next week. A couple of years previously John Maughan led Clare to a first Munster football title in 75 years. An epic poem was composed and released on audio cassette. It contained the lavish praise: "John Maughan is like our Lord. His strength he has for sure."

Yet in time Miller would fall out with the county board whereas Maughan's management career, extending well beyond Clare, would in time bear comparison with other less enviable aspects of the life of Jesus.

Even at the very top there's no such thing as a comfortable post. It's been well-recorded how Mickey Harte had begun to excite the displeasure of some within the county before last summer's championship campaign spectacularly turned for the better.

Brian Cody is unassailable in Kilkenny but he of all people, given his experience at the hands of the mob as a player, won't have forgotten how the position he took up 10 years ago had become a poisoned chalice.

Jack O'Connor says his appetite is back for the Kerry job but part of the reason it diminished in the first place was the sheer attrition in 2006 of running a team that was going badly but managed to turn its season around and nail an All-Ireland. It was what Páidí Ó Sé was getting at in his comments about Kerry supporters.

Even in Cork where the relationship between county board, management and players has become the most dysfunctional in the country there is calculation at the heart of the manoeuvring.

If the county officials, who consider it a worthwhile pursuit to antagonise their senior players in order to settle old scores, felt that they were risking All-Ireland success they might be less reckless but clearly they believe that in a period of transition the stakes aren't that high.

Similarly in a less fraught and more recreational environment you wouldn't be as likely to find a senior player like Ben O'Connor so willing to state so unabashedly and publicly that winning was far more important than merely representing the county.

Then again we are where we are and managing these at times irreconcilable tensions will be a major part of the future that the GAA is currently trying to map.

e-mail: smoran@irish-times.ie