Football

Clubs will bear the brunt after Congress gets it all wrong

Cahair O'Kane

Cahair O'Kane

Cahair is a sports reporter and columnist with the Irish News specialising in Gaelic Games.

GAA director-general Paraic Duffy was left disappointed after the vote on several key motions went against him at the weekend's annual congress<br />Picture by Hugh Russell
GAA director-general Paraic Duffy was left disappointed after the vote on several key motions went against him at the weekend's annual congress
Picture by Hugh Russell
GAA director-general Paraic Duffy was left disappointed after the vote on several key motions went against him at the weekend's annual congress
Picture by Hugh Russell

BEFORE the start of the Fifa elections last week, as a test question for the electronic voting devices, delegates of soccer’s governing body were asked if Russia was hosting the 2018 World Cup.

Only 95 per cent got the right answer. Some 11 delegates, which equated to five per cent, hit ‘no’. One would hope it was a slip of the hand. It’s certainly a better excuse than forgetting you’d made the decision yourself.

Following events at the GAA’s annual congress early on Saturday afternoon, the heart broke a little. It would be great to think there were a lot of hand-slips, brought on by falling asleep and accidentally hitting the buttons. That would, at least, offer an excuse.

Motions at congress are voted for by the counties themselves. Provincial bodies - the Ulster Council for example - do not have votes. The number of votes a county has is in line with its number of affiliated clubs. Cork, Dublin, Tipperary and Galway all had over 1,000 teams registered in 2015. Those counties get the bigger share of the vote - up to a dozen.

A lot of smaller counties have five votes. By and large, the county chairman, secretary, treasurer, Central Council delegate and, usually, PRO make up their voting committee. For counties with a larger share of the vote, their extra delegates are usually county board members nominated internally.

One issue is that the international unit has a big slice of the vote and yet, in many cases, they are voting on issues that do not directly affect them. New York, Asia, Europe, Canada, Australia, the list goes on. All of those bodies have as many votes on the U20 championship as counties actually affected by it. That is one of a number of issues.

Saturday’s Congress did not go as planned. Paraic Duffy wanted to effect change. It wasn’t radical, but it was a start. He has spoken over recent years of wanting to help clubs, to help with the issue of burnout. He helped table the motion to bring the All-Ireland finals forward. He helped bring the motion to do away with inter-county replays.

Those proposals weren’t going to solve all the calendar’s ills, but they could have been positive steps towards helping club players. Congress threw them back in Duffy’s face. The GAA’s director-general told Monday’s Irish News that he felt club players “will feel that we let them down a little bit”.

GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail added: “The motions that were rejected, that won’t help the club player, but I wouldn’t say anything is ever finished: the focus is on clubs, we’re going to continue with that process. I would certainly have some disappointments.”

Duffy’s use of the word ‘we’ is harsh on himself. The motion to bring the All-Ireland finals forward by two weeks was rejected by 39.2 per cent of voters. The motion to abolish replays was critical. It would allow the club calendar a degree of stability, dramatically lessening the potential for it to be thrown into chaos by a county team drawing. Yet, 42.2 per cent of county delegates turned down the idea.

Down secretary Sean Óg McAteer spoke of their decision to do so on the basis of hoping for a home Championship game by way of a replay. Down have presented motions to the Ulster Council’s congress in the past for a home-and-away rotation policy for the Ulster Championship. But to vote for the retention of one of the overall calendar’s biggest problems on that basis is hard to side with.

Quite why the rest of the 42.2 per cent made the decision they did is an absolute mystery. Enough delegates wanted to keep the inter-county intermediate and junior football and hurling championships to strangle the motion to delete them, which would again have helped clubs.

Croke Park did make one major mistake in penning the new U20 championship in for the months of June, July and August, which will have a seriously negative impact on clubs.

It’s alright for the senior clubs, who can easily cope without a young player through the league. But for intermediate and junior clubs who are relying on those players to help them achieve their goals, it’s a real uppercut to absorb. Hopefully, once that has been looked at for a season or two, the timing can be reversed and the U20 championship will be played at a more opportune time. Its current place in the calendar covers that base. 

When counties who voted against those motions go crying because they’re still playing club games in the middle of December, they won’t have anyone to blame but themselves.

And then, congress introduced the mark. Heavens above. The reaction to that decision, more than anything, suggested that most county delegates don’t bother asking their clubs for a mandate.

Inter-county players were among those who came out in force to lambast the decision. Notably, among them was Aidan O’Shea, one of the finest midfielders of his generation.

“Can we not trial it first?” questioned the Mayo midfield general, a fine fielder of a ball.

Michael Darragh Macauley also had his say, telling the rule-makers to leave well alone. O’Shea is one of the old breed and Macauley the antithesis. But what Dublin have done with their kickouts over the last 15 years deserves to be praised and rewarded, not shut down.

Why should a high catch be rewarded any more than any other skill in Gaelic football? If someone kicks a good 40-yard pass, should they be given a free in on the ‘13’?

The mark’s intentions are good, but its introduction is as misguided as those who turned away their chance to effect positive change for clubs last weekend.