The current system sees a handful of county teams play just two championship games in any one season. I also feel that if the GAA goes professional the inter county player would no longer be able to play for his club due to the sheer demand being put on the players. The GAA would effectively split into two, the professional inter county players and the amateur club players.
The majority of County players are virtually professional in every aspect bar actually being a professional athlete. To date, no County player has received money from the organisation based on performance. However, a lot of the top County players may receive money on sponsorship deals and various other things such as media obligations before big matches. Recently in the Under 21s All Ireland Hurling Final, some players received a couple of hundred euro to wear a specific brands helmet. Likewise, players such as Diarmuid Connolly, Philly McMahon, Cillian O’Connor and Aidan O’Shea will all have received money before the All-Ireland final for all the media work they done.
The time spent away from loved ones and sacrificing family events or even your job in some cases has gotten out of hand in the last few years. Inter-county players seem to be on a “beer ban” for the majority of the year.
In the GAA the club player has it worse than the county player. At least the county player is receiving some kind of money through expenses and promotional work or sponsorship. The club player scarifies so much of his life and sometimes there is no reward at the end of it all. Club players dream of walking behind the pipe band on county final day, they dream of walking out in Croke Park representing their club.
It's madness that amateur players are on beer bans for five or six weeks at a time while our international soccer team were drinking cans of alcohol four days before they played France in the last 16 of the European championship and no one batted an eyelid. Could you imagine if Aiden o’Shea or Diarmuid Connolly were caught drinking three days before the All Ireland Final, the media would have a field day on them.
In 2015 in Wicklow the first round of senior championship was played on the 12th of April and the second round was played on the 26th of July. Thats 105 days without a championship game for senior club players in Wicklow while the Wicklow county team only played two championship matches in that time.
In Mayo this year, the first round of the senior championship started on the 14th of May. Mayo senior championship consists of four groups of four teams. Everybody plays each other once and the top two qualify for the next round. At the time of writing, Mayo have played two rounds of group games since the 14th of May. The Mayo championship still has one round of group games then it is finally into the knockout stages. The Mayo county board wanted to play the last round of group fixtures after the All Ireland semi-final against Tipperary; they eventually deferred these fixtures till the 24/25th of September to give the county team the best possible chance of beating Dublin.
As we all know, the All Ireland Final was a draw meaning the club players from Mayo had the round of fixtures deferred again till the weekend of the 7/8th of October. The Mayo club champions are due to play in the Connacht championship on the 30th of October. The club which represents Mayo on that day will be playing their fifth match in 21/22 days! Talk about burnout!
In fairness to Dublin they know they have a problem so they run off a straight knockout championship to get it finished in time so the county champions can compete in the Leinster club championship but imagine winning the first round game and then training for 161 days and then getting knocked out in the second round. Two championship games in 161 days and the dream of walking behind the pipe band on county final day are over for another year.
Spare a thought this morning for the club footballers in Dublin and Mayo!!!
— Alan Brogan (@alanbrogan13) September 19, 2016
I used three counties as an example of where their club players are waiting month’s in-between championship games but this is probably happening in the majority of the counties around the country and until all of this changes the GAA should not even consider calling itself a professional sport. My views are that the way the GAA is at the moment, if it were to go professional in the next few years we would then pretty much branch off into two separate codes; the professional inter county players who probably no longer get to represent their clubs and the amateur club players.
Author : Jamie Snell
4th Year BB (Hons) in Recreation and Sport Management Student