Post by fenit67 on Apr 13, 2018 2:40:26 GMT
There hardly seems to be a player interview now when a player does not mention how professional the team was and how professional the backroom team was. "Certainly the dressing room and training attitude was professional and how we set out was professional. Then there was the driver and the man doing the pitch lines who were professional even though the driver had borrowed the cousin's van".
What I wish to highlight is that should the GAA ever pay players then it will be the end of the GAA as we know it. The reason for this is that is the word "professional" is bandied around far too easily as if it has some magical ability to make the current malaise within the GAA disappear.
The GAA needs to have the following:
*An inter-county season from April to May then knockout July to mid-August
*Universities January and February
*Secondary November to March
*Clubs will then be able to play on good ground in the Summer and provincial and national club competitions could be finished in a calendar year.
There are many similar plans to this and each could well be adopted but what is certain is that this country cannot support a professional GAA competition. For those who would dispute this then look at rugby in this country. There are five professional teams because it was decided that twenty professional teams was unsustainable and indeed some clubs came close to disappearing. Who would countenance their county no longer being able to field a team? Soccer offers similar lessons. In the days of the Celtic Tiger some players were on salaries similar to the English Championship but that was unsustainable. Irish soccer has had its strong periods but for many decades it has been resolutely semi-professional. And in addition Irish soccer attracts a huge attendance when you consider that there are perhaps more soccer clubs than GAA clubs in Kerry although some of those soccer clubs may not be legitimate.
The underlying problem is that our sports are in need of leadership and that may not be the main problem currently. A crossroads has been reached but the GAA is unwilling to grasp the nettle of manager power; not manager payments but manager power. County managers now have seemingly boundless powers with certain notable exceptions. It is they who have infiltrated this notion of professionalism into their players' psyches. What utter nonsense. GAA players may like to consider themselves as being professional but they are not, despite some inter-county players being described as such. There is not one player capable of putting ink to paper declaring on a tax form that "I am a professional GAA player". And it will not be for a while because the organisation to which that player owes allegiance is not capable of rationalising a calendar where players are forced to train themselves to death for a handful of meaningful matches.
Players are trained to death in the GAA at inter-county level; an Irish provincial rugby or English soccer club would look at it and laugh purely for the amount of training undertaken and the time of the year. What is most worrying is how qualified managers are and how much they understand the players. In the AFL the first two months of annual training are the toughest with the rest being a top up, similarly observed in rugby. However the AFL is a 7 month long, physically gruelling competition and it's professional. Inter-county managers want players to train and train for the league, which is not taken taken seriously, and to be in top shape for a match in May maybe June then August then September. I know this year will bring a minor change but it is absurd. Professional it is not!
What I wish to highlight is that should the GAA ever pay players then it will be the end of the GAA as we know it. The reason for this is that is the word "professional" is bandied around far too easily as if it has some magical ability to make the current malaise within the GAA disappear.
The GAA needs to have the following:
*An inter-county season from April to May then knockout July to mid-August
*Universities January and February
*Secondary November to March
*Clubs will then be able to play on good ground in the Summer and provincial and national club competitions could be finished in a calendar year.
There are many similar plans to this and each could well be adopted but what is certain is that this country cannot support a professional GAA competition. For those who would dispute this then look at rugby in this country. There are five professional teams because it was decided that twenty professional teams was unsustainable and indeed some clubs came close to disappearing. Who would countenance their county no longer being able to field a team? Soccer offers similar lessons. In the days of the Celtic Tiger some players were on salaries similar to the English Championship but that was unsustainable. Irish soccer has had its strong periods but for many decades it has been resolutely semi-professional. And in addition Irish soccer attracts a huge attendance when you consider that there are perhaps more soccer clubs than GAA clubs in Kerry although some of those soccer clubs may not be legitimate.
The underlying problem is that our sports are in need of leadership and that may not be the main problem currently. A crossroads has been reached but the GAA is unwilling to grasp the nettle of manager power; not manager payments but manager power. County managers now have seemingly boundless powers with certain notable exceptions. It is they who have infiltrated this notion of professionalism into their players' psyches. What utter nonsense. GAA players may like to consider themselves as being professional but they are not, despite some inter-county players being described as such. There is not one player capable of putting ink to paper declaring on a tax form that "I am a professional GAA player". And it will not be for a while because the organisation to which that player owes allegiance is not capable of rationalising a calendar where players are forced to train themselves to death for a handful of meaningful matches.
Players are trained to death in the GAA at inter-county level; an Irish provincial rugby or English soccer club would look at it and laugh purely for the amount of training undertaken and the time of the year. What is most worrying is how qualified managers are and how much they understand the players. In the AFL the first two months of annual training are the toughest with the rest being a top up, similarly observed in rugby. However the AFL is a 7 month long, physically gruelling competition and it's professional. Inter-county managers want players to train and train for the league, which is not taken taken seriously, and to be in top shape for a match in May maybe June then August then September. I know this year will bring a minor change but it is absurd. Professional it is not!