Martin Wynne's Blog

The push for structural change needs to continue despite the recent setback at GAA Special Congress 2021

Disappointment and anger may have been the overriding emotion for many GAA folk in the aftermath of last weekend’s rejection of Option B at Special Congress. However, the appetite for change was reflected in the fact that a slim majority voted in favour of the proposal (50.6%).   

In the end, it seems as if the anomalies associated with Option B were just too big to ignore for many people. A lot of anger is now being directed towards the so-called ‘dinosaurs’ of the GAA. In other words, those who will always be resistant to change of any kind, particularly if it threatens to splinter the power of the provincial councils.  

But while there may be a cohort who continue to operate in this manner, it would be a mistake to believe that anyone who expressed their opposition to Option B fell into this category.  

Personally speaking, I was in favour of the proposal. But having followed the debate closely over the last few weeks, I was particularly struck by some interesting points made by the Irish News sports journalist Cahair O’Kane in an interview with Off The Ball’s Nathan Murphy.  

O’Kane suggested that people are so “blinded” by how bad the current structures are, that they’ve become desperate for change of any kind. But the point that resonated strongest with me was his assertion that “Division One has become an enclosed space” which is “really harming football”.  

In other words, the current league structure has resulted in the top teams playing each other all the time and this has served to increase the gap in quality between the elite and everyone else. He went on to give the example of Roscommon and Cavan, two teams that have been yo-yoing between Division One and Two in recent years due to the fact that the gap between the top five or six and the best-of-the-rest is so stark.  

O’Kane suggested that one way of trying to remedy this is by returning to the Division 1A and 1B model, where you would have a mixture of Division One and Two teams in each section. It is something that Kieran Shannon has also expressed support for in his Irish Examiner column.  

I too am in agreement with the idea, and feel that it is a crucial element in the re-working of Option B. Long before the proposal ever reached the floor of Special Congress, it struck me that the much-discussed anomalies could easily be fixed by a tweaking of the league structures. 

So here is an outline of how Option B can be re-packaged with the current anomalies ironed out:  

Step 1: 

• A maximum of seven counties are eligible to qualify as ‘wild cards’ for the All-Ireland series. They comprise of the following:   
  1. The four winners of the provincial championships.  
  2. The two winners of Division 2A and 2B. 
  3. The Tailteann Cup winners from the previous year.  

Given that some or all of the provincial winners may already have secured a berth in the All-Ireland series via their league placings, it is unlikely that you would have seven ‘wild cards’ on any given year.

Also, the Tailteann Cup winners from the previous year may end up winning Division 2A or 2B the following season. Thus, the ‘wild card’ qualifiers could be as low as two on any given year, or as high as seven.  

If there are only two or three ‘wild cards’, then the teams that finished fifth in Division 1A and 1B will come back into the reckoning for a Qualifier berth.  

On the other hand, if all seven potential ‘wild cards’ end up qualifying then you would stage a pre-Qualifier round. This would involve the seven counties going into a hat for the purpose of an open draw. It would result in three play-off matches, and one county receiving a bye to the main Qualifier round.     

Tailteann Cup:

A similar system would be used for the Tailteann Cup, but without the ‘wild card’ element. Instead, the teams that finished in second and third place in 2A and 2B would be handed the seeded berths in the quarter-finals.  

The teams that finished in fourth and fifth place would enter a Qualifier Round as the seeded teams (i.e. home advantage), going up against the sixth and seventh-placed teams in 2A and 2B.  

Conclusion

The structural changes outlined above are designed to address some of the key issues that prevented Option B from receiving enough support at Special Congress.   

For a start, it retains the status of the provincial championships by linking them back in with the All-Ireland series. It also upgrades the status of the Tailteann Cup by providing the winners with an automatic qualification berth for the following year’s All-Ireland series.   

A third major anomaly with the Option B proposal was the fact that teams ranked 17^th (Division Three winners) and 25^th (Division Four winners) would qualify for the All-Ireland series ahead of counties ranked sixth, seventh and eighth.  

Under the system outlined above, that anomaly has been tightened up to a large degree. It would still mean that the counties ranked 17^th and 18^th in the country would qualify ahead of the counties ranked ninth and tenth.  

But while there may still be a slight anomaly in that, the gap is much narrower than before (eight or nine places, instead of 19). In addition, the counties that finish in the lower rungs of 1A and 1B will still have their provincial championships as an alternative route to qualification.

Many people have rightly complained about the inequities of the provincial championships. Realistically, though, any change to the current structures is going to be a hard sell unless the provincial championships are linked into the system in a meaningful way.  

Provincial titles may not mean much to Dublin and Kerry. But for practically every other county in Ireland, provincial success still means a hell of a lot. The wild celebrations that greeted recent title victories for Tipperary, Cavan and Roscommon are testament to that.  

Only one team can bring the Sam Maguire Cup home on any given year, and the number of counties with realistic expectations of doing so has dwindled to just three or four at best.  

So it should hardly come as a shock that almost all the counties in Ulster voted against Option B, including Fermanagh (to the apparent surprise of many). 

The Ernesiders have never managed to win an Ulster title. But as long as they remain competitive in the province, that long-held aspiration to bring home the Anglo-Celt Cup will endure as their holy grail.

An Ulster title will remain a realistic target for the likes of Fermanagh, Cavan, Derry, Armagh and Down, in a way that an All-Ireland title could never be. So any attempt to dilute the prestige of the provincials is unlikely to garner much support up North.  

There is also likely to be resistance in Connacht, as could be seen from the way Mayo and Galway delegates voted at Special Congress. A lot of Roscommon supporters would have mixed feelings as well, given the euphoria of their provincial triumphs in 2010, 2017 and 2019.     

Another major drawback with Option B was the fact that the Tailteann Cup winners were not given the carrot of automatic qualification for the following year’s All-Ireland series. For many, this turned the competition into an after-thought that had all the hallmarks of a re-branded Tommy Murphy Cup.  

So while there was plenty to like about Option B, the drawbacks were ultimately too big to ignore for many. However, going back to the status quo cannot be an option either.

The one thing that almost everyone agrees upon is that the current system is irredeemably broken. Hence the need for forward-thinking, hopefully along the lines outlined above. 

The rushing through of a Tier Two championship for 2020 has left many people feeling uneasy at the way the GAA goes about its business    

There are plenty of GAA people who would be in favour of a Tier Two competition, particularly for lower-ranked counties that make an early exit from the championship. It seems logical given the huge levels of effort and commitment that goes into preparing an inter-county team each year.

For it to be all over by the second week in June, after just a couple of championship matches, seems an awful waste of six or seven months training. So the idea of a second tier competition, to run concurrently with the main championship, makes sense on a number of levels.

However, the only way it can be a success is if it is calibrated correctly from the start. It means that, before a ball is even kicked, the GAA should have a clearly outlined vision designed to capture the imagination of players and supporters alike. Without that, it may be doomed to failure before it even gets off the ground.

It’s not like we haven’t been down this road before. The Tommy Murphy Cup was introduced for similar reasons back in 2004. But the lack of buy-in from many of the counties involved resulted in it being scrapped after just five seasons.

So if a Tier Two competition is to have any chance of succeeding it is imperative to have all the pieces of the puzzle in place ahead of implementation. The one thing you shouldn’t do is rush it through on a whim, and then hope that ‘it’ll-be-alright-on-the-night’.

But that is what we seem to be getting with the motion that received the green light at Special Congress on October 19^th. It is hard to see why it needed to be hurried through so quickly, particularly given that a task force had been set up last June to look into all aspects of the fixtures calendar.

GAA President John Horan has said that the Fixtures Calendar Review was “one of the most important projects that the Association will undertake this year”. That task force has been quietly going about its business for the past four months, and their recommendations are expected to be published in the coming weeks.    

Yet despite emphasising its importance earlier in the year, Horan decided to go on a solo run and ram through a Tier Two competition before the task force has even had a chance to publish its findings.  

Is this really what passes as best practice in the GAA? An outgoing President, who feels that he alone knows what’s best for the organisation, decides to push his pet project through Special Congress with barely a discussion.    

Nobody with the best interests of the GAA at heart wants to knock something just for the sake of it. The new Tier Two competition may well turn out to be a roaring success. But that doesn’t change the fact that the manner of its introduction raises serious questions about the way the GAA does its business.   

A major problem seems to be the lack of an over-arching vision for Gaelic Games in the 21^st century. It means that any structural change that is introduced tends to be based on the whim of whatever President, or Director-General, happens to be in the hot seat. 

Some of the changes brought in over recent years have certainly been positive. For instance, the ‘mark’ has successfully re-established the dying art of high fielding. The black card has also been somewhat effective in reducing cynical fouling. But many other decisions have been highly questionable at best.

***

To put it in context, here is a timeline of some of the more controversial decisions made by the GAA over the past 17 years. Some of them may have been made with the best of intentions. But many of these decisions have had far-reaching consequences, and are arguably doing great harm to the game……

***

So this takes us back to the original question: Is there an overall strategy or are the GAA just making it up as they go along?

It is certainly difficult to find any over-arching vision in the timeline of decision-making that is laid out above. If there is a trend running through it, it would appear to be a preoccupation with bringing in money for the organisation at the cost of everything else.

This is particularly apparent in the way Dublin have been given special treatment due to their large population and support base. There may be many good reasons for promoting the game in the capital city. But it should not run counter to competition fairness.

Can anyone point to a popular sport across the globe in which the strongest team get to play almost 93% of their games at home? And then on the rare occasion when there is an opportunity to take the Dubs out of their home patch, the GAA inevitably opt for a neutral venue that’ll best suit the travelling Dublin supporters rather than the county they are up against.

On top of that, Dublin are handed two home games in the Super-8s when every other county gets one. And when challenged on this, the GAA circle the wagons and throw out disparaging remarks like “mean-spirited” and “divisive”.

Yet those at the top table don’t appear to see anything wrong in this. But they are pursuing a very risky strategy by placing revenue ahead of competition fairness.

In this regard, the chickens are already coming home to roost in the shape of plummeting attendances for recent Leinster finals at Croke Park. The amount of people turning up for Super-8 matches at Croke Park has been pretty abysmal as well.  

However, the preferential treatment of Dublin GAA is just one of many concerns. In addition to that there is also the Sky Sports deal, the fixtures mess, the marginalisation of the club player and the failure to address under-the-table-payments to managers.  

In recent weeks, there has been evidence of further fallout with the financial disputes that have erupted in Mayo and Galway. There was also a segment on RTÉ’s Prime Time programme on October 24^th which highlighted an issue of ‘serious concern’ in regard to unauthorised spending by a senior GAA official.

The most worrying element in all this is that these recent controversies may just be the tip of the iceberg. And it would be naïve to think that the financial turmoil many counties find themselves in isn’t a by-product of GAA policy.  

A pertinent question that needs to be asked is whether the GAA have inadvertently created an ‘arms race’ through the bankrolling of Dublin. In other words, is the chasing pack in danger of bankrupting themselves in a bid to try and stay competitive with the Dubs?

It is hardly a coincidence that it’s the people pouring sponsorship money into Mayo and Galway that have been kicking up the biggest fuss in recent weeks, and demanding to know how their money is being spent. But is it any wonder that counties are haemorrhaging money when Dublin is being held up by the GAA as the benchmark for excellence.

Achieving excellence is much more attainable when your county board can strike a multi-million euro sponsorship deal with a global corporate entity like AIG. For a start, it means that volunteers don’t have to spend half the year fundraising to keep the show on the road.

To give an example, a team of volunteers attached to Roscommon GAA spent a large chunk of 2018 promoting their ‘Win a House in Dublin’ raffle across the shopping centres of Dublin and further afield. It eventually netted around €1.4m, with a profit margin of just over €943,000.   

To put that in context, an article by Colm Keys that appeared in the Irish Independent on May 19^th of last year revealed that Dublin’s accounts for 2017 showed “just €55,000 under the ‘fundraising’ table, one of the lowest in the country”.

Yet the GAA continues to use the fig leaf of ‘amateur ethos’ to deflect attention from the gross inequality that now lies at the heart of the organisation. And the longer it allows this to go unchecked, the wider the chasm will get between the haves and the have-nots.

This slide towards elitism has been gathering pace for some time now. For many, the introduction of a Tier Two championship was just another step along the way. It prompted the following reaction from Carlow manager Turlough O’Brien in an article by Martin Breheny that appeared in the Irish Independent on October 24^th.       

“It’s leading to elitism and that will take it towards some form of semi-professionalism,” O’Brien warned. “Counties are fundraising in the US to provide more and more money to spend on county teams.

“The more successful the county, the more they can get but isn’t there something wrong with all this money being raised just to spend on county teams?

“We’re heading for a revolution in the organisation unless we work out what’s best for everybody and take steps to implement it. It can’t all be about ‘Super 8s’ and the top teams,” he reasoned.  

The time has surely come for the GAA to decide what it stands for in the 21^st century. If that means professionalism then they need to come out and say that, and set about creating a vision for the future based on those principles.

On the other hand, if they want to maintain an amateur ethos then they need to start doing a better job of pooling resources, re-distributing the wealth fairly and levelling the playing field a bit more.     

Either way, the organisation is at a crossroads. And what they cannot afford to do is continue to operate in this limbo-region where it’s professionalism for the few, and an amateur ethos for the many.  

Gaelic Football is ploughing headlong into a crisis, the seeds of which were sown in 2002 when Dublin GAA were allowed to cherry-pick from that year’s Strategic Review

When the GAA Strategic Review was released in 2002, the essential message to emerge from it was that Dublin needed to be prioritised. The chairman of the committee, Peter Quinn, noted at the time that Dublin required “special attention” due to the fact that it accounted for “30 per cent of the state’s population”.

In an Irish Times article from Jan 21^st of that year, Quinn was quoted as saying that they would be “recommending sizeable investment in terms of finance and personnel”. He also said that the committee would be recommending that Dublin be divided into two separate teams, with the transition to be completed in time for the 2005 season.

In the same article, Dublin’s newly-appointed senior football manager Tommy Lyons responded to the proposals as follows: “I’m happy we’re talking about change. We shouldn’t be afraid of change, irrespective of how it affects individuals. Something radical is needed when you’re dealing with a county of 1.2 million people.

“In isolation, the idea of splitting Dublin in two mightn’t have any particular value but as part of a whole review programme of development and investment, it might well make sense. There are so many areas in the Dublin region that are not properly serviced,” he said.

Over the following years, the special attention duly arrived in the shape of millions of euros in investment. But the split never happened.

Last July, Lyons was speaking once again about Dublin’s funding. But this time he seemed to be singing from a different hymn sheet.

“This isn’t about money. It’s about hard work and county boards not waiting for others to do the heavy lifting,” the former Dublin manager declared in an Irish Independent article from July 4th.

“No amount of cheap shots about money in Dublin will change that. It’s arseboxing of the highest order. Just because an exceptional Dublin senior football team, led by an exceptional manager, is going well people are having a go.

“Fine, if that’s what they want to do, but let’s stick with facts, not stuff that just doesn’t hold up,” he argued.

Lyons did not make any mention of the splitting of Dublin, despite the fact that he felt it “made sense” as part of the overall strategy in 2002.

And why would he? Especially since Dublin were able to receive all the spoils from the 2002 strategic review but without having to take on any of the accompanying pain. It means that what we are left with is a region that has the population and funding of a province, but continues to operate as just another county.

This begs the following question. If Dublin GAA want to operate as a county like any other, then why is it being singled out for “special attention”?

On the other hand, if Dublin is too strategically important to be treated as just another county then why does it continue to operate with just one county team, 17 years after the strategic committee recommended it be split?

Surely they cannot have it both ways.

***

So what can be done to address the imbalance?

The latest suggestion to emanate from the higher echelons of the GAA is a proposal to give the Leinster champions a bye into the provincial semi-finals.

Writing in the Irish Independent on September 6^th, Colm Keys noted that the reason given by Leinster GAA chairman Jim Bolger for the proposed change was that it would give counties more time to prepare for an encounter with the top team in Leinster.

So if this proposal goes through, it will effectively mean more special treatment for Dublin GAA. Under the new scenario, they will avoid the opening two rounds in Leinster and will be able to tailor their training schedule to enable them to hit peak fitness later in the summer. Other counties, meanwhile, will need to hit the ground running four or five week’s earlier.

If the GAA truly wanted to give teams a better chance of beating Dublin, then why not have an open draw? That would open up the possibility of Dublin having to travel to Meath or Kildare for an away fixture in early May.

This is how it currently works in Ulster and Connacht, and heavyweights like Tyrone and Mayo have suffered early provincial exits on a number of occasions in recent seasons. So if the GAA was serious about tackling the inequity in Leinster, wouldn’t that be a good place to start?  

Ultimately, though, it is just tinkering around the edges of the problem and ignoring the root cause.    

John Horan and the GAA hierarchy seem intent on pushing the narrative that the current Dublin team is just an outlier and their dominance will soon pass.

But anybody who has been tracking the evolution of their squad over the past six-to-eight years will rightly be sceptical of this argument.

The turnover of players has been too extensive to consider it to be just one exceptional cohort enjoying an extended period of success, as Kerry did in the late-70s and early-80s. Rather, it is a conveyor belt of top class talent being churned out on an annual basis, resulting in the perennial regeneration of this Dublin team.

Apart from the strategic funding, it has also enabled Dublin GAA to secure lucrative sponsorship deals which can be targeted specifically at their inter-county teams. This type of revenue stream is something that will never be within reach for the majority of counties.     

Given all that, it is hard to see any other solution than the splitting of Dublin. For their loyal supporters, that cannot be an easy thing to hear. But it’s not something that fans of the other 31 counties should be cock-a-hoop about either.

Imagine having to watch an All-Ireland final, or even a provincial final, being contested by Dublin North and Dublin South. It is hardly an ideal scenario for anyone, is it?

Yet we are where we are. Dublin has become a financial juggernaut and we now have to deal with the consequences. That particular horse has long since bolted, and, most worrying of all, attendances have been plummeting due to the lack of competitive fare on offer.

So it appears as if we are left with two options; one of which is bad and the other terrible.

The bad option is to split Dublin. The terrible one is to keep the status quo and see the Dubs destroy opponents with depressing regularity, often without having to step out of second gear.  

So what is the solution?

Well if it does mean the splitting of Dublin, then the best we can hope for is that some sort of compromise could be reached that might be agreeable to both sides.

In that vein, I believe that the changes outlined in the following blog post may be one potential way forward……

• A revamped Leinster Championship