Amatuerism v Professionalism. Small budgets v Big budgets. Has the horse bolted?

evolvingtipperary101

Citing that over €35 million was spent on preparing inter-county teams in 2023, €11m of that in Munster alone, the Tipperary man has questioned the amounts as well as what is being expected of players.

Munster Council chairman Ger Ryan has called for an urgent review of “all activities at inter-county level”.

Citing that over €35 million was spent on preparing inter-county teams in 2023, €11m of that in Munster alone, the Tipperary man has questioned the amounts as well as what is being expected of players.

In his address to Munster convention in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Friday evening, Ryan said: “I think we have reached a point where we need to stop and review where we are heading. There are serious questions we need to ask and answer. Are costs too high? Are they sustainable? Where is the money going to come from? Are we asking too much of players? Is the amount of training they are doing in their best long-term interests?

“Are we putting our best underage players at risk with the amount of activity they undertake while still developing physically and mentally? How consistent are our inter-county regimes with our amateur status?

“I know there are plenty of good people managing teams and plenty of good player welfare and training practices evident but in the overall scheme of things, are we headed in the right direction?

“We need as a priority to review all our activities at inter-county level and decide are they taking the Association in the right direction. Of course, there are plenty of positives in our inter-county activities but we need to decide if the training regimes are the appropriate ones for long-term player development and enjoyment.

“We need to reduce the costs of inter-county backroom teams and see if our spending is directed as effectively as it should be for the overall benefit of the Association.

“We also need to review our relationship with the GPA and ensure that how we support our inter-county players is done in the most beneficial and cost-effective manner possible in the best interests of our players and the overall Association.” Like his provincial chief executive Kieran Leddy, Ryan is a backer of the split season but feels it will need to be reassessed to allow more down-time for inter-county players.

“I remain very positive towards the split season and I think that overall it works very well. However, it makes sense to review it fully within the next year and decide if there are enhancements that can and need to be made to it. T “The most important point is does it work for players and it seems to me that most players, whether they be club only players or players who play both club and inter-county, remain happy with the split season in terms of the greater predictability it brings for them.

THIS IS OLD NEWS but worth restating = In Ireland, GAA insurance figures show 314 hip arthroscopic surgeries in 2014 compared to 80 in 2007. This indicates a rise of 392%. The numbers of teenagers being operated on has increased from 10 in 2010 to 77 in 2014. More recently, 2019, GAA players account for 75% of hip surgery patients in Ireland (10% soccer and 6% rugby). The average age going under the knife is 26 years old. How is this sustainable for an amateur sport? You cannot train hard four or five nights without an opposite amount of rest - work does not allow for this.

castletownman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058331108/amatuerism-v-professionalism-small-budgets-v-big-budgets-has-the-horse-bolted

But how can 90% of the teams with no chance of winning the AI expect to compete if they don't turn the game into a chore?

Social lives are over-rated

Treble double

What makes the Gaa unique is that it is played by amateurs who go from working beside you during the week to playing before thousands and on live television at the weekend.

It's now evolving into a situation where that one thing, that gives it its edge on professional sports is being eroded.

Inter county players are now expected to be professional in all but name and have "careers" that allow this. This is all being driven by people in backroom teams making good money on the back of said players.

It has reached a point where the inter county game goes professional or else an amateur model of preparing teams that allows a life for players is strictly enforced on all counties.

A professional game would fall on its face, muscle bound robots strictly adhering to a risk free game plan all round, while destroying the very fabric of the Gaa.

I would much prefer to watch a carefree amateur game but alas I think I will have to watch gaa gold for that.

CrabRevolution

It's simple to decry the game today, but who is going to voluntarily take a step back into a simpler, cheaper more amateur game and let other teams push further ahead of them and beat them?

It's easy to blame backroom staff and managers as if the players are helpless innocent victims in all this, but the first inter county manager to jettison the nutritionists, psychologists, videographers, specialist coaches, analysts etc. will be out on his arse immediately because the players will demand them back. Same if they go back training later than other teams, or cut training volumes back. The players would revolt and demand higher standards to keep up with other teams.

The training ban was made a mockery of, and I don't remember any players campaigning for it to be kept. Similarly when the GAA limited mileage to a certain number of training sessions a week, the GPA were up in arms saying they need to train more and more.

The horse has well and truly bolted on this one and there's no chance of it ever going back. The only way would be if the GAA started to centrally control all county board expenditure, but there's no chance of that.

thinkabouit

I think it’ll go pro eventually, something has to give at some point because it ain’t sustainable for pretty much most countries except the established elites.

So what I propose is this blueprint

Football for winter, hurling summer. 6 month season there abouts for both. Main reason being weather & I think football would work better for evening or night time kickoffs.

3 team’s from each province 12 teams

A h&a league system with 12 teams

Id create separate Cup competition, fixtures during league campaign similar to FA Cup in Uk, its straight knock out & final’s in Croke Park. Preferably weekend after Last league games.

Monetary side of thing’s dunno where to start. Maybe offer semi pro contracts or something like the IRFU system where the elite players get paid better. Plenty of ideas welcome lads.

Id also have the same system for women’s team’s, they’ll play all fixture’s same as men’s & maybe play before men’s kickoff?

I imagine infrastructure wise a lot of the ground’s are already there or need some modernisation, maybe share a ground to keep costs low?

Each pro team will also have youth system’s & feeder club’s into the system

Anymore idea’s welcome

Dreamland stuff i know but add or take what yee like from it, but as a Sport looking ahead into the future where does the Gaa want to go?

callaway92

100% will go pro eventually - Might be a long way away, but your 'Counties' as you know it may well change and instead teams will be franchised.

CrabRevolution

Who'll pay for it all? Even if you overcame the enormous cultural and institutional obstacles. the money side is formidable.

A yearly salary on minimum wage is currently €25760. A panel of 26 would cost €670'000. Multiply that by 24 (2 sets of 12 teams in hurling and football) and you're talking €16.1 Million in expenditure. Assume you go the LOI route and only hire the players in the season (say 8 months), you're still talking €11 Million.

And that's at minimum wage. You'd need to pay even more to actually attract players to the job (taking the stereotype of players all being teachers-a secondary teacher's salary starts at €40000). Double the cost again if you're including the ladies games.

So now we're spending tens of millions of euro a year to pay players. Where's the extra money coming from? Will more punters start paying more to attend games, because the players are professional? I personally doubt it since a vast number of current players will have to give up playing at the top level in order to stay in their job/college. Somehow an 8 month contract at minimum wage doesn't seem likely to attract players away from their jobs...

I don't see TV channels lining up to pay big money for the an unproven pro GAA competition.

That's long before you even get to team identities, organisation etc. and whether fans will cross over to supporting these new teams en masse- a notion which I have serious reservations about.

chops1990

GAA going pro would ruin it. Look at any modern sport. If they went pro you'd have manufactured bespoke test tube, athlete babies from shady labs in China, being shipped in to play for the county. I love hyperbole but you get my point.

Treble double

Well one thing is for sure at county level, it can't continue that everyone is getting paid bar the the actual people that are being flogged ie. the players.

Players must be starting to wonder at this stage, what kind of fools are we.

evolvingtipperary101

Leinster chairman Derek Kent in his address to the provincial council’s annual convention in Portlaoise this evening, hit out at what he claims is discretionary expenditure by the official inter-county body.

Following on from Connacht Council chief executive John Prenty’s criticism of their “little respect” to the GAA, Wexford man Kent remarked: “Accountability also must come to the fore, as an Association we contributed over €3.4 million euros to the GPA in 2022 at a time when we withheld funding to our clubs. In return we had player protests a refusal to promote our games, and the antagonistic language such as, and I quote, ‘will be organized and mobilised for protest action’.

“I personally am not happy with aspects of how the GPA spend the precious resources allocated to them annually - a recent presentation to Ard Chomhairle on their accounts revealed a significant spend on items such as match day tickets, on entertainment in corporate boxes, and on donations at a cost of almost a quarter of a million euro, of our funds, to various other bodies.

“All of this at a time when every county board seems to be flat out fundraising to sustain the county game, and when we have volunteer Chairpersons having sleepless nights about their county’s finances, struggling to meet the demands of their teams and maintain their facilities.

“As I said accountability must be to the fore and the word ‘runaway train’ is a term constantly referred to in the preparation costs of our teams. We all have a duty to control costs and evaluate our spend. It is not, and it won’t be sustainable, and the question for everyone sooner than later is how we can stop, when do we stop and who is going to say stop.” Kent also pointed out that the pre-season competitions the GPA oppose support former club and county players who find themselves in financial difficulty.

“Regarding the Accident tournaments, I wish to acknowledge the support of all our counties and I believe we have the competitions structures in place that will benefit the players. Recently the GPA proposed that we abolish the tournaments, not taking into consideration that the gate receipts help support an injury and hardship fund for all our players and not just the two percent they represent.” Kent also defended his role as Central Competitions Control Committee chairman in putting forward the proposal to remove five counties from the Allianz Hurling League from next year, which they later withdrew.

“A lot has been discussed of hurling lately and the recent CCC proposal certainly gave hurling a platform in the various media sources and of course with the keyboard warriors.

“As I always stated, the proposal originated from some of the counties with the view of improving hurling at underage and club level, and I welcome the fact we have lower tier hurling counties in Leinster that have committed to improve the hurling structures in their counties.”

Fr Tod Umptious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121612450#Comment_121612450

Totally agree with all of this.

We don't have a market big enough to support a large professional football or hurling league.

As the poster I'm quoting asks, where is the money going to come from?

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121612830#Comment_121612830

I know personally of players with a Connacht Hurling County team (not Galway) that are making €2,500 a month in expenses (tax free since it’s expenses)

evolvingtipperary101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121615325#Comment_121615325

But if it's expenses, how are they making money?

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121615866#Comment_121615866

If you think they’re getting covered for the exact amount that travelling etc is costing them, you’re way off it.

Expenses can be disguised extremely easily.

Treble double

2500 a month with a team not in the McCarthy Cup. I see so players on top 8 teams must be on a lot more than that, it's starting to make sense now, I foolishly thought these lads were putting their life on hold for the love of the Jersey. I'd be interested to know what is really going on in relation to.players expenses.

Eoinbmw

Ireland is too small a nation to support a fully professional GAA.

Other sports have the comfort of playing and be be funded from a larger international organisation or competition.

windy shepard henderson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121616379#Comment_121616379

100% true , even jp's 32 million divided out over the country shows just how quickly the money is swallowed up

windy shepard henderson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121616134#Comment_121616134

the closest we have to the gaa is collage sports in america where the top players are allowed sponsorship , remember the cork hurlers with the paddy power hurls , that should be allowed at very least

threeball

I can't see the intercounty scene ever rolling back from the demands and standards in place now. There will always be counties that would subvert any financial restrictions or training bans that might be put in place.

I think a professional level or semi pro at minimum is inevitable and probably required. The status quo of 2 to 3 teams winning everything 95% of the time and the vast majority having no hope is no longer sustainable. There isn't enough high quality games to keep the interest and the format of the competitions doesn't encourage teams to try to evolve through a season or experiment. There's no wiggle room for losses in the league or championship so that's a bad thing.

It'll probably need to be whittled down to 16max and probably 12, with a draft system and a spending cap, proper league and a cup competition and no more hold ups in the club games, so no more playing games in December and January.

I think a lot more money would enter the game with professionalism and it would make the product more attractive further afield (Aussie rules is a pretty rubbish sport but still gets coverage in a lot of markets).The big issue would be periphery players would get on a squad for a year or two and then are dropped. How to deal with them, putting careers on hold etc. How to deal with those guys might be a problem but then that's the same in all pro sports.

I can't see it dampening enthusiasm for volunteers at club level, i know I wouldn't feel any different towards the club. 99.9% of the people you'd deal with wouldn't ever make it out of club level and you'd only have been happy to have some hand in developing a lad that did.

Fr Tod Umptious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121617534#Comment_121617534

But where would the money come from to give you even 12 professional teams?

I don't think growing the game intentionally is an option, it's just to difficult to build a following.

Take rugby for example, a sport that is played on an international level with big influential countries like the UK and France being strong in the game.

But it's way way down the pecking order in most of Europe and South America, and in the US is totally obscure.

Even in former colonies like India and Pakistan it's unknown (cricket won that battle obviously).

threeball

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121617771#Comment_121617771

Well considering we're already spending €35m on the current set up then the costs won't change all that much. I think it could pick up a nice bit of interest from elsewhere as its easier follow a team in a structured sport. GAA isn't very casual fan friendly. The league is structured oddly and way too short to generate real interest, played in poor conditions on poor pitches. It also means very little in the greater scheme of things. Its neither celebrated for winning nor has any real impact on your championship prospects. A better designed calendar would get more buy in from casual fans and TV. The US is a huge market. You'd only need 100,000 subscribers to GAA Go to have a very tidy revenue stream. Pick up another 10-15,000 in the UK and you'd put a fair dent in costs.

It'll never be Rugby level but there's plenty of pro sports out there with smaller fan bases.

eastie17

Slightly off topic, but to my mind the craic going on at club level is even worse. If you have any sort of a coaching/management CV a club will fork out the bones of 15K a year to you to bring glory to the club. In a country where one of the only government bodies that seems to work is Revenue how is this still happening "under the table". Its going through the books at some level as its discussed at club committee meetings, and the members are asked to go fundraising for it. To be fair in most cases the committees are asked in advance should they go for an outside coach at X cost and have to agree so is not like its forced upon them.

There will then also be most likely a paid S&C person

As regards player welfare, the most at risk players are those talented 17 to 21 year olds who are not good enough to make intercounty but are good enough to feature heavily in their clubs. The age of guys playing adult is going back the whole time as they are so well developed now physically at 17 or 18. Its not unusual for 19 and 20 year olds to be vital to their adult teams success. 30 and over is now seen as "old" in a lot of clubs and the demands of life that the fact that we start serious organised training at age 4! means at that age they have a lifetime of it done and are stepping back.

I know lads in my own club at that age who between schools or college, U-21 and adult who are going constantly all year round, Jan to late December if they are going the latter stages of the respective U-21 comps

That doesn't happen in most inter county setups and when it does the players have the benefit of being monitored, told when to rest up, have every support available to them with physio, S&C etc as they should

Your good player gets very little of this but most importantly is probably having to deal with multiple different team managers, not all of whom may have his best interests at heart and are more concerned with their own charges success. That's not always the case of course but you can see the challenge.

I'd love to see the data on those getting the operations mentioned above, I'd wager there's a higher percentage of good club players than IC players.

Finally, this fallacy of Croke Park putting money back into the "grass roots" which we were told was the reason for the Sky deal and paywalling games was so more money could go back to the "grass roots"

I dont know what others experiences are but theres very little coming in to clubs from what I can see, there seems to be more going out with county board levies, player injury funds (which have to be in place to be fair) etc. Granted there are alot of clubs in the country but this notion that its all for the grass roots gets trotted out and unchallenged.

randd1

I can see football going semi-pro, with players getting paid per game.

The way I think it will happen will be an even split. Two Divisions of 16, 15 games games apiece, 3 up/3 down. Top 8 of each division into AIQF's. Panel of 32 only. Top tier players get €400 per game regardless, €500 if you play, second tier gets €300 per game regardless, €400 if you play, payment is per game and totted up at the end of the season. The winners of the finals get €1000 each regardless of appearance. Cup competition based on traditional provincial structure to run alongside the league phase, winner takes all amount of €2000 a man for winning the cup outright.

To facilitate this, the GAA will have to cut payments for training to 3 sessions a week, and players/managers will have to do media work to promote the matches. Rule changes also brought in to force more attacking football (designated forwards etc.) to really ramp up the entertainment.

Season runs from mid-January until the end of August, final last Sunday in August. Reduced size club championships to run during September and October, club championships run off on a week-by-week basis (penalties if necessary) from the second Sunday in November, with the finals in the first weeks of December to "facilitate the clubs".

That'll be the deal eventually.

Hurling is just too small to go semi-pro, it'll try along with football and fail, and return to the status quo.

dxhound2005

Not a single mention of referees, umpires and sideline officials. They would need to go on a proper wage. And of course at the top level, they would have to get VAR.

thinkabouit

I Dont think money would even be a problem. There’s plenty of money there already. It would make the GAA & country money.

But for example, Take team A has a stadium capacity of 30k a game.

30k x average ticket price of €60 = 1.8 million x 11 home games per season = €19.8 million from ticket sales alone.

I think 30k is a realistic enough attendance target if there’s only going to be 11 home game’s a year and as we know Ireland’s population is booming

Fr Tod Umptious

30k x average ticket price of €60 = 1.8 million x 11 home games per season = €19.8 million from ticket sales alone.

Seriously

What venue other than CP could even go near commanding E60 a game and manage to get 30,000 people to pay that ?

Even Dublin in CP could not get that sort of attendance at that price.

People need to be realistic.

Who the fcuk is going to pay E60 to sit on concrete seats in Castlebar or stand in the terrace in Galway or Killarney 11 times a year?

thinkabouit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121619277#Comment_121619277

Well I would hope after going pro that stadiums & infrastructure would improve with investment from Government & Team’s.

A process done over time.

Well be realistic but have to build to the future also, otherwise another few decade’s of what we’ve got now is what awaits.

PTH2009

Would any intercounty team train in there home stadium nowadays ?

CrabRevolution

I don't see how professionalism or semi professionalism solves the current issue of spending on county teams.

If the problem is too much spending, how is adding an enormous wage bill on top of the current spending going to help things? It's not like physios, transport and meals will be free if the players get paid, or that the analysts, specialists and coaches everyone hates will be fired.

Start paying players and then....what? Nobody is waiting in the wings with bags of cash waiting on professionalism before they'll invest in the GAA. There's no TV companies waiting to sign big broadcast deals. There aren't hundreds of thousands of people currently staying away from games, but who wish their county team would be disbanded and replaced with a new regional team that they would support.

evolvingtipperary101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121621233#Comment_121621233

Perhaps, the point is we have an 'amateur' org throwing around more cash on prep than some semi-pro sports like the league of Ireland. Personally, I think, if the Munster hurling teams or Ulster football teams played each other home and away in a league, each team would crush what Shamrock Rovers make a year. Think Rovers made 1.6 million last year. It certainly wouldn't work for the other championships. But if a top hurling league or football league was arranged like the league of ireland, it would crush the league of ireland figures.

kksaints

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121621350#Comment_121621350

Would it? The NFL and NHL which have the best teams playing each other don't have huge crowd numbers. Think people underestimate how traditional GAA fans are at times. I'm not entirely sure that GAA fans would take to a pure home and away league system of 18 assuming they play each other twice or 36 matches similar to the LOI assuming a 10 team league in Hurling for example.