Mayo GAA Discussion

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!

We know that there the are lots of people in and around the Mayo County Board, who have no interest in looking back, no interest in investigating if any one, or a number of things, have sadly left our County, with the title of the biggest losers in the history of Gaelic Football. There’s a very good reason for that, which is that they don’t want anyone attaching blame to them.

As a player and as a County team manager, I have played my own part in adding to that history. My involvement started in 1971 as Mayo Minor Captain and ended as Mayo Minor Manager in 2002. I played Senior (badly) right through the ‘70’s, which was of course the only decade in which Mayo failed to win a Senior Connaught title. It’s a bit of a mystery to me how that happened, given Mayo’s underage All Ireland record between 1966 and 1978.

Mayo won a minor All Ireland in 1966. In 1980 all of those players were only 31 or 32 years old. All in their prime throughout the ‘70’s. In 1967 Mayo beat Kerry in a replayed All Ireland U21 Final. Many of those players would have been in their prime through the early to mid ‘70’s. In 1971 we again won the Minor All Ireland and many of that team played in the 1973 All Ireland U21 Final defeat to Kerry. That Kerry team formed the basis of the highly successful Kerry Senior team of the following ten years. We won the All Ireland U21 Final in 1974, and were beaten All Ireland Minor Finalists that year too. Then, in 1978 we won a third Minor All Ireland in 12 years! So what happened to all of that talent? Why did it fail to produce even one team to win a Connacht Senior title between 1969 and 1981?

Okay, so maybe there’s no point in digging that far back. It might be more productive to revisit the more recent past, which in a few short years, has produced the largest group of top quality players in the history of Mayo Football, at least 8 or 10 of whom would rank with the greatest ever produced in our County.

There are those who believe that focusing entirely on the future, even if it means making the same mistakes, and perpetuating that losing sequence, is better than investigating the historical reasons, which if addressed, might cure the problems and bring that evasive All Ireland Senior Crown, which at times has deservedly eluded us right at the death, but which at other times we have thrown away!

It looks like the proposed review planned into the 2021 Final debacle is being long-fingered. A review which should have taken place in the cold light of day in the immediate aftermath of the game, when feelings were running high, and memories still sharp, could have been very cathartic. All that passion and emotion running loose might have resulted in some hurtful and over the top comment. In fact, that was there anyway, but some of it would surely have been very educational, cleansing and constructive.

However, it appears the Board are hoping that with the passage of more and more time, the anger and disappointment will have dissipated to such an extent, that a delayed review and likely another whitewash, will satisfy the fans. The management and players may get a slap on the wrist, and Mayo GAA will just carry on carrying on! A new slapstick Comedy movie for the third decade of the 21st Century.

The makeup of the Review Group is unlikely to instill any confidence, that it will rigorously examine, the weaknesses in support and direction provided by the Board, in the strength of the team management structure, or in the quality of the playing group. The review body will probably consist of collection of ‘Company’ men, trained in the art of toeing the line, which involves pointing the blame away from the officers and Board. In my view, if the Board was really serious about a full reveal of what has gone wrong, so many times, it should have approached someone of the calibre of a Jim McGuinness or a Peter Canavan or a Jim Gavin to lead a properly independent, no holds barred review.

I know I might sound a bit like a broken record by mentioning again, the comprehensive review of Mayo GAA structures prepared by Liam Horan 15 or so years ago. If the Board of the time had been farseeing enough to look seriously at Liam’s proposals, and less concerned about the affect it might have on their personal positions of relative power and influence, which meant so much to them, the Board of 2021 might have been spared the present proposed review, and there might well be several more Sam Maguires in the trophy cabinet.

And now for the ‘Elephant in the room’. Again, I have to apologise for going back in time, to examine a decision that must rank as the most ill advised, most expensive, and most destructive decision ever taken by the Mayo County Board, or perhaps by any County Board, with the possible exception of Cork. That was the decision to take over McHale Park on some kind of long term lease basis, and to redevelop it, without it would appear, any proper costing, or plan to meet the costs. I thought at the time, and stated as much in the Western People, that it was a decision fraught with danger, because I didn’t believe the Board had the expertise to manage and fund such a project, and because I was hugely concerned about the amount of money the loan repayments would take away from the promotion of football in the County. I had absolutely no idea, how grossly I had underestimated the inept and inadequate approach of the Board to the task, or how extreme the consequences would be for every club and every GAA player in our County.

The Board had to be bailed out by Croke Park, when they ran into difficulties with their Bank, and were locked into an outrageous repayment system, which could only have been agreed to, by people who knew that some other soft target, was actually going to be funding the ridiculous repayments of over €33000 every month, initially for 30 years!! That €33000 is not coming out of the pockets of the County Board officers who created this monstrous debt in the first place of course, it is being paid for by the clubs. There are roughly 50 clubs in the County, so in effect, on average, each club has to find €600 every month to pay for this County Board Folly, which equates to €7200 (Seven thousand two hundred euro) per year. With the payment system being tiered, Intermediate and Junior clubs do pay less, but believe me, this is the very first payment your club has to scrape together and is mandated to hand over every single month. When you consider that Croke Park expect to be paid for 30 years, that means that €216000 (Two hundred and sixteen thousand euro) on average, will have been removed from your Club, your Parish, and your players including your underage players during the term of this loan. Can you imagine the damage that loss of finance will cause at local level, across every one of fifty plus clubs in Mayo. If the maths education my primary school teachers gave me is not too far off the mark, that amounts to close to a cool €12,000,000 (Twelve million euro) removed from the financial resources of our clubs, to pay for perhaps, the costliest white elephant in the history of amateur sport.

Now, that is a white elephant that needs to be considered in any review of the past and present performance of our County teams, because the removal of that vast amount of money to fund a depreciating piece of defective and costly infrastructure, hugely impacts the quality of player, that every single club in the County can produce. Just imagine if that €600 per month was spent on a good coach in every one of our 50 clubs, over the past ten or so years, since this insane project was undertaken. Imagine the scoring forwards we might have unearthed, or the extra Lee Keegan’s or Keith Higgins’s!!

If the Mayo County Board was a business, and I have long argued it should be operating as a business, then our Board would be insolvent, as it is incapable of meeting its debts, without wreaking havoc and potentially visiting financial destruction on every club unit in the County.

Our Mayo people of course are paying through the nose on the double. They fund their clubs to pay this huge McHale Park debt in the first instance. Add to that the multi millions that Mayo supporters have paid, to follow their team to All Ireland Semi-Finals and Finals, all of which goes into the Croke Park vault. Fifteen big Mayo games probably contributed a minimum of €30,000,000 (Thirty Million euro)to the GAA, and with perhaps 60% of that coming out of Mayo pockets, equating to €18,000,000 (Eighteen Million euro), we are being royally screwed. Mayo supporters, who have probably been the GAA’s greatest cash cow over the last twelve years, are being squeezed financially from all sides, and it is unfair, inequitable and unsustainable. Croke Park need to be made aware of the strain their unconscionable loan terms are creating, and perhaps the Board in the best interests of Mayo Football need to consider ‘pulling the plug’, which is what would have happened some time ago were the Mayo County Board operating in the real business world!

The thing is, are Cork repaying their bail out? It's completely unfair to lump this bill on every club in the county