Fight against the Cusack/Farrell stand - Part 2

[ballymanabroad]

Is the Times taking a different approach to the GPA and pay for play?

Victimhood of GPA begins to rankle
by: Tom Humphries


LockerRoom:

The Gaelic Players Association has an image problem. Maybe the GPA doesn't care about that but it is a pity nonetheless. Within the ordinary rank and file of the GAA there is alarm and resentment that the GPA seems to represent, in an increasingly shrill and narrow way, the desires of what is already an elite group.

I don't know anybody who doesn't agree with the GPA on issues of player welfare. Nobody wants to see a player out of pocket for representing his county. Most people seem willing to accept a player or a mentor might be out of pocket for involvement in his club team or an administrator might be out of pocket for his work on behalf of the club, but we are all agreed that - for the enjoyment they give us - our best players should not suffer financially.

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Fewer people, I suspect, are so clear on the issue of grants for elite players. The issue lacks some clarity at the moment and most people want to know more.

The GAA itself has taken basically the same position on behalf of its members. Seán McCague and Seán Kelly have been supportive on these issues. The GAA seeks to have its further input on the matter deferred until Nickey Brennan assumes the presidency in six weeks' time.

This is not unreasonable; it would be unfair and deficient in protocol of Seán Kelly to hand an incoming president such a major issue as a fait accompli. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt Nickey's integrity on player issues.

Caution is the correct approach, however. What are the implications? What are the guarantees? If a player is to get €2,500 per year for being on a county team, what are the implications in a county, let's say, like Roscommon, where participation in the county team may not last longer than the next disciplinary issue? Can the naked pool player sue for the remainder of his 2,500? Does the player who comes on to the county panel after a fine club game in early April and then stops training when the county lads get knocked out in May get the same as the lad who trains from January to late September?

Does the ordinary GAA member stand to benefit in that if 30 players on a panel get €2,500 each or 75,000 in total will the already astronomical spend on county teams by county boards be reduced accordingly? Or will players continue to get recompense from the county board for a range of issues and see the 2,500 as cream, the first increment of pure income for playing?

There are 100 question you could ask straight off. These are difficulties. Wrinkles. Complications. The GAA hasn't said No. It has gone a long way toward saying Yes.

What the GPA needs to decide is whether it wants the scheme more than it wants the fight for which it is spoiling with the GAA.

Getting the scheme up and running will, as John O'Donoghue indicated during the week, be dependent on the GAA's co-operation. One thing the GAA isn't going to do is hand all the credit to Dessie and Donal Óg and have itself portrayed as having taken a whupping on this one.

The GAA has been wrong on many player issues over the years (the PlayStation game being a glaring example), and the GPA can take great credit for steadily eroding those attitudes. What will evolve though should be a cordial partnership, not an adversarial relationship in which intercounty players seek to hold the GAA to ransom.

The GPA has summoned an egm of its members (already very busy people, as we know) to discuss the issue. The best and most mature course of action would be an expression of respect for the GAA's caution in the matter of tinkering with an amateur ethos that has served well for over 100 years. An appreciation of the concerns of ordinary club players and members would be welcome also.

There should be no sabre rattling. There are intrinsic rewards in the journey from mini-leaguer to county man playing in Croke Park in front of 83,000 people. People hate to hear it reduced to "where's the money?"

There is huge goodwill out there for elite players but there is some dissonance between the GPA's perception of its members as being the most important and most victimised people within the GAA and the ordinary GAA members' view that, all things considered, being an intercounty player is a good and apparently quite enjoyable thing.

Most players want to be players. Very few want to quit. Where's the horror? The GPA is a necessary component of the modern GAA. Slowly the GAA is seeing that. What the GPA doesn't need is to keep behaving as if the player issues would be more appropriately dealt with by Amnesty International. And the GPA has a youthful tendency toward shrillness. In September the GPA produced a document entitled Player Welfare, A Survey of the Views of Senior Intercounty Gaelic Footballers and Hurlers. The trumpeting of the results seemed typical of the flaws inherent in the GPA's approach.

The survey suffers (inevitably) from self-selection bias. The GPA itself has a selective input into GAA affairs and matters of GAA welfare. Sometimes that is unhelpful to the cause.

There was, for instance, an unseemly and - many neutrals would say - counterproductive rush to attempt to grab a slice of whatever monies would accrue from the GAA's decision to open Croke Park.

At a time when many non-elite members within the association were struggling with mixed feelings about the issue, especially in terms of the implications for amateurism of having professional players hoofing about on the same stage, the GPA was quickly in to ask, "Where's mine?"

Similarly, the GPA if it has views on what happened, say, in Omagh last month struggles to articulate them. The virtual collapse of the GAA's disciplinary system has profound implications for elite players. Again we're not hearing the GPA clearly enough on this issue.

That's the problem. In surveys you get self-selection bias when the entities in the sample are given a choice whether or not to participate. If a group of members within a sample decides not to participate, it reduces the ability of the results to generalise to the entire population. The GPA always generalises to the entire population.

If the GPA sends out a long and detailed form surveying players' views on welfare issues, those with grievances about these issues are the ones most likely to take the time to respond.

In the GPA's survey, conducted with the help of the UCD Centre for Sports Studies, a survey of 106 questions covering seven subject areas was sent to 1,779 respondents. There was a 62-per-cent non-response rate.

Within the data from the 38 per cent who bothered one must also allow for a response bias that typically occurs when respondents answer questions in a way they feel, subconsciously or otherwise, the questioner wants them to answer.

The questionnaire came with a letter attached from Dessie Farrell stating the importance of the survey. The GPA's image is such that this was like a man getting a letter from the chair of a women's group stressing the vital importance of the accompanying questionnaire on attitudes toward violence against women.

The difficulty was that what might have been a moderately interesting sampling of players' opinions became a weapon for campaigning on the issues of grants and semi-professionalism.

The survey raised some interesting questions about the disparities between the treatment of hurling squads as opposed to football squads and the continuing and unacceptable patchiness of county board responses to player-welfare issues.

It was, however, not valid to state, as the GPA did on that occasion, "Moreover 70 per cent of all players also favour a move to professional or semi-professional status." Seventy per cent of the 38 per cent response rate being in favour of professionalism or semi-professionalism means we know that 26.6 per cent of players who were posted surveys last year are in favour of either semi-professionalism or professionalism.

What would be the response rate if the questions were couched a little differently? We don't know? That's why the GAA is right to be cautious as we head down this path.

The GAA has 750,000 members, which on an island this small makes it almost a nationally owned organisation. It is tradition and culture and sport rolled into one. It changes slowly. That's how it should be.

Softly, softly does it, lads.

We all have a stake in this.

[Lone Shark]

Here's an excellent tongue in cheek response to all these matters .....

An Spailpín Fánach