Hypothetical Situation

[Lone Shark]

While we might give out about our county senior teams on occasion, I think we can certainly consider ourselves lucky as a county that as a rule our players are very committed and act with the best interests of the county at heart - if we do have disruption, certainly with the footballers, it's generally along the lines of what happened with Roy Malone after the Carlow game - born out of frustration at the lack of success for the county and the players, rather than out of self interest.

So as outsiders looking in at the situation faced by our neighbours in Roscommon, what would ye suggest?

For those who aren't aware. the problem runs a lot deeper than just one or two well known figures. A large proportion of the panel, and certainly the majority of the team, are unwilling to bow to authority, unwilling to curb their penchant for "excess", and generally look on the county jersey as a means to impress and pick up the scarce few decent looking wans you're likely to find in Rockfords of a Saturday night. Examples of such woeful behaviour are 3 players drinking in Athlone on the Friday night before the Mayo game - witnessed by yours truly, not urban legend - one player booking his holiday for the week of the round 4 qualifiers because there was "no chance" they'd reach that far, and players refusing to play outside of their chosen positions for management.

On the face of it, it seems straightforward - characters like that do not belong in an intercounty panel, particularly a proud county like ourselves or the Ros. However the alternative is also unpalatable - cut around the half the senior panel, including basically all the senior and established players, put up with the muppet hero worshippers demanding the return of the delinquents, and suffer 2-3 years of horrendous results while the new team beds in and develops.

To relate it to ourselves - and I stress that I'm not suggesting any of the following players are anything but loyal and committed servants to the county, just that it gives an impression of the situation our North Western neighbours find themselves in - if Offaly were faced with a situation where Podge, Froggy, Scott, Slatts, Mac, Mooney, Paschal, Niall, Jimmy Paw, Super, Shaper and half the subs were a bad influence, unwilling to curb their ways, and had been given several chances, what would we want done? Being a small county, the playing pool is shallow, and the quality of replacements mightn't be high - chances are we'd be looking at 2-3 years at least of losing heavily to Longford, Wicklow, Carlow and the likes. There would also be the risk of players not playing in solidarity with their "hard done by" clubmate.

On the other hand by tolerating it, results might be better, but you run the risk of embedding the misbehaving culture even deeper.

What is the best way forward?

[Barracuda]

Jaysus LS do you have nothing better to do !

Get a manager and County Board who can command respect and start again ........

[Lone Shark]

Jaysus LS do you have nothing better to do !

Lots. But I'm leaving this job in a couple of weeks, and despite my repeated pleas, and the fact that I'm not under any contract, they refuse to save themselves my couple of weeks wages and let me out of here.

I'm highly motivated at the moment, as you can imagine.

[Barracuda]

Nice one LS- Nice one indeed

[Biff O'Mahon]

Its an interesting topic, generally speaking, loike...

I suppose its been our hurlers that have made a name for themselves as, well, em... difficult (?) when it comes to giving up the beer to concentrate on championship (I'm not even thinking of league here) - Mssrs Cassidy & Co spring to mind, but so do the Pilkingtons & the Troys etc over the years.

Then there were the defections this year in the football (Grennan et al)...

But you're right LS, the 'players doing it for themselves' mentality is not uncommon in the national games. Dual code disputes, personal sponsership, & then you can start on the player-manager clashes and so on.

I would suggest that its one of the symptoms of an unhealthy situation whereby amateur players are the minions in an increasingly professional production. Its not difficult to imagine why a player may become disaffected when the manager is not only over-rated, but he's also on 50k (or whatever)... ok that's only one scenario - we could probably dream up plenty more.

My point is, after all that, the contrast with the Lions tour this year. (Okay, I know I got rapped over the knuckles for mentioning other codes on this forum before, but bear with me here).
For all the ineptitude of the Lions management, none of the players revolted!!!! and the rugger players can't all be dummies either... with all that expensive schooling behind so many of them, I'm sure there they must have a few brain cells between the lot of them - & there were a lot of them).
The stories will come out in the ghosted biographies when these guys retire, but is it not the professional nature of the sport that inhibits the players from walking out of panels etc ... and we can't compare the behaviour of GAA players with any of the other major sports on that basis.

I'm not promoting professionalism in the game - but we're now in an age where we have blogs (yes, blogs!) dissecting the attitude & performances of inter-county players, who do after all play the game for pride & honour alone.

Good for you LS, in getting out of an unhappy job thing, hope all goes well for you... by the way ...so müssen Sie Deutsches in Ihrem neuen Job erlernen? und müssen Sie auch erlernen, Ihre Fersen auf eine faschistische Art und Weise zusammen sind zu klicken?

[Bogman]

God! This is like one of those moral dilemna questions like if we knew Hitller or Stalin or Mao when they were kids and could somehow foresee that they would be the cause of tens or millions of people dying horribly, should we kill them?

I'd say pick one of them and make a public example in the hope that it would bring the others into the line. No offence meant to anybody but is this what Eamonn Cregan did in his early days as Offaly manager when he dropped Roy Mannion from the squad because of differences of opinion despite the fact that Roy was one of the most physically mature and also one of the most talented of the minor hurling All-Ireland winners.

[Lone Shark]

To be honest I think our hurlers just had a reputation, and the media seized on it because it was a nice angle. The likes of Johnny P gave the impression that he wouldn't ever give up the drink for hurling , played it up himself, and it was a delight for Humphries and co to talk to someone who didn't go on about savage fitness training in November, speed work in February and hurling 1500 sliothars at training in May all the time. I wouldn't include our players back then in the same category as the current Roscommon panel at all - I think truth be told they had their heads screwed on rightly. They hurled hard, took it seriously when it mattered, and just when they were having a few jars they didn't feel the need to go and hide in the back corner of some pub in Portlaoise.

Equally to go back to the Mannion incident, it doesn't really apply in this case because Cregan wasn't really hurting the team to do that. It could easily be argued that Mannion wouldn't have got on the team in 1994 anyway - maybe in the half forwards, but probably not to be honest.

Again in the football this year, I've no problems with lads training, or like in the case of Grennan, opting out. It's when players want to be on the county panel and want to play but refuse to act like a county player at the same time.

I don't know if dropping one player would really help in the Ros Case either - Frankie was dropped, and it's not like the rest of them fell into line - far from it. You see it does make the decision more difficult when you know there is going to a subsequent downturn in results, and inevitable supporter backlash.



And as for new jobs, well I'll have to find one first before I suss out what linguistic or footwork skills I'll have to add to my repertoire.....

[Biff O'Mahon]

Okay, I'm not familiar with the Rossie situation... but just to be devil's advocate for a minute...

If all inter-county GAA players were to be paid a retainer on a say, pay-per-play basis, significant enough that it would be primary source of income, wouldn't the messing 'Rossie-style' disappear?

Ok, I know that Kerry players would then earn more than the Kilkenny ones (football)... but let's just say that an equable payment system was devised....

.... its all hypothetical...




Knew your German would be sh*t hot....

[Lone Shark]

Okay, I'm not familiar with the Rossie situation... but just to be devil's advocate for a minute...

If all inter-county GAA players were to be paid a retainer on a say, pay-per-play basis, significant enough that it would be primary source of income, wouldn't the messing 'Rossie-style' disappear?

Ok, I know that Kerry players would then earn more than the Kilkenny ones (football)... but let's just say that an equable payment system was devised....

And if this were a nationwide problem, then you'd be looking at solutions like this - the fact that it's one county that has a real problem where they didn't nip it in the bud years ago, and the rest, even if they have 1-2 problem cases per county, are fine means that a dramatic solution like this is un-necessary.

To go back to the Offaly example, our footballers don't get paid, and even if we might question their ability to close out a narrow win, I would certainly never question their effort or commitment. Roscommon have a discipline issue in the county where players cheapen the county jersey by their antics, and while payment might resolve it, to be honest in a pay for play system I'd say the county would just say feck off to the current bunch and get Kerry's B team instead.

Anyway, pay-for-play would be the death of county boundaries within ten years - it'll happen eventually, it has done to every sport, but my intention would be to fight it tooth and nail until it does, and keep the sport I love alive in it's current form for as long as possible.

Knew your German would be sh*t hot....

If by "your German" you mean "your ability to enter text into Google Translate....", then yes......

[Biff O'Mahon]

Fair points there, I wouldn't be in favour of professionalising the game either - however the irony may be that the increasing hype, the ever greater tv coverage, the jersey sales, the blogs (none of which we would object to individually) combine to drive the profile of the game ever higher... and this all adds fuel to the professionalism debate. Everybody wants their cut after all - and we are now living in a more monetary driven little country than we once did...

If by "your German" you mean "your ability to enter text into Google Translate....", then yes......

You could've just kept schtum there, we wouldn't have known better & would have just accepted fluent german as one of your many talents...

(i'm not really sure what to use mrgreen for, so just though i'd try it out!)

[Lone Shark]

Fair points there, I wouldn't be in favour of professionalising the game either - however the irony may be that the increasing hype, the ever greater tv coverage, the jersey sales, the blogs (none of which we would object to individually) combine to drive the profile of the game ever higher... and this all adds fuel to the professionalism debate. Everybody wants their cut after all - and we are now living in a more monetary driven little country than we once did...

It is coming all right, there's no question of that. Somewhere along the line the county player's lot improved greatly - no problem there - but more worryingly, the club player became even more of a fringe element. Managing county teams, and county team expenses, began to absorb a disproportionately high amount of time and money. As a result the gulf between the two has widened considerably. Hence Dessie Farrell can partially get away with his request for fixed stipends for county players etc. - we all know it doesn't stand up to any kind of harsh scrutiny, but there is a large amount of people with a passing interest in GAA who are barely aware clubs exist now, and a large vested media interest who know that professional GAA is even more news.

I think the safeguards that could be put in place without any likely objection from the GPA etc. are:

(1) Rigorous auditing of club and county accounts to make sure that money isn't being leaked into surreptitious paying of players and managers. Based on the Roscommon example, it might be no bad thing to do anyway to make sure counties aren't living beyond their means.

(2) Some form of collaberation with the Revenue commissioners. If a business entity enters GAA sponsorship or any kind of club/county donation into their books, it's not unreasonable that the GAA can check to make sure that amount has been entered into that club/county's books correctly, and not disappeared into the ether.

(3) Put stricter rules in place regarding transfers. We don't want to hit ordinary club players who just want to kick a ball/swing a hurl with a local club, but witnessing how much that Morgan fella is sinking into Armagh at the moment, instead of paying McGeeney to appear in a few photos, it could be just as easy pay Mattie Forde to appear in a few photos. Transfer to Armagh Harps or Pearse Óg from Kilanerin, and there you go. Just as much carpentry work needed in Armagh as Wexford I'm sure, so Mattie's happy out. (Again I'm not saying Forde would do this, but just to show how easy it could be)

You can't stop lads from taking jobs, and you shouldn't block lads from moving clubs where distance becomes a real issue. However you can put a two year wait on intercounty transfers.


Any thoughts?

[Biff O'Mahon]

(1) Rigorous auditing of club and county accounts to make sure that money isn't being leaked into surreptitious paying of players and managers. Based on the Roscommon example, it might be no bad thing to do anyway to make sure counties aren't living beyond their means.

You had the inside track there didn't you!!!

Just you left out county chairmen out of the recipients of iffy payments....
Then there's the honest muckers out there playing for the, what was the advert ?, the glamour... that's it the glamour.