GAA aims to tackle ‘blemish’ of unregulated payments to managers

THE GAA is to consider formalising a structure to regulate the payment of team managers.

County board officials will meet on Saturday to start a consultation process, after which the GAA intends adopting an official policy on unregulated payments to team managers.

In a discussion paper released yesterday, GAA director general Páraic Duffy outlined several models whereby the organisation might permit county boards to remunerate managers.

One of the suggestions is to recruit managers as paid employees of county boards, while another is to allow managers to invoice boards for the provision of services to their teams.

Mr Duffy also laid out an alternative, which would see the GAA strictly enforcing its amateur status via the setting up of an audit and a registration and audit board.

The document was put together as the first step in addressing what Mr Duffy regards as “the existence of a hidden semi-professional culture, indifferent to the values that guide the association and the vast majority of its members”.

The idea of paying managers is anathema to the traditionally successful counties, which have predominantly relied on natives to coach their teams. While unproven, there is anecdotal evidence of county and club managers being paid for their services.

Mr Duffy is adamant the GAA has to tackle a matter which strikes at the core value of the organisation.

“The choice facing the association in this respect is a very simple one,” he wrote in the paper.

“Either we do nothing about a practice we dislike so much and continue to wring our hands and piously mutter our disapproval in the certain knowledge that nothing will change and that in five or 10 years we will still be lamenting. Or we decide that it would be defeatist and hypocritical not to confront a practice that those who care about the GAA know to be a blemish on the association.”

Rule 1.10 of the organisation’s official guide states: “A player, team, official or member shall not accept payment in cash or in kind in conjunction with the playing of Gaelic Games.”