John Fogarty: Should inter-county GAA players be pushed up the vaccination queue?

Limerick’s Graeme Mulcahy shakes hands with Waterford’s Dessie Hutchinson after the All-Ireland final last month. Picture: Inpho/James Crombie

At the start of December, Teneo Ireland CEO Mick O’Keeffe posted on Twitter a link to a piece about when company chief executives should receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

Dismissing our vain attempt to hop a ball with him about emulating Father Ted character Fr Joe Briefly and looking for two parachutes, the former Dublin footballer explained why he highlighted the article published on the website of Korn Ferry, the global management consulting company.

Pointing out that those who need it most should get it first, he asked them that “should leaders show example and get it too? To encourage more to get it?”

The matter is, of course, a double-edged sword.

Being seen to be considered more important than the rest of the company may send out the wrong message and when Covid is having a detrimental effect on take-home pay, a sense of entitlement being shown to leadership is the last thing some firms need.

At the same time, illustrating that inoculation is a safe thing to do when the anti-vaxxers have warped too many minds is proactive.

Doing it alongside employees, not asking them to do something they wouldn’t do themselves, would set the right tone. Besides, certainly not in O’Keeffe’s case but chief executives are generally close to State retirement age — according to the Korn Ferry piece, the average age of one in the US is 59 — so some of their Covid vaccine rankings would be high anyway.

Neither age nor health is something that would bump inter-county players up the priority list but them endorsing the vaccine will do a lot of good for when the time comes for their peers and young adolescents to take it. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of players would be rightly uncomfortable about being put ahead of others. Given the opportunity, they would likely be keener to see their parents and older relatives given the dose before them.

The GPA know it’s a tricky matter for other reasons. They have come a long way from when some of their officials were suggesting they didn’t buy the idea of volunteerism or that playing in an Ulster final was more important than sweeping a floor (the players these days are known to do both). But there is a question of optics.

At the same time, they, the GAA, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association, and the Camogie Association won’t want to put their top players in harm’s way if they are again to provide respite and distraction to the nation.

In October, one in four male inter-county players did not want the season to go ahead because of the pandemic.

As well as the GAA organise competitions before Christmas, the additional and more transmittable strains of Covid-19 mean arranging them may be a bigger ask irrespective of the vaccine rollout.

Last week, International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound claimed there would be no issue if his native Canada were to prioritise vaccinations for the country’s Olympic athletes.

“To take 300 or 400 vaccines out of several million in order to have Canada represented at an international event of this stature, character, and level — I don’t think there would be any kind of a public outcry about that.”

Burnley manager Sean Dyche explained why he felt vaccines should be fast tracked for Premier League footballers: 

People will say: ‘Why should footballers get vaccinations?’ But, if the testing diminishes, that money could be used for a much better cause. Football then also remains a competitive industry rather than what might end up as a skewed industry because of players missing from games. It’s a common sense view.”

It isn’t entirely when millionaires are bumped up but then the entertainment they have offered up is what has sustained so many during this pandemic. The show is going on but it is creaking and cracking.

Vaccines would sure lubricate the engine and ensure the integrity of the sport is higher.

That would be welcome in inter-county Gaelic games but for the GAA and the Government the obvious benefits would be protecting players who would again be putting themselves at risk to give a large proportion of the country something to look forward to.

Where exactly in the queue inter-county players and other elites sportspeople might be vaccinated is another thing.

Is it a stretch to say they could be considered among “key workers”, the sixth highest group in the Government’s provisional list?

The rationale for key workers states they provide “services essential to societal and economic activity”.

They might not providing essential services as the ethical principles for key workers defines but their endeavours have made what would have been a long winter shorter.

As Taoiseach Micheál Martin said last August of his determination to see a Championship go ahead, “I think it would be a symbol that a country is fighting this virus, that it’s not going to surrender to it.”

A figure of €15m was the parachute then and something similar may be needed again but this time the personal price may be higher.

Cork beach reasoning just does not wash

Outlining the 2021 season back on December 21, a document from Croke Park was provided to the media.

Under the first sub headline “providing a meaningful closed season/down time”, read the line, “no return to collective senior inter-county training before January 15”.

That message would have been relayed from that weekend’s Central Council meeting to the Cork management. So how they felt the group did not contravene that rule the weekend before last when they congregated to train on Youghal beach is dumbfounding. 

There are too many intelligent and decent people in that group to believe they are attempting to gaslight the rest of us but fully compliant with Covid protocols? Give us a break.

It bears repeating what the GAA define collective training as: “Where one or more player(s) is/are required to be at a specific place at a specific time on a specific date.”

That is most certainly what Cork did so, while under level 5 restrictions they did nothing wrong as elite teams are permitted to gather, they breached the GAA’s closed season.

Maybe because like Down, who also have a case to answer and were also knocked out of the 2020 championship in November, they felt the best way to move on was physically; that after relatively early exits they should return sooner as per the previous phased inter-county winter training ban. 

They wouldn’t be alone there. There is anecdotal evidence about one other provincial finalist training from early December.

But in the context of alarming Covid case numbers, their actions have to be viewed in a dimmer light. Talk of relegation as a suitable punishment is excessive but fines and suspensions could be on the cards.

GAA will simply have to borrow

The word from last week’s meeting of county treasurers was grim to say the least with a number wondering just how possible a full inter-county season is when the tap has been cut off.

That was the warning from the GAA’s finance committee relayed by director general Tom Ryan last month of going down the route of county before club this season but really is there any other plan?

When exactly will level 2 restrictions, paramount for clubs competing, return? As director of club, player, and games administration Feargal McGill said later in the month, it was “a no-brainer”.

Finding the money to finance the inter-county season, McGill pointed out, is the next issue and it is a significant one. Asked to submit their team budgets to Croke Park today, some county treasurers won’t be painting a pretty picture. Remember Clare’s Michael Gallagher last July exclaiming the board “will go bust” if it doesn’t rein in its spending on teams?

Financial prudency holds a lot of sway in the GAA but loans, as was the case for reconstructing Croke Park, will have to be the order of the day if this season, the gateway to what should be the fully-formed split season from 2021, is going to take place as scheduled.

When funding is made available from central sources, rural counties where travel expenses are that more acute should be put at the top of the list.

As Conor Counihan suggests elsewhere in today’s Irish Examiner, that’s where reality is biting hardest.

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