Cusack attacks ‘free-dinner merchants’ of the GAA

THE Gaelic Player’s Association secretary, Donal Óg Cusack, has launched a stinging attack on GAA chiefs and “lifelong free-dinner merchants” who continue to take players at all grades for granted.

Cork's All-Ireland winning goalkeeper a key figure in the Cork hurlers' revolt of 2002 issued a clear warning to the Association that players could take "direct action" unless there are real motions passed by next year's Congress recognising the GPA players' right and conditions.

That has been interpreted as a strike threat from the GPA, and could lead to a cooling in relations between the players' group and Croke Park.

Cusack, in his address to the GPA AGM, pulled no punches as he made a case for the lesser known inter-county players, who train just as hard as the successful counties.

"What has actually changed for the players over the years?" he asked. "The training, definitely, no such thing as a few laps, a game of backs and forwards, with a steak and a few pints afterwards, as one ex-Cork player with 10 Munster senior hurling medals described their sessions to me.

"Nowadays, you don't stop being an inter-county player after the game, you don't even stop when the season is over. People take notice of the modern-day GAA player all of the time. To all these changes, the GAA player has adapted wonderfully. He has answered every demand that has been placed on him and still continues to produce a better and better product. The key question is, who has placed these demands on the player? Himself, partly, as every player worth his salt strives to get better. But, in the main, it's the Association that has placed these demands, and the player has answered, all the time. On the other hand, has the Association changed the way it perceives the player? Not one bit."

Cusack read a letter written by an aggrieved Jamsie Kelleher to the Cork County Board in 1908, on the treatment of injured players after an inter-county game.

"I have seen, to my disgust," went Mr Kelleher's letter, "the players draw the crowds, make the money, and lose their sweat at many a hard hour's game, while those gentlemen at the head of affairs take charge of the bag and jump on their cars again before the match is over, off to their hotel to count the coin made by the rank and file. Who made all this money?"

Very little has changed since 1908, claimed Cusack.

"The role of the player, present and future, is the key issue. The agenda will never willingly be changed; we must make it change. Players are the backbone of the GAA, without them, it doesn't stand up. Yet we never get considered at county conventions. We get some lifelong free-dinner merchant standing up and whingeing about the cost of the panel for the year, as if the players were the beneficiaries. Nobody stands up in the club committee meeting to say that they want to ensure that players are looked after properly, their time, status and role acknowledged. Why? Because we're taken for granted. The feeling is often that we should count ourselves lucky to be as well treated as we are, and should lie down every night and thank God that we can give of ourselves for the dream. I have reluctantly come to the view that unless, at the initiative of the GAA, there are real motions passed by next year's Congress recognising the GPA players' right and conditions, the time will have come for direct action."

Strong words, apparently at odds with the earlier claim by GPA chief executive Dessie Farrell that the players' body is already, in practical terms, officially recognised by the GAA as representing the players.

Yesterday, Cusack elaborated on what he was saying. "There is de facto recognition, but my fear is that they are trying to wear down those of us in the GPA who are determined to see this thing through, throwing us a sop here and there. I want to stress that we're very well treated in Cork, John Allen has an excellent structure in place, I can't speak highly enough of Jim Forbes and Mick Dolan (county board officers), no complaints whatsoever, but perhaps that's the point. The GPA is not about the stronger counties, it's about the whole set-up for players. Most of the Saturday's meeting was taken up with discussing the treatment being meted out to the hurlers of Armagh, where they weren't even being supplied with sliotars; of Louth, where the players weren't getting their gear. Penny-ha'penny stuff, surely we should be gone beyond that? The only way to bring on all those other counties is through the collective, the strong looking after the weak. We could sit back here in Cork and say, 'I'm alright Jack', but we don't. A couple of years ago, at the GPA AGM, the way we envisaged players being treated was that they come into training and their gear would be there waiting for them, all they would need to bring would be their boots, hurleys, and a good attitude. I'll let you imagine the reaction from the county board, when we went looking for that. Yet at the end of last year, at one of our meetings, Jim Forbes (Cork's GAA chairman) said, "I want to compliment ye on the training gear, it looks very well, anyone coming to look at ye is impressed, the sponsors are happy, we're happy."

Even go to the sports psychology part of it, it's accepted fact that it's beneficial to the team when everyone is dressed in the same gear.

"The GAA for a long time has been as much a political organisation as a sporting organisation, but it needs to start thinking along purely sporting lines, and the competition they face from other sports. Fellas today are different, I see it myself with the younger lads in Cork. Their experiences are different, their expectations are different; they've been brought up with Sky Sports, they see what's on offer with other sports, they see what's on offer here in Cork, when they come in now.

"There's an impression that if the GAA throw us a bone every now and again, keep us happy, keep us from complaining, eventually we'll go away. That's not going to happen. People might think that the likes of Liam Mulvihill, Sean Kelly, are doing a good job, but I can guarantee you, history might well say otherwise, the guys who replace these fellas, 20, 30 years down the road, might end up saying, if only those fellas had dealt properly with the problems we had then, the problems on my desk now mightn't be as grave.

"Don't keep dragging this thing out, sort it out, once and for all; give the GPA official recognition."