Spillane blames GAA for Setanta’s defection

LEGENDARY Kerry footballer turned GAA pundit Pat Spillane has criticised the GAA for failing to promote and market their games, and he sees the loss of Cork sensation Setanta Ó hAilpín to Australian Rules as a glaring error.

“Setanta was left go far too easy,” said Spillane. “It’s obvious that he wants to be a professional sportsman and fair play to him for that, but why couldn’t the GAA facilitate him and ensure he wasn’t lost to hurling.

“Ó hAilpín was the talk of the country in 2003. Here was a player who could do untold good for the image of hurling, yet he has been allowed to slip away.

“There was a lost opportunity some years ago with Jason Sherlock. He was the first real marketable commodity in Gaelic football, particularly in a city like Dublin where the GAA was well down the order of preference with the youth. He was a guy who had it all going for him, including his own TV programme, yet he was never used by the GAA to capture the minds of the youth of the capital.

“In my view he should have been employed by the GAA or the Dublin County Board, or both, and paid a decent salary to go around to the schools in the county promoting the games and doing some coaching as well.

“Sadly that wasn’t done. Apart from Peter Canavan there isn’t any other player out there, a marketable commodity in Gaelic football.”

“Our games need role models. Outside of DJ Carey we have no other player who excited hurling followers more last year than Setanta Ó hAilpín. I’m of the view that a sizeable number of GAA players should be employed by the association in a coaching, marketing, promotions capacity, and paying them the going rate. They would be worth their weight in gold.

“For all that to happen however we have to change the mindset of those running the association at the top. The priorities are all wrong. The days of bricks and mortar are gone. It has to be coaching and games development from now on. You have to make the games attractive for the youth of the country if we are to remain to the forefront.”

Two Waterford hurlers are about to transfer to neighbouring East Cork clubs for the coming year.

Tom Feeney, a Munster SHC medal winner in 2002 is set to switch his allegiance from Ballyduff Upper to the Glanmire based Sarsfields, while Lismore’s Sean ‘Growler’ Daly is likely to be wearing Erin’s Own colours.

Waterford county secretary Seamas Grant said that he hasn’t received a transfer application for either player, and could not comment further.

Feeney, a member of the Ballyduff club is employed in Cork with the EMC company in Ovens. Daly’s transfer to Erin’s Own is also understood to be at an advanced stage of negotiation. Ironically, Daly’s former Lismore team mate Sean Prendergast is training the club’s senior side in 2004.