Power not pay the real issue, Nickey

AWAY for just one week, come home to turmoil. Scandal, revealed by GAA president Nickey Brennan, inter-county managers getting filthy lucre for doing what every proud and decent GAA person should be happy to do for nothing.

We’re on the road to perdition, surely — ah Nickey, where will it all end? When he was first announced as the new GAA president-elect, I had high hopes that Nickey Brennan would be the perfect man to succeed Seán Kelly — an energetic, modern reformer to continue where the talented Kerryman had left off.

Over several years, I had often come across Nickey, was impressed by him every time, by his efficiency, his professionalism, his recognition particularly of the important role played by the modern media.

I can’t say I’m very impressed by this though, nor by some of his other utterances since assuming office, his shot across the bows of the GPA within days of taking over an early example.

There is a problem with inter-county managers, but it’s not the one “exposed” by Nickey

Brennan. Does anyone really give a damn that these guys are getting paid? I don’t, not a whit. They are doing a hugely demanding job, one for which the vast majority will suffer constant abuse and deserve every penny they can get.

In fact I’d go further: I’d like to see it become official with full-time GAA managers at every level, with even greater responsibility for game development than they now have.

And here lies the real problem with inter-county managers.

Currently, all inter-county managers care about is winning, specifically their own team winning. Their focus is narrow, selfish, confined to the team in their charge. Everything outside that is increasingly irrelevant.

They have been hired for one job, to bring success to the county. To that end, they will look to hog the time of the best players in the county, they will look to have club games postponed so that the club scene is completely subsumed to what’s happening at the top level.

As their season starts to come to a head, those demands will become more and more strident — everything possible must be done to ensure inter-county success. Do I blame the inter-county managers for that? No, not at all. Whatever it takes to get the job done, that’s what the most ruthless will do, and in sport, it’s usually the most ruthless who succeed.

At fault here is the GAA itself, led by the man himself, Nickey Brennan. At fault are the individual county boards who allow these inter-county managers free rein. I’ve said this many times before, and will say it many times again, until someone actually listens — inter-county managers have far too much authority, far too much power.

There are no official parameters to which they must adhere, so they can call as many weekly training sessions as they like, start whenever they like and make as many demands on the top players as they like.

They can also put pressure on those players about playing or training with their clubs, they can put pressure on county boards about postponing whole rounds of championships, even about postponing the whole championship itself until their team has been eliminated from the All-Ireland series.

Last weekend we had the spectacle of county semi-finals and finals being played in bog-like conditions — why? Why does it take to mid October to play five or six rounds of championship hurling? It’s completely out of hand, and needs to be addressed now.

By whom? By Nickey Brennan, and by the other power-brokers in the GAA.

There is no doubt that the new qualifier system has added immensely to the profile of both hurling and football; no doubt that it has also saved teams from the absolute nonsense of training for six months only to find themselves gone from the championship after one match.

There’s no doubt either, however, that this new system has had a hugely adverse affect on the club scene, with more and more counties acceding to the pressure of the inter-county manager, postponing club fixtures.

There is a way to correct this — lay down markers for every county.

Every club in every county must have access to their own players, for training at least once a week, for every competitive game. This should be laid down by rule.

County training should be restricted, should only commence on a certain date, should be confined to a maximum of two sessions a week, increased perhaps to three on the week prior to a championship match.

By all means give players individual programmes, year-long if necessary — I’ve done this all my life anyway, never did me any harm. Along with all of this, mandate start and finish dates for all county championships; mandate also that a certain number of rounds must be played in the summer months.

This is the problem with inter-county managers, Nickey, not the fact that they’re getting paid.

The abuse Ger Loughnane will suffer if Galway don’t win an All-Ireland in the next couple of years, how much is that worth? The loss to his reputation if the risk he’s taking should fail? The loss of income in the meantime? The power of those managers is the real problem, the abuse of the clubs, the abuse of the players, club and county. Get with the programme, Nickey, and sort this out.