Kennelly reveals retirement fund talks with GAA

TADHG KENNELLY has approached the GAA about setting up a retirement fund for inter-county footballers and hurlers similar to that in operation by the Australian Football League.

The money for the Aussie Rules fund comes from the players’ association who themselves receive agreed payments from the AFL based on the league’s income from television rights.

As it currently stands, AUS$15,000 (€8,886.83) is put aside for AFL players for every season they play but the figure is based as a percentage of the league’s income and so has been rising steadily for years.

Kennelly explained in today’s Championship ‘09 All-Ireland SFC special: “If you play 10 years you get a lump sum of a $AUS150,000 (€88,874.52) payment when you are finished. Like, Darragh O Sé has played 15 years of football and it’s something you could do. No-one in Ireland would complain if you gave him 10 grand.

“It would still be far off what he has lost from playing the game. It is more of a thank you than anything else.”

Asked how the GAA reacted when such an initiative was put to them, Kennelly replied: “Not bad.”

But such a suggestion is likely to ruffle more than a few feathers at all levels of the association. The GAA is currently in negotiations with the GPA over official recognition and both have very different ideas on how the players’ body would be funded. Croke Park officials have already rejected the GPA’s proposal that they be guaranteed a fixed percentage of the GAA’s national annual commercial income.

Kennelly’s idea of a retirement fund would be interpreted as another step towards the erosion of the amateur ethos by some members – even pay-for-play in a different uniform.

“I don’t think the game itself will ever go professional,” said Kennelly. “Nor should it. I’ve seen the game the way it is set up in Australia. There is no loyalty.

“As long as players aren’t out of pocket because they are missing a Friday afternoon out of work, because they have to be here and there doing this and that. That’s the big thing.”

Kennelly has himself spent six years playing in the AFL with the Sydney Swans and will therefore be eligible to a tidy sum when he finally confirms his retirement from the oval ball code.

As it is, he is still a registered Swans player and speculation as to his intentions post-Sunday continue to circulate as he prepares for his first All-Ireland SFC final.

Sydney coach Paul Roos will be in Croke Park this weekend, along with a number of others from the Swans family, and he has continually declared that the door remains open to the Listowel man.

For now however, he has promised that the subject is out of bounds.

“I’ve made a commitment to myself and loosely to Tadhg, through his girlfriend, that it’s not something I’m going to bring up,” Roos said yesterday. “I want him to have a successful game and to really focus on his games and his dreams.

“If at some time in the future he wants to bring it up, I’m certainly happy to talk and see where he’s at and where his body is and what he’s thinking.”

Kennelly himself has been able to see the funny side of the speculation. Having spent seven years in Australia, where he was continually being questioned about a return to Ireland, the tables have certainly turned.

“No-one wants me,” he joked. “I think it’s stemming from Roosy being asked questions all year, about would he like to have me back and he has just been saying, ‘of course I’d love to him back if he made a phone call’.

“People in the media have been reading that wrong and saying I am going back. I have been in touch with Roosy probably once every two or three weeks because I’m ringing him about the team, about his family, asking ‘how are things with everyone over there’.

How Kerry fare on Sunday could colour his judgment but it is interesting that both Kennelly and Roos pinpointed his physical well-being when discussing any possible return to ‘footy’.

“If I went back playing AFL football, this year will have been a blessing for me because it’s given my body an opportunity to recover,” he said.

“The game itself is physically demanding. You play 22 games, every weekend, run between 20 and 25 kilometres a game and you are getting tackled. It takes you three or four days to get over a game. The next day you are in bits. I find it hard to walk to the car.

“I’ve got to think about that. Do I want to put my body through that again? My first seven, eight years were fantastic. Everything was rosy but then the last two years, everything just led on to another, which often happens with injuries.

“I didn’t enjoy my time then. In my last two-and-a-half years there I didn’t play a game better than 75% fit. It was very frustrating to play games like that. You know what you want to do but you can’t do it and that’s why this year has been a blessing. The demands of training all day every day are not there. The intensity of the training is very similar but the amount of it is less.”