Burns: GAA may have to swallow ‘bitter pill’

ARMAGH Central Council delegate Jarlath Burns has voiced his opposition to managers being paid but concedes the GAA might have to swallow the “unpalatable bitter pill” of remunerating them to restore the Association’s integrity.

The 1999 Ulster SFC winning captain was acknowledged in the discussion paper for his contributions to it by the document’s author GAA Director General Páraic Duffy.

Burns is concerned county boards will vote against paying managers even though they have no intention of practising what they preach. He believes the Association have reached the last resort in their attempts to address managers’ unregulated payments and reluctantly admits the GAA may have to remunerate bosses.

“I welcome the period of national reflection over the next few weeks, but my fear is we will go around the counties and it will turn out to be a competition to see who is the greatest Gael,” said Burns.

“The sort of stuff, ‘I’ve been involved in the GAA for 40 years and it would be a sad day to see managers being paid’.

“You can use all the clichés you want — the genie is out of the bottle, the horse has bolted, whatever.

“Look at the training ban. Counties voted in the closed season and what do they do but go off to train in those two months. My fear is that we will all come back and the overwhelming consensus will be that managers should be paid and we revert back to option one (doing nothing). We have to have integrity and deal with reality and dealing with reality might mean we have to concede a principle. At least it means we won’t be hypocritical.”

Burns believes a vote for option 2 by county boards — payment of fees and expenses to managers — would be “hypocrisy of the purest form”.

He said: “Talk to 95% of chairmen who are paying their manager and they can look you in the face and say they’re not being paid by the county board.

“That doesn’t mean they’re not getting paid. It means they’re not controlling their manager. Somebody else is.

Burns appreciates why option three — structuring the regulated payments of managers — is such a contentious one for GAA supporters.

Apart from challenging the amateur ethos, it asks county boards to fund the managers themselves.

“County committees have arrangements at the moment where they don’t have to know anything about the payment of managers. Under option three, they would have to pay.”

Burns’ preferred model under option three is “a structured modest recompense to managers overseen by Croke Park and county boards.

“We’re paying bloody well everybody else. Nobody boos the speed coach but he’s getting paid. Everybody boos the manager and wants rid of him. He’s the person who puts in all the hours.

“Regulating payments puts us back in control. In order to stop ourselves being hypocritical, the unpalatable bitter pill it is, I’d much rather pay them out of our funds than continue to be hypocrites.”

Meanwhile, Dublin chairman Andy Kettle fears the players could demand to be remunerated if managers are paid by the GAA.

“It’s a possibility. The best way to give an analogy is as a county chairman. I would not and never would look for payment for anything. I feel very strongly that if we as an organisation lost that love for the game the Association would not be the Association that it is today.”

Tyrone’s three-time All Star Philip Jordan said he can’t see how paying managers will help the GAA.

“If you’re asking someone to go outside their own club or county to manage a team it’s not realistic to think they’re doing it for free, but the GAA can’t find any way of policing it,” remarked Jordan, who retired from inter-county football last November.

Kildare footballer and the team’s GPA representative Ronan Sweeney takes a different view.

“Personally, I think it should be regularised. What’s the point in doing things under the table? If that’s the case why not just get everything out in the open?”