Sky deal a very brave step for the GAA, says Whelahan

Brian Whelahan is no stranger to making history.

A legendary member of an Offaly side that thumbed its nose at tradition and a founding member of the Gaelic Players Association, he will be in the vanguard again when Offaly and Kilkenny front Sky’s first ever exclusively live GAA championship game on June 7.

Whelahan is braced for the extra attention the occasion will demand – before, during and after – and his opinions on the pros and cons with the decision to embrace Sky as a former GPA president were as interesting as the trip to Nowlan Park itself.

“It’s a very brave step for the GAA to take and they have to be commended for that. In three years’ time, we’ll be definitely able to answer that with a lot more authority but it has the capability of opening up a huge can of worms.”

And by ‘can of worms’, he meant what? “I mean it in a way that I don’t think we would have envisaged. I mean, from a player point of view and everything else like that. It depends on where Sky take it after this current term.”

Whelahan was fulsome in his praise for the work Sky has done in bigging up other sports, but it remains to be seen what fare the broadcasting giant has to work with when Offaly face their neighbours in four weekends’ time.

The injury-hit Faithful needed to beat Kerry in a play-off to avoid the drop to the league’s third tier although the update on the fitness of those players was encouraging at yesterday’s Leinster GAA championship launch. Rory Hanniffy is expected back shortly while Derek Morgan played for his club last weekend and, though other injuries were suffered in club ties, Whelahan is hopeful David Kenny will be the only absentee against Kilkenny.

In a county of Offaly’s slim resources, every player is precious and it was with that in mind last January when Whelahan pulled the plug on the proposed dual experiment in which up to half-a-dozen players were expected to take part. Shane Dooley, Dan Currams and Conor Mahon were among those expected to double up.

“We just found ourselves in a situation where, number one, it’s very hard to do the two and at one stage it could have been the bones of about six players overlapping,” said the former Hurler of the Year.

“Whatever about one or two, you just can’t have that amount trying to overlap. To be fair, at the time, we had quite a number of injuries so to have players divided in two on top of your injuries, it just wasn’t working out.”

Other issues are more deep-rooted. Whelahan spoke yesterday about the dearth of investment put into underage structures in Offaly and the lack of finance has also hurt the preparations of the senior footballers and hurlers.

The absence of suitable floodlit facilities in the county led to Whelahan seeking training bases in Laois and Tipperary while Emmet McDonald’s footballers had to utilise facilities in St Loman’s in Westmeath.

“We would be hoping over the next 12 months that we would have something in place to address that issue,” said Whelahan. “But at the end of the day we have to deal with what we have now and the position we’re in now, try to overcome that and prepare a team for Kilkenny and have a real good go.”