Joe Brolly dubious about potential run at GAA presidency

Joe Brolly has been asked to consider running for the GAA presidency in the future — but is sceptical about being straight-jacketed in the role.

Following his kidney donation to a fellow club member in October 2012, the Derry man’s stances on a variety of topics such as the black card, payments to managers, Sky Sports and most recently player welfare have commanded widespread coverage.

His Opt For Life organ donation drive on both sides of the border has been fully endorsed by the GAA, one of a number of factors leading observers to suggest he is a viable presidential candidate in the coming years.

However, Brolly is concerned he wouldn’t have the freedom to fully express himself were he to seek the office of Uachtarán.

“I’m a freelance animal, really. Obviously, there’s been a huge response to anything I’ve done over the last three or four years. I’ve had a lot of communications from people saying: ‘You must do something bigger than this’.”

“In a way, the most important job I have is my U14s and U16s (with his club St Brigid’s). We have a lot of fun. Teaching them how to lob the keeper — that’s a lot of fun. We enjoy it.

“It’s very difficult to say because the political structure is very narrow and for me it’s very limiting because it’s requires political correctness and subservience.”

That said, Brolly is buoyed by the example set by former president Peter Quinn during the nineties.

“Peter Quinn was different. He’s an extraordinary, driven man. What he achieved in his life reads like a Boy’s Own comic. Also, he’s very plain-speaking and isn’t afraid.”

In tomorrow’s Examiner Sport Big Interview, Brolly responds to the criticism levelled at him from GAA director general Páraic Duffy, president Liam O’Neill and Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney following his recent “indentured slaves” remarks.

But he has been buoyed by the support he’s received for what he terms “stating the bleeding obvious”.

He says: “Humanitarianism interests me, grassroots movements interest me. We’ve all been reverentially mesmerised for too long by too many institutions in Irish life and I’m talking about the hierarchy. There’s nothing wrong with holding a hierarchy to standards.

“I love the GAA. I’m a passionate member of my club. I’ll passionately help out any club that wants help.

“Primarily, we’re a social and cultural movement. Sport is brilliant but it’s about neighbourliness, it’s about the collective, it’s about having a community and a society. I think to preserve that in the modern world you have to be radical.

“We should be educating our children from day one about what the GAA is. It’s not just a sport.”

Brolly has grown despondent with what he sees as the GAA’s embrace of commercialism.

“Increasingly, what’s coming down from the hierarchy is: ‘Let’s get a higher audience for the games’. Participation is secondary. This is what happened to rugby. Ginger McLoughlin in your paper (last week) spoke about it. “It’s now about elite and development squads, the rest don’t really matter. We’re now starting that at U14 level and it’s unregulated chaos and nothing has been done to deal with it.”

He is disillusioned at how the GAA’s leadership has addressed the challenges to the organisation’s amateur ethos.

“What are our principles? Paid managers, for example. The idea you could have a paid manager come in where he has no loyalty or allegiance. He now has the time and the resources to create a professional regime so that’s what he does.

“The players, well they just have to do it and players will do it. You’ve got a situation now where player after player, day after day, is saying we’re making career choices to suit football.”