Mike Quirke: GAA’s silent majority let down once again by Congress

I’m not sure what has me more befuddled this week; trying to figure out the complexities of the potential make-up of our next government, or searching for the logic in the debris from GAA Congress 2016.

In the interest of conceptual clarity — sometimes lacking at Congress — I will endeavour to start at the beginning…

And the beginning of our association, in every sense, has always been about the club. It’s where you start and where you finish. We grow up being fed a staple diet of clichés and advertising slogans, that tell us club people are the lifeblood of the association. They are the grassroots. The first and most powerful unit of the GAA. Flick through any relevant GAA document and you’ll find that club players make up about 98% of our association’s playing population. That’s the equivalent of enough seats for a dictatorship in the Dáil, never mind a majority. No coalition required.

But here’s the kicker: Despite overwhelming numbers, club footballers and hurlers remain very much the silent majority, and have been for many years. Instead of dictating, or at least exerting some influence, on how the establishment functions, the 98% are completely voiceless within the current structures.

Club players are stuck in a broken system that has made them as inaudible as a church mouse at a rock concert. The logic used by county delegates not to provide a two-thirds majority to bring the All-Ireland finals forward just two weeks to alleviate some of that pressure on fixture makers just compounds that glaring inaudibility of the club player.

It wouldn’t have solved the myriad of problems suffered by the 98%, there is no magic wand, but it would surely have been interpreted as a gesture of goodwill. A beginning.

Chinese philosopher Laozi once said “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, and in declining to take that step, Congress 2016 has once again failed in its duty to recognise the perplexity of the club player, by not accepting that there is a distorted imbalance within our association. The passing of motion 7 on Saturday would have provided a clear signal there was at least an awareness and an appetite by the policy makers to effect a positive change.

By bringing the final dates forward, it would have an impact on the two competing counties obviously, but also you’d imagine, as a knock on, the quarter-finals and semi-finals would be played at an earlier stage also, spreading the benefit to more counties than just the two All-Ireland finalists.

Alas, with nearly 40% voting against it, it’s been shelved for now.

I’ve mentioned here before I respect the premise of the GPA, and I appreciate some of the great work they do for the players. But their remit focuses almost exclusively on the elite inter-county player and seeks to enable them to get the most out of their playing career and beyond. They cater for the top 2% of the association’s playing population.

Last weekend’s decision in Carlow has rubber-stamped a long held belief of mine, we desperately need an additional player’s representative body, or at the very least, a new, independent branch of the GPA whose only mandate is to fight for the needs of the ‘average joe’ club player. It can’t be left solely up to director general Padraic Duffy to keep carrying the fight.

A Cork delegate, arguing against the motion of bringing the All-Ireland finals forward, believed “we would be handing the month of September over to other sports”. Come on. Really? Using that logic, should we just push the finals back to October and take that month for inter-county games as well?

I appreciate Cork do more than most in terms of playing club championship games during the inter-county season and they feel squeezing it up will take away valuable dates for fixtures. But for the majority of counties, this is not the case. It wasn’t all that long ago remember, that Jim McGuinness shut down all club championship action in Donegal, until they won or were eliminated from the All-Ireland series.

I would venture something similar happens in the majority of counties competing in the latter stages of the All-Ireland series.

A great opportunity has been lost at this year’s Congress by failing to implement this amendment to the calendar. I would have thought that we were not handing September over to other sports, but instead giving it over to the supposed cornerstone of the organisation; the voiceless 98% — our club players who have been waiting for eight months to play meaningful ball.

Could we not have guaranteed them at least a month of firmer ground and dryer weather that we could have used to play 0ur club competitions in a more meaningful way, afforded the time and dignity they deserve, and not run off as an end-of-year blitz?

It would be fairer too on the inter-county footballer, who in some counties must play a provincial final or All-Ireland quarter-final and only days later finds themselves force fed back to their club to play a fixture that they may not be physically able for, or as motivated as they should be to compete in. Serving two masters is a difficult task.

The message I will ultimately take from Congress 2016, despite some positive reforms to the minor and Under-21 championships is club players desperately need to find a voice.

In fact, they need a megaphone, because at the moment, nobody’s listening.