John Hynes reveals fears for Galway future

Galway GAA chief executive John Hynes has expressed “grave concern” for the future of Galway hurling unless the county’s minor and U21 teams are properly catered for.

The Galway County Board are currently preparing a submission for Central Council with a view to securing full integration into Leinster.

Galway officials were recently informed by Leinster hierarchy that the provincial council remains steadfast in its opposition to Galway’s minor and U21 teams joining the province and Hynes said this latest rejection has compelled them to take their grievances to the top table of Croke Park and make this a national issue.

“We are not going to be in dialogue with Leinster anymore because, quite frankly, it is going nowhere,” said Hynes.

“The time has come for us to front up and get this on the national agenda.”

The Galway minors had a training to games ratio of 70:1 this year and Hynes believes this worrying statistic will be repeated in the years ahead unless the county’s underage teams enter the respective competitions at an earlier stage than is presently the case — the minors enter at the All-Ireland quarter-final juncture, while the U21 team joins at the All-Ireland semi-final stage.

The decision to take their case to Central Council is also financially motivated as figures revealed at last week’s county board meeting show that of the €3.47m generated in gate receipts from Leinster SHC and Walsh Cup games involving Galway between 2009 and 2015, the county pocketed less than €130,000.

“This issue is secondary to securing more meaningful games for our minor and U21’s, but it has to be pointed out that we received only 4% of the total figure of gate receipts since we joined Leinster.

“We play an awful lot of games in Tullamore and 10% of the gate goes to the Offaly County Board under the heading ‘field grant’. The amount of money we are contributing to Offaly and Laois, because we do play in O’Moore Park too, is no doubt helping those counties develop and invest. We don’t have that luxury. We are not getting meaningful competitive games yet by competing in Leinster, we are swelling the coffers of Leinster Council and the counties whose venues we play at.”

The Galway chief executive accepts that 2017 is off the agenda with regard to Galway’s potential participation in the Leinster minor and U21 championships, but wants the matter put to bed long before 2018 rolls around.

“There will be All-Ireland U17 and U18 hurling competitions next year. We asked Leinster could we be accommodated in their provincial U17 championship but that was turned down.

“By us bringing this to national level, Central Council may recommend us to table a motion for Congress 2017 requesting that the Galway minors and U21s be accommodated in the Leinster championship. If that is what they recommend then that is something we will seriously consider doing. I think there needs to be a permanent solution and it may require changing the structure of the All-Ireland U21 and minor series’.

“Nobody in the county has been suggesting that we pull out of the Leinster championship completely and to hell with them, that anger hasn’t surfaced yet. But certainly, there is grave concern. Unless that concern is addressed, it could easily turn to anger.

“2018 is the year of change with minor dropping down to U17 and the U21 grade changing to U20. Our submission will be made next month and we are hoping 2018 will be our year of change too.”