‘The GAA wouldn’t have a pot to piss in if the players stood up to them’
In those early, firebrand days of the Gaelic Players Association, its founder O’Neill and chief executive Dessie Farrell organised a meeting with Nike in Dublin. The American sportswear giants’ executives’ reaction to the GAA was one of awe.
“They couldn’t believe what this organisation does and how they act. They were absolutely dumbfounded that they were getting away with it. They had the height of respect for the GAA but people in the sports business look from the outside in and wonder how they’re getting away with it.”
And still are, O’Neill maintains. After producing a series of documentaries on diet and nutrition, the Armagh native is still heavily involved in those areas and human performance. He takes the call in Slovenia where he is working on a project but he has never removed himself too far from the goings-on at home.
“On one hand, they’re saying players are amateur and all that, but they are not treating the organisation as anything but a commercial vehicle. The stadiums that have been built, it’s absolutely farcical. They’re like a charity with too much money; they don’t know where to put it.
“What can be built now? It just doesn’t stack up. If you want to be an amateur organisation, that is very easy to achieve, but the turnover will reduce, the amount of stadia being built around the country will reduce. They’re creating problems for themselves with the amount of money they are generating from what I can tell.”
O’Neill considers the move towards the Super 8 and the extra hurling championship games this year as the GAA expanding their commercial horizons. He marvels at the way they have managed to do it without outcry from players.
“The organisation is commercialising players as a product. I’d be a little bit disappointed that players aren’t getting more. It’s still not enough to make a difference to each and every player. If the organisation is saying they’re completely democratic, then that should apply to players across the board and a rising tide should apply to each and every one of them but that’s not what we’re seeing.”
He recognises the GAA’s 2016 deal with the GPA as having taken away players’ right to protest. More money will be made off their exploits and there isn’t much they can do through their union about it.
“It’s about containing the mass opinion and they’re very clever at that balancing act,” he says of the GAA. “The cute hoorism in the GAA is second to none. I don’t buy it for a minute. It’s like Coke introducing Diet Coke. Okay, it undercuts the sales of Coke a little bit but the overall bottom line improves. The GAA are subtly increasing the value of this product as they now refer to it.
“The issue hasn’t gone away and it won’t go away. The GAA has done a really good job in containing the GPA and that’s central to their strategy. Is the switch going to flick in the next couple of years? I don’t think so. I think you’ll see the situation that I’ve spoken about before where a team or teams will break away as factions. That’s the only way I see it moving forward.”
It’s an issue O’Neill has spoken before: a renegade team taking on the GAA. As featured in the recent RTÉ documentary on his career, Mick O’Dwyer did so when in charge of Kerry in 1982. Kerry were given £20,000 by Adidas to wear their gear and fined £500 by the GAA after being instructed not to wear it. “It was a good deal,” O’Dwyer smiled at the memory.
O’Neill couldn’t but admire his audacity and shrewdness and he can see history repeating itself.
It mightn’t necessarily be the Dublin footballers, though. “This Dublin team now certainly are comparable but it’s a different scenario. Dublin are loaded with money and I imagine those players don’t want for anything.
“I would just like to see the net spread wider. We presented an option for the GAA whereby sponsorship monies would be pooled and say six counties could be bundled together and sold to individual sponsors and you would get big sponsorship money for the weaker counties. They’re not doing that and they’re ending up with a Formula One structure where there is a handful at the top and the rest are just making up the numbers.
“It’s never going to change with the current system.”
But there is a chink in their armour, O’Neill believes. “Because they’ve written themselves into so many contracts, All-Ireland final day, Ulster final day, these are the days when change can happen and when there are so many legal obligations across the table that the GAA wouldn’t have a pot to piss in if the players stood up to them. Micko is the only one who has led the charge and that was over 30 years ago. If he did it today, it would be very interesting.”
Joe Brolly joined O’Neill in the early days of the GPA only to turn into the players’ body’s most vocal opponent. O’Neill has heard all of his rhetoric against the commercialisation of the GAA, including his stance on the recent Colm Cooper testimonial but isn’t all that convinced.
“Joe can lament all he wants about it but he’s not bringing forward any suggestions. He’s just saying this is wrong and that is wrong.
“All he’s doing is saying no but he doesn’t know what he is saying yes to. That’s the problem. Give me the solution.
“If you strip away and rationalise the sponsorship strategy of the GAA, you can very quickly get rid of a lot of the things Joe is talking about but nobody is doing it and Joe is not doing it. He is smart enough to know that if he sat down and stopped talking about championship structures and looked at the legal structures and the contracts that the GAA have tied themselves up in, that they are the real problem.”
The GAA do seem to be taking more matters into their own hands, though, with their growing GAAGo channel. It was something O’Neill envisaged years ago.
“I always believed that there should have been a GAA TV channel broadcasting club games and if they’re f***ing serious about it I want to see Killeavy play Crossmaglen in the league next week. I want to see club games.
"Don’t give me this bullshit that it’s all about the club and not give us any of your so-called product. If I’m a member of a club I’d expect to have free access to GAA TV. That has become a very cost-effective opportunity more so recently with the advances in technology that we have had.
"That’s not a particularly difficult thing to do and if they’re deadly serious under no circumstances should people in Tyrone not be able to see Tyrone in an All-Ireland final or semi-final as has happened.”
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