Championship exits don’t save money,Galway treasurer claims

There is no saving to be made by county boards from one of their flagship teams exiting the All-Ireland championship as early as mid-June, Galway treasurer Mike Burke has claimed.

Galway’s unexpected departure from the race for Liam MacCarthy has guaranteed that the county’s overall team expenses bill for 2019 will fall well short of last year’s €1.84m total, which represented a 41% increase on the 2017 figure. But this does not mean good news where the end-of-year accounts are concerned, according to Burke, as fundraising efforts over the coming months will be hampered by Galway’s non-involvement across the remainder of the hurling summer.

The Galway County Board took in €860k last year through various fundraising initiatives, one of which was a car draw held the week of the All-Ireland hurling final. At €50 a ticket, clubs were rewarded with extra hurling final tickets when successfully returning a certain amount of ticket books for the car draw. Any such reward won’t be half as incentivising this summer.

“The more successful you are, the more money you spend, but, also, the easier it is to fundraise,” said Burke.

The reduced team expenses bill and the income from fundraising will balance each other out, but we must still plough ahead with our fundraising.

Clare were another county to exit the hurling championship last weekend, so board spend on their inter-county teams for 2019 will see a reduction on the €793,000 forked out last year. Again, though, no savings are expected, with Clare County Board chairman Joe Cooney forecasting a notable hit to their income from inter-county gate receipts.

At last December’s Waterford GAA convention, team expenses for 2018 were reported as having fallen by €100,000 compared with 2017, a decrease of 12%, largely owing to Waterford’s failure to emerge from the Munster SHC round-robin. With the Déise hurlers again failing to make the top three, there’ll be no substantial change to the cost of preparing their flagship teams.