Brady dismay at club GAA pay culture

Former Mayo footballer David Brady has shone a light on the culture of paying managers at club level.

Brady has revealed that when previously contacted by interested club teams, the first question put to him was not what playing style he favoured or his preferred training methods, but rather what was his price.

GAA director general Tom Ryan’s annual report outlined how spending on inter-county teams reached €30m in 2019, an almost 12% rise on the previous year. To curb the year-on-year increase in team preparation spend, described as unsustainable by Ryan, the director general has proposed a cap on the amount of money each county can pump into their flagship teams.

Brady argues that such a cap continues to ignore the money being handed over to inter-county managers, which is not reflected in county board end-of-year accounts. He laments that the culture of paying managers is equally murky at club level.

“What we’re seeing being spent on county teams is not including the managers. So you’re going: ‘we have to cap everything else, but the managers are still getting paid’,” said Brady, pointing out the obvious paradox.

“I myself am not (a manager). I deliberately didn’t get into [club] management because I have a young family at the moment.

In a year or two’s time, yes, I’m going to go headlong into management. But the conversations I’ve had, sometimes the first question is: ‘What’s your fee? What do you expect?’

“And I’m going, Jesus Christ almighty, what about ‘tell me about your ethos, tell me about your structures’. I said: ‘Jeez, that’s the first question you ask me?’. And I know in the back of my mind during the conversation, he’s thinking: ‘How much is this guy going to cost? He’s talking a serious game’.

Brady said such conversations are taking place between club officials and potential managers “every single day of the week”.

A Sunday Times survey, published in December 2017, found coaches were commanding as much as €125 a session in certain counties. At the following year’s Congress, a motion from Clare club Wolfe Tones na Sionna to outlaw the practice of club’s hiring outside managers was comprehensively beaten.

On tackling the growing inter-county team spend, Brady recommends a slimming down of bloated backroom teams.

“If you have a manager coming in, the manager is going to more or less dictate the budget. Some managers will be told, and as the man says — they’re not the managers you really want. That’s being honest.

“Backroom teams are getting bigger, they’re getting better. I don’t necessarily agree that they’re all needed, though. There’s too many people involved in GAA now that are just happy to be seen to be involved, to be part of the backroom team or the front-room team or the side-room team.

“Sometimes, a little bit of independence should be handed back to the players. Everything is laid on for them now. OK, it’s nice to have everything laid on for you, from meals to gear to food, to diets, to lifestyle choices, and everything else.

“But it all comes at a cost. It’s sustainable until the revenue starts dropping. But are they going to drop? The rising tide lifts all boats and from a county board and team-spend perspective, everything seems to be increasing.”

Reflecting on Mayo’s many near-misses in recent years, Brady, an All-Ireland club winner with Ballina Stephenites, has questioned if key players were rushed back from injury too quickly.

“Probably the most long-term injury I can think of with Dublin is Stephen Cluxton now with his shoulder.

There’s been an absolutely monumental amount of players injured from Mayo. It’s the main players, it’s the consistency. You’re going, ‘right, it’s the mental turmoil of not winning an All-Ireland’. Are we asking these players to come back too quickly, too repeatedly year in, year out?

“Yes, at times, we are looking for the likes of Cillian O’Connor to carry us on his shoulder, but sometimes you need to say: ‘Is a year out the best thing for Cillian O’Connor?’ It mightn’t be the best thing for me as a manager, it mightn’t be the best thing for Mayo as a whole, but we’ve got to think of the person.

“Because it’s just a repetitive list, a conveyor belt of injuries, whether it’s Lee Keegan or Aidan O’Shea or Seamie O’Shea or Tom Parsons or Cillian O’Connor.

"Patrick Durcan has had his injuries, so too Donie Vaughan. You say to yourself: ‘Where is the common denominator? Are we pushing these players too much and pushing them back too quick?’”