GAA to seek State aid to run 2021 All-Ireland championships

Counties have been told they will not receive as much financial support from the GAA as this year

GAA director of club, player and games administration Feargal McGill. File photo by Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

The GAA will again seek financial assistance from the Government to stage the All-Ireland championships in 2021.

As the Irish Examiner reported earlier this month, one of the conditions attached to the €15m grant from the State towards running this winter’s 2020 games was that it was “a once-off intervention”.

However, GAA director of club, player and games administration Feargal McGill is hopeful the social capital of the competitions that ran from October to this past weekend primarily through Level 4 Covid restrictions will show the Government made a sound investment.

With stringent crowd restrictions expected to remain for the first half of 2021 at least and the GAA on Friday agreeing to run All-Ireland senior football and hurling championship from the end of April to the middle of July, the GAA will be approaching the Government for aid.

McGill confirmed: “Look, we’ll have those conversations, we haven’t had them yet but obviously everyone in sport is looking for help — it’s not just the GAA at the moment. Down the road, I’ve no doubt those conversations will take place. I would hope people recognise the success the GAA championships were and the role they played in hopefully distracting people and giving them something to look forward to at the weekends.

Earlier this month, the GAA’s finance department had raised concerns about putting the county season before club in the new year and the impact of no gate receipts would have on the organisation’s coffers. Those sentiments were echoed by GAA director general Tom Ryan.

However, McGill said the GAA had “no option” but to go with county first. 

“We can’t play any club games at the moment, we’re not permitted to under the restrictions. So if you went with club before county, I mean we’re all living in the real world, it looks unlikely that there will be any positive change in restrictions in the first quarter of the year certainly so you’d be saying there will be no GAA activity at all in the first quarter of the year.

“At the moment, club teams can only train on a non-contact basis in pods of 15, you weren’t going to get them up to championship speed at that rate. But also you just get far greater quality time for clubs if you ran with county first. Because the inter-county game is gone, finished, over (in mid-July) nobody’s dipping into your training pool for the club team to take them off to the county, etc. So for all those reasons we decided we had no option but to go with county first because you’re probably doing the right thing by 450,000 (club players) people rather than by 2,000 people, it’s almost as simple as that.”

McGill accepts there is a major financial challenge presented to the GAA and counties have been told they will not receive as much financial support from Croke Park as this year. “I suppose this was approved with an asterisk from our finance committee etc, that we do have to go away and come back with a plan on how all this will be paid for.”