How Kildare ladies football reached breaking point
Kildare players celebrates after winning the 2023 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Intermediate Football Championship Final match between Clare and Kildare at Croke Park.
Sponsorship, marketing and money are at the centre of one of the most extraordinary breakups in ladies Gaelic football, following a week of mass resignations and deep recriminations.
Intermediate All-Ireland champions Kildare are still counting the cost of a divide across the organisation after all 11 members of the county’s LGFA Executive stood down last Wednesday.
An investigation by Examiner Sport has revealed that irreconcilable differences between players and administrators – including around the value of the ‘Brady Family Ham’ sponsorship - accelerated tensions to the point of breakdown in recent days.
The lack of detail around the Brady deal sits beside other key grievances, including the presentation of All-Ireland winning medals, and the distribution of a Government-funded €34k grant for team affairs.
A failure by both sides to meet and discuss the players budget added fuel to the fire of that broken relationship, causing last week’s highly damaging fallout which has seen a suspension of LGFA club games across the county.
A new Executive Committee will be voted in at the Kildare LGFA later this week.
How any new powerbrokers deal with the Brady contract, and the strong belief by the players that they should be informed on all financial matters, will determine the future relationship between players and administrators.
Such lack of joined-up thinking around financial matters was cited by the players in a letter to the Kildare LGFA as “a lack of collective thinking (and a) lack of transparency”.
For its part, the now ex-Executive insisted it would never reveal such commercially sensitive detail, indeed in a subsequent correspondence to the squad, reiterated its stance in a series of rebuttals.
In one written exchange the board insisted that the Brady Family Ham deal was a no-go, indeed that “sponsorship cannot be disclosed” – a point it reiterated five times, in consecutive paragraphs, as claims and counter-claims were traded.
Sources close to the Kildare committee say this is due to two reasons.
The first is a non-disclosure agreement between the meat processor and the county board, and secondly, the Brady deal is not exclusive to the senior team, rather it helps fund the entire organisation.
Someone aligned closely to the players insisted that the footballers are only looking for how such commercial income contributes to the overall senior squad costs, and the investment in team resources.
“They only want a fully accountable system which allows them to achieve the highest standards, knowing what the value of the Brady deal, would allow comfort in that they are getting the best value reinvested back into the team,” said the well-placed individual.
The budget for the current season is expected to sit at approximately €170-180k, and is line with the squad charter, or blueprint, on how the team is funded and operationally organised.
Some close to the former executive say that the issue of money centres on players and management expenses, a figure which we’re told has increased by 40% this year for management.
The squad, however, do not receive compensation for mileage or what they would see as close to the equivalent values as their male counterparts.
Relations had deteriorated so much recently that the players organised their own medals presentation banquet, for last year’s All-Ireland win – a season in which the side also won a National League Division 3 title and the Leinster Championship.
The footballers were unhappy that they were limited to a ‘plus-one’ on the night, and some wanted more invitations for extra friends and family – the Kildare LGFA believes that such a move would have been impossible to budget for.
The county board had held a banquet on the night the side won the All-Ireland last August at the Westgrove Hotel in Clane, and were said to be fully supportive of organising and paying for the second formal presentation night, but were then sidelined.
No members of the executive were invited to the medal awards event at the Kaedeen Hotel in Newbridge in early January, although sources close to the players say that the committee members were given the opportunity to purchase tickets and attend the event.
One person aligned to the County Board dismissed this and said: “The first the Executive found out about the event was on Facebook.”
Medals were presented on the night by captain of the 2016 All-Ireland winning team Aisling Holton – LGFA protocol dictates that a senior official should have made the presentation, but none were present.
The issue of money, and the Government Grant Scheme, which has increased this season from €10,000 in 2023 to €34,000, was the final tipping point in relations between both sides.
In a rare instance of agreement, both parties admit that there were major difficulties in even coming together to discuss the allocated budget and how it should be spent, with meetings cancelled, or rearranged, and one side (the players) not showing up.
The LGFA and the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) have been operating in an advisory capacity to both sides. When asked for its view, the LGFA would only say: “We’re aware of the current situation in Kildare. We expect that a new county board will be in place shortly and we look forward to that.”
While many clubs in the county were said to be supportive of the Executive committee, they are now gone, and how the new body will differ in tactics or appreciation of the players' concerns remains to be seen.
Certainly there is sympathy with both sides.
The now-departed volunteer executive were responsible for putting together a highly successful operation which has achieved full-senior LGFA status, a team which now sits on top of Division 2, with three wins from three.
The players and management, led by Diane O’Hora, will say they now want to insure that all the vital elements are in place to build on that success, by improving standards and resources across physio, S&C, nutrition and other high-performance areas.
Both sides, like all LGFA senior squads, operate on greatly lower budgets than their male counterparts.
A fresh management committee should certainly be good for all sides, but that will only last so long if the players concerns are not dealt with, and, if the players don’t accept their own responsibility for the escalation of the dispute.
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