On Gaelic Games:The director general's approach of trying to establish what the association wants before working out how best to give expression to this in the Official Guide is the most sensible, writes SEAN MORAN

THOROUGHLY COMMENDABLE as Páraic Duffy’s initiative on amateurism is, it also runs the danger of raising more issues than it addresses. Typically, the GAA director general simply believes it is no longer acceptable for the association to go pretending that amateur status is a core value and then routinely dishonouring it through the activities of its membership at all levels.

Duffy’s modus operandi has always tended to be that, if there is a problem, it should be considered and remedial action proposed and, if accepted, implemented without undue delay. At times this simply isn’t possible given the constraints of GAA governance.

For instance, the whole question of cynical, foul play overtly exercises the director general – and, to be fair, the overwhelming majority of delegates at last year’s congress – but because of the leisurely approach to the disciplinary crisis taken by the association’s management committee there will be no re-visiting of that issue at next month’s congress.

Similarly, whereas there was no doubting the zeal of his annual report in respect of the match bans issue, he all but accepted that it was likely to be next year before a simple and screamingly obvious reform could be floated.

Amateur status is, however, different. There are no quick fixes. Duffy’s approach of trying to establish what the association wants before working out how best to give expression to this in the Official Guide is the most sensible manner in which to tackle the issue.

The big problem is, first, that the GAA may not really know what it wants to do about amateurism, or, second, that if it does, that such a blueprint may be difficult to articulate.

It’s got to the stage where the issue has become as insidious as drug-assisted performance. Many clubs and administrators, whatever their scruples, simply feel that everyone else is paying their coach and that if they are to take off at the same starting line they need to do the same.

Even the – what you’d imagine are conservative – figures produced by the TV3 survey showed that five county board officials were sufficiently unfazed by the admission to tell the media privately that their managers were paid above the permitted rate.

Were everyone to agree that this shouldn’t be the case, there’d still be the suspicion that the whole shabby, under-the-table process would start again. There is also the issue of enforcement. If a third party is paying the money over, how does the GAA secure evidence of the transaction?

It’s not that such payments are illegal. Suggestions that there are tax-related reasons to maintain the status quo are improbable. Anyone taking money to coach teams is doing nothing wrong in the world at large and, as long as they declare their earnings, won’t run into any difficulty with the Revenue.

But as the authorities have far greater powers of search and access to personal financial details than Croke Park, it would be possible – and advisable – to keep your affairs in order without worrying unduly about the GAA ever finding out.

Shamateurism, which is the effective current state of affairs, is a hard process to reverse. Attempts to re-draw the boundaries have never worked. Money, like water, always finds a way. The reason this happens is that, despite the rules, members of the association are happy to breach them.

The GAA has always placed a notional value on its volunteerism, the idea that everyone contributes something to the association without getting any material recompense. But by the same token any time operational areas have been deemed to need full-time input – whether because of increasing workload or simply decreasing numbers of volunteers – the organisation has moved to provide that support.

Again boundaries are constantly re-drawn, from administrators to coaches. It may well be that managers will be the next group admitted to the fold.

Duffy’s references to the need to clarify the issue were non-directive, and whereas he would obviously be pleased were the association to close ranks and decide that the paying agenda had gone too far, it seems far more realistic that he’s looking at where the next line might effectively be placed.

The arguments for paying managers are well aired at this stage both from the perspective of the time and pressure involved in the positions and the beneficial impact a successful team can have on the promotion of the games in a given area.

How players would react is an unknown. From one perspective there wouldn’t be a difficulty. Teams want the best coaches and managers so that their own commitment can be optimised, and few balk at the idea of them being paid.

From another perspective, were that to become an approved procedure, something to which the manager became entitled under the rules of the Official Guide, it could change the atmosphere. In other words it’s a delicate ecosystem.

US journalist Andy Mendlowitz spent eight months here is 2005 and wrote an account of his impressions of Gaelic games’, Ireland’s Professional Amateurs: A Sports Season at Its Purest.

He mentions in the prologue that a couple of years previously he had descended into a state of ennui in relation to his favourite sports teams at home, having experienced the games in Ireland on a visit in 2002.

“Every once in a while I’d think about the Irish players, grown men who battle the daily tedium and soul-crushing days that we all go through. They show up bruised to work, put in a long day and then beat the crap out of each other for the honour of representing their people. In American pro sports, the players want a cheque.

“In the Irish sporting world, players want a jersey. No wonder the Irish people felt more of a connection with their sporting heroes than I did with mine. They lived in the same communities, shopped at the same places. There was an electric authenticity to their world.”

It’s an image of Gaelic games that nearly everyone admires. Preserving it through the stresses of an evolving organisation is a major challenge, but Páraic Duffy is correct to make the GAA face up to whatever future it decides it wants.