GAA: Jack O'Connorargues the GAA has a great product but it needs to sharpen up on the marketing front

After watching the FA Cup final on Saturday it struck me the GAA in general has a much better product on its hands than it realises. After half-time in the cup final it was noticeable large sections of the stands, especially in the corporate area, were still empty for 15 minutes after the game kicked off again. The first half had been so bad I imagined the seats' occupants were being forced at gunpoint to go back out and watch some more.

Whatever they were doing they were happy in the knowledge they weren't missing very much, from two teams full of superstars. It was dull stuff.

I was at my first live soccer game last October when myself, Aidan O'Mahony and Ger O'Keeffe paraded the Sam Maguire Cup at Old Trafford before the Manchester derby. We were in the company of a great Kerryman, Fr John Aherne. John has two passions, Manchester United and Kerry football, so it was a dream come true for him to bring the two together. The match itself was a damp squib though.

One thing that stood out for me though was the constant chanting by the supporters. I couldn't quite figure this out. The match was poor but the crowd kept up this non-stop noise. It struck me after a while there was so little action going on out on the field this was the only way fans had of keeping themselves occupied. They were entertaining themselves by insulting each other.

These chants are an amusing part and parcel of the game. I enjoyed the one I heard recently that the Spurs fans were singing to West Ham about their striker, Bobby Zamora, a former Spurs player. When you're up in row Z, and the ball hits your head That's Zamora, to the tune of That's Amore.

I had a similar feeling in Yankee Stadium, New York, a few times when I went to baseball matches. A game can last three hours or longer if it goes to extra innings but for the most part you sit drinking beer and eating hot dogs and chatting with no fear of missing too much action. Can you imagine wandering off to queue for beer and hot dogs in the middle of a hurling game? You could miss three goals and a good fight.

Where these games score heavily over us in the GAA though is in the area of marketing. The star players help sell the games. Look out at the front gardens or greens anywhere around Ireland and you see the influence TV has on youngsters. Be it rugby, tennis, soccer or whatever, if they are seeing it in a well-packaged glamorous way, they'll be out trying their hand at it.

The stars of the GAA are the ones who can really sell the game. The Colm Coopers, Henry Shefflins, Stephen O'Neills, Eoin Kellys, Kieran Donaghys and Alan Brogans, they are the ones that kids will look too. There has to be imaginative marketing of these stars, not just the usual business of bringing a player up to Croke Park before a match and taking pictures of him throwing a ball in the air while looking around with a stupid grin on his face.

Since Breaking Balldisappeared from the TV screens there have been no similar magazine programmes which take a different look at the lives of the star players. I don't know why that is. The Sunday Gameseems basically unchanged for decades now. Even pitchside interviews with managers after matches. I watch soccer on Sky and I see the manager talking direct to studio to the panel. I watch RTÉ and the managers are still giving two minutes to Marty and rushing off.

GAA president Nicky Brennan suggested a few weeks ago we all have an obligation to promote the GAA in some way. I know what Nicky means, I think at the time he was having a cut at Justin McCarthy for not going up to Croke Park before the hurling league final. Players and managers have huge demands on their time though. They'll promote the game if they get something out of it, especially when it comes to TV. Not just a few bob but the sense they are doing something different and something with impact.

To expect players to co-operate with the media on an open-ended basis is unrealistic. The days of there being just three national newspapers and RTÉ are long gone. There are local papers, local radio stations, a huge number of national papers and they are all looking for a piece of a star player's time. It's in our sports culture for players to say to themselves why take the chance on being set up in the newspaper on a Saturday or Sunday morning and have the article pinned in the opposition dressingroom for some fella in there to think he'll make a name for himself marking him. Most managers will be giving the same message. Lads, it's on Monday mornings we want you in the papers, not Saturdays or Sundays.

On the whole, a team is better off working with the media, spreading the load, making sure lads don't get saturation coverage. The lead has to come from Croke Park though with a drive to market and promote our star players in a more imaginative manner.

It runs through our approach to other aspects of the game. Look at the referee, the single most important individual on the pitch. He dictates what sort of game we are going to be watching. His primary concern has to be letting the game flow and therefore ensuring more entertainment for spectators and a better spectacle.

This is where common sense comes in to it. A smart referee isn't punishing every indiscretion or flashing cards willy nilly. His raison d'etre is to keep the game flowing. There are chances to put a bit of cur isteach on a fella when the ball goes dead and there are so many TV cameras at big games now very little escapes the electronic eyes.

A big part of the problem is the assessor up in the stand. It is virtually impossible for a referee to play his normal game if there is a fella ticking boxes on a clipboard. A referee needs common sense more than he needs a rule book. I had an experience recently where for the first time in 20 years a cigire came to watch me operate in the classroom. She sat in and watched me teach. I know one thing. My refereeing display was radically different from what it would normally be. Enough said!

From the way we approach press conferences to the way we let referees run the games we have to take the lesson from other codes. We have a great product but marketing is a huge part of the message.