The success of Martin Clarke after his move to Aussie R ules has put even more pressure on the GAA, writes Seán Moran
An indication of Martin Clarke's confidence in his first season with AFL club Collingwood wasn't so much the record time in which he completed his graduation from rookie to the senior list or the outstanding impact he made but the fact that after six months the former Down footballer wanted to know why he wasn't getting picked for the seniors.
Clarke's performances have fuelled in a fairly high-octane fashion the interest among AFL clubs in Gaelic footballers. Whereas Tadhg Kennelly, now a stellar presence in the Rules game, took a while to graduate to the senior list, more recent recruits like Clarke and Laois's Colm Begley have slashed the preparatory time from years to months.
Increasingly players with senior intercounty experience are also being invited to make the adjustment. Cork's Michael Shields played in last September's All-Ireland final and captained the county to the under-21 title last May.
The migration has caused anxiety and anger within the GAA at what has obviously become a targeting of elite young players, who would have been seen as the future of their own counties at senior level.
Mayo's Pearse Hanley is an example and manager John O'Mahony says the county is at a stage of the development cycle, starting to rebuild, where emerging talent is especially important.
"He is a loss, particularly for a team in transition like Mayo. He's a fine young footballer, who's captained the minors and played for the under-21s. He was obviously a senior player for the future and had just been blooded. He'd definitely have been a first-choice championship player for 2008 and there's not many young players you can say that about in January."
There is of course nothing that an amateur organisation can do when promising players are offered a contract and a chance to become full-time sportsmen. "You just have to accept it and wish him the very best of luck," says O'Mahony.
The evolution of Australian Rules football - its "Gaelicisation" in the words of Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse - is seen as one reason Irish players have started to make an accelerated impact but according to Pat Daly, the GAA's head of games, there are other factors involved, including lifestyle and improved training techniques within Gaelic games.
"Young people travel a lot now and generally want to get the travel bug out of their systems. From a sporting point of view there are attractions. They can operate in a more regulated environment with six to eight weeks of a close season, a proper pre-season period and only have to cope with the demands of one team. They don't have multiple team involvements or overlapping competitions.
"PLAYERS ARE ALSO better prepared. Modern training uses the ball to develop them both physically and psychologically, which makes them better able to adapt. Aussie Rules has changed as well. It no longer depends on sheer physicality to the same extent as it did 10 or 20 years ago."
There is also the perspective of a player such as Brendan Murphy. Captain of the first Carlow minor team to reach a Leinster final last summer, he was trialled and signed by Sydney Swans, Tadhg Kennelly's club.
Whatever about the football options open to someone like his club-mate, Murphy would have known that he was unlikely to be sacrificing a clutch of All-Ireland medals to pursue his new career.
"In real terms," says O'Mahony with heroic understatement, "the perception - to put it mildly - would be that Carlow aren't going to win an All-Ireland in the next few years. You can say that Tadhg Kennelly would have had three or four All-Ireland medals if he hadn't gone but Kerry can live with that.
"Teams, however, like ourselves, Down and Armagh (who have seen the hugely promising Kevin Dyas also sign for Collingwood) feel the loss of talented young players because if we're going to win we need all hands on the pump."
O'Mahony is also surprised at how little money comparatively there is in the Australian game, where rookie contracts come in at around €20,000 and even basic senior contracts depend on match appearances to register significant improvement on that figure.
"People might feel that players are signing up for something like the Premier League but even if you make it as a full-time professional the money isn't sufficient to retire on so at the end of a career a player is still looking for work and in need of a career when it finishes," he says.
In Australia the view of the Irish invasion is that while it is sufficiently noticeable to excite media interest it is only part of a growing phenomenon that has seen the AFL attract elite youngsters from a variety of sports.
"THE TREND IS increasing over the last couple of years of players coming in cold from other sports and scholarships have been organised for them, similar to those that are available for players with GAA backgrounds. Volleyballers, basketballers and even elite soccer players are breaking on to AFL lists," according to AFL spokesperson Patrick Keane.
"There's been a long-standing discussion as to the number of elite cricketers that are being drafted. Members of state squads have been signed up and the father of one of them, a well-known former player, has said football offered his son a better career path.
"Kieren Jack, who's on Sydney's books - his father (Garry Jack) is a Hall of Famer in rugby league but he's breaking through on to the Swans' list."
There is irony in the fact that increasingly demanding standards in Gaelic Games might well be creating the environment in which the Australian game has become both more accessible and more attractive to young Irish footballers.
In other words, players who face rigorous training schedules at the elite tier of an amateur sport are open to the option of focusing exclusively on their sports career and becoming full-time athletes in a country into which it is comparatively easy to integrate and which offers a particularly attractive lifestyle to young people.
