Trouble in the fields. It takes a peculiar type of dust-up to make us sympathetic to the GAA. It's part of the national character, even among those who have lived their lives within the association, to take quiet satisfaction in seeing the GAA roughed up a little. This time, however, the GAA are completely in the right. The Gaelic Players Association (GPA) has picked a fight which is unnecessary and nasty and which threatens a part of our culture.
First. Nobody seriously objects to players with high profiles making a few ducats. In a good season the demands placed on the heroes in terms of training and media demands are different to those experienced by the rest of the association. Besides, there is no way to police the traffic. If a guy gets a job because he has a high profile in the GAA he benefits as surely as a player getting a brown envelope stuffed with cash benefits.
Second. There can be no difficulties, even though it smells bad, with inter-county players opting for a form of collective representation denied to other members of the GAA. There have been issues which such a collective voice could have dealt with effectively in the past. There will be again. Even in an association like the GAA, which suffers from an excess of democracy, it's still good to talk. The problem, though, has been with the character of the GPA itself. It thirsts for confrontation. The GAA is a slow-moving organisation, frustratingly slow, but it has been clear for some time that Croke Park recognises the needs of elite players.
Zapping Croke Park with a pre-emptive strike like last week's isn't the deed of a body determined to forge a happy working relationship with those who run the game. The Marlborough deal is an attempt to make the GAA lie down before the will of some of its own star names and suggests an intent to gain influence further down the line over the manner in which the GAA gathers and disburses its revenues. For £50,000, Marlborough have bought a lot of cheap publicity and put nothing into the game.
The GPA aren't asking what they can do for the game, they are demanding to know what the game can do for them. They want answers and cash quickly. The GAA proposal, asking players benefiting from endorsement deals to put half the money back into the very association which gives them their prominence is reasonable and in keeping with the way the association must operate if it is to survive. The stars whom the GAA (and media) might create would be rewarded and would at the same time provide trickledown compensation for those in the association whose contribution is of equal value but whose opportunities for profit are less.
It must be this way. If the GAA is to be filled with people asking "where's mine", it will die within a decade. The GPA has been about brashness and stunts, though. Its appeal (beyond the playing population) is to that strain in Irish society which loves to see the GAA getting a bloody nose.
The GAA for all its faults is a unique and beautiful concept. No paid scouts find the stars. Overworked teachers and enthusiastic mentors hone them and care for them and hope they might play county one day because playing county was the purest reward for steadfast love of the game. And although it often seems that way, the relationship between players and the GAA authorities is not an Us and Them situation. Everyone shares at least one love.
Those who make fond comparisons between English soccer players asserting their rights in the 1950s and '60s and the GAA stars of today reaching for a slice, are wrong. Nobody was exploiting the GAA player. The GAA player was contributing to the welfare of the association which nurtured him.
The GPA could have made a constructive contribution within that tradition. Instead good men are missing the point. The childish attempt to gatecrash the GAA congress last spring embarrassed the very people the GPA should be seeking to work with.
So let's make it clear. No chimes of freedom were being struck last week. It would be disingenuous of anyone in the GPA to claim there aren't already considerable perks that come with being a high-profile GAA player. Nobody was liberated last week. The Marlborough men are not a Schindler's List, walking blinking into the daylight. Nor is this a situation of employers, workers and scabs. The more the stars take for themselves, the greater the threat to the organisation. The GAA can't survive in Rupert Murdoch land. Pretending it is there already, and therefore ripe for plucking, is dishonest. This is a co-operative which is being busted by greed. This is confrontation as a first step.
What's gone wrong? If the weight of obligation to training and matches and big-time pressure and the other things which we as kids dreamt of, is so great, then retire. Lay down the burden, nobody will blame you. Play rugby, play soccer, play with your kids. If your family want for your company, or your boss wants for your time, well give it to them. Hurling and football are only games and there are more people who depend on them for their enjoyment than you. If the pressure on you is such that £4,000 will make it disappear, like hey presto, well it's something else that was ailing you.
Croke Park doesn't fill up because of stars. People come because of tradition, they come because big GAA games are an expression of our community, they come because they love the sport and the sense of place that goes with it. They come because of the accessibility of the players. It's a gathering, an event, a marking of time. It's continuity.
The GPA showed last week how big they are. Players we all like and admire flexed their muscles. One hopes that reconciliation will be made before the GAA shows the GPA how big it is. A contract with Marlborough isn't a contract which guarantees you'll ever play inter-county again.
That would be ugly. A dark time for the last great amateur sports organisation on earth. There is a feeling that the next move is the GAA's. Wrong. It should be the GPA that moves next. Otherwise we have a fight nobody can win.
Welcome to Marlborough Country.