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elite players must keep club links
By Eamonn O'Molloy
Give them their money but don’t let them become detatched from their
communities.
ON SATURDAY, my junior club went to the home of a senior club in our
county league and won by eight points.
You would imagine that might be a cause for celebration, for encouragement
but it was largely meaningless.
You see, of the three county seniors, one county U21 player and one county
junior in our opponents’ ranks, only one was playing, a man who
normally gets a number in the late 20s when our county manager dishes
out the jerseys.
So our hosts, while still disappointed to lose out to lowly-ranked opposition,
are probably not going to be plagued by insomnia this week over the outcome.
And while two league points are welcome however they come, it would probably
have been more beneficial in the long run for our lads to test themselves
against the best and lose by a point than it was to dish out a superficial
thrashing.
Of the 15 games we’ll play in that league, county players will be
available, by rule, for eight of them. But Saturday was one of those ‘available’
days and injury and recent and upcoming games robbed our opponents of
80 per cent of their players that operate at a higher level.
So it’s safe to assume that we’ll get through this league
with only a handful of opportunities to see a big name or two pitted against
us.
With the grants and sponsorship issues dominating headlines everywhere
(am I the only one sick of this?) there are those that would like to polarise
the debate, to insist that one is either on the side of Dessie Farrell
or Joe Brolly, of Donal O’Neill or Mark Conway.
The argument is not that clear-cut. A couple of grand expenses to county
players is not going to break the GAA’s amateur status.
Players are being painted in some quarters as big bad monsters trying
to rob the auld lad who lines the pitch and sweeps the floor, but that
simply isn’t the case.
Those sidelined county men were there on Saturday to lend their support;
if they get a couple of grand next year, it won’t suddenly mean
that they’ll be out test-driving Ferraris on a Saturday rather than
watching their mates.
They’re not like that. Playing for their clubs is at least as important
as playing for their counties to them. That’s why Tadhg Kennelly
has togged out for Listowel Emmets when he’s been home from Australia.
Colm Begley did the same for Stradbally last year. Donal Óg Cusack
trains Cloyne. Kieran McDonald is on the record as saying that playing
for Crossmolina is the most important thing to him.
Everywhere you look, you see examples of players whose club means just
as much to them as it does the man who cuts the pitch and trains the U8s.
The players are not at fault here. True amateurism was broken a long time
ago, around the time that we accepted sponsorship on jerseys and decided
to build corporate boxes.
We will go on with our Irish solutions to Irish problems and what harm?
Even Ian Paisley has realised by now that extreme fundamentalism is seldom
a realistic solution to major problems.
The GAA needs money to compete with other sports, to pay coaches, to build
stadiums, to capture young imaginations.
That involves getting into bed with corporate Ireland now and again —
and most of the time, the ends justify the means.
Anyone who is at least in the process of growing up realises this is not
a black-and-white world.
I’m not saying we need to scrap county training, demolish corporate
boxes and kick the Irish rugby team out of Croke Park.
But just because times change, doesn’t mean we have to lose all
that makes the GAA different.
It is sad but tolerable that we will get through a county league without
encountering many elite players; but we are on a road that could mean
that in 10 years time we will never play against them, even in championship.
That would be the real disaster, because it is the best players that inspire
you to love the games in the first place. You probably went to U10 training
to continue your fantasy that you really were Matt Connor or JBM.
The counter-argument is that kids pretend to be Robbie Keane or Lionel
Messi and that those players won’t be turning out in the Kildare
county league any time soon.
But that is the real beauty of the GAA: When we were growing up, we saw
our Lionel Messis, our heroes, on our local club pitch. Our Lionel Messi
taught us in school, came out to our summer camp and showed us how to
kick pass, roasted our uncle in the Dowling Cup, and made up for it by
presenting us with our U12 division Z medals.
So give the players their two or three grand — they are more than
worth it. If we play it right, such a move can strengthen, rather than
wound our organisation.
The real disaster would be to lose touch with them, to see them as (rightly
or wrongly) we see Robbie Keane, someone we have nothing in common with.
If we lose that bond, we’ve lost what really makes us different.
So let us have our roastings. we’ll all talk about the time our
uncle put our Lionel Messi on his arse with a shoulder, anyway, and never
mind the 1-8 he scored.ac |
