These days, the expertise and appliance of science expected at club level have increased exponentially, but so have the costs. One estimate suggests they run at €10 million in the club game, on top of the acknowledged €44 million for intercounty budgets.
The starting point for GAA president Jarlath Burns’s Amateur Status Review Committee was the steepling costs of paying managers, and if that’s an overly narrow focus for the broad subject of amateurism, the issue itself is seriously challenging.
An old solution to this problem has been floated – a prohibition on coaches working outside their own units, club and county. It is a nuclear option and of course, doesn’t remove the possibility of large sums of money continuing to change hands.
The report of the 1997 Amateur Status Committee considered this very remedy. Committee chair and former president Peter Quinn told this newspaper back in 2001 that there had been a vigorous discussion on the matter. He was commenting on a contemporary committee, established by president Seán McCague, to investigate “payments to managers and coaches”.
READ MORE
For Quinn, it wasn’t the efficacy of such a measure but its fairness that was at issue. “I think it would be financially effective,” he said at the time, “but it would also have the effect of discriminating against weaker counties.”
It is not difficult to understand that argument, even if over the past 50 years just two outside managers have won All-Irelands in football and in hurling – maybe four in the latter, depending how you categorise Dermot Healy’s input.
What we learned from Munster’s emphatic win over Leinster
At provincial level, which is the more realistic target for rising teams, counties with no history of success have always looked for outside help. Jim O’Hehir, father of pioneering broadcaster Micheál, was a trainer in the early decades of the 20th century. He had the double distinction of working with two of history’s biggest breakthrough teams, his native Clare’s first All-Ireland winners in 1914 and Leitrim’s first-time Connacht champions 13 years later.
Cavan All-Ireland winner Mick Higgins lent expertise to two other pioneering provincial wins, Longford’s in 1968 and working with player-manager Brian McEniff when Donegal took their first Ulster in 1972.
Modern examples abound. Only this summer, Louth bridged a 67-gap to their previous Leinster title under the management of Dublin’s Ger Brennan, now ensconced with his own county.
Westmeath, 20 years ago, won their first Leinster with the late Páidí Ó Sé in charge, a year after Mick O’Dwyer, who died earlier this year, had led Laois to the same title all of 57 years after their last one. Mayo men John Maughan and John O’Mahony, with the Clare and Leitrim footballers in 1992 and ’94, closed Munster and Connacht gaps of 75 and 67 years.
There is, therefore, no shortage of examples to back up Quinn’s contention that to deprive less successful counties of outside expertise would unfairly straitjacket their future ambitions.
He also recalled that, as is the case with the latest Amateur Status Review Committee (ASRC), the 1997 group had looked at authorising payment of managers and coaches. One of the reasons they declined the idea was that players would not be getting paid, whereas those in charge of them would be compensated.
During the years that have intervened, it has become obvious that players are probably the most open to managerial payments. They want their voluntary efforts on the training pitch and in matches to be directed by managers as good as can be secured.
The annual survey of the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) threw out two interesting and relevant findings in its snapshot of opinions among the intercounty playing cohort.
On the idea recently floated that intercounty managers should receive a contract or an all-in stipend, GPA members were unambiguously supportive: 75 per cent approved (34 in favour of a salary and 41 preferring the stipend).
Yet this did not appear to create a stampede in the direction of pay-for-play, as nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) indicated that they were “content with amateur status”.
The idea to restrict the movement of managers recently emerged from the National Games Development Committee. Chair Micheál Martin is at pains to place the suggestion in the context of the principle of self-sustainability for clubs in the 2022-2026 funding model for coaching and games development.
He also acknowledges that any such proposal will in all likelihood come from the ASRC but points out that it is equally intended to keep coaches within small clubs as opposed to prohibit outside help. In other words, it arises squarely in the “coach development framework”.
There are also plans for derogations and a phased introduction for small clubs particularly affected by a blanket ban.
The Towards 150th Anniversary report, which was never released by the GAA, had a stark solution for the problem, locally.
“At club level no payments will be made for playing, coaching, or team management. Those coaching/managing teams must already be, or become, a member of that club. In this context, coaching will incorporate skills development, fitness, tactics, injury prevention, strength and conditioning, and statistics, etc.”
The logic of these two positions is clear. Encourage and empower clubs to produce their own coaches, which is admirable, but even at club level different voices are sometimes better heard.
When Leitrim suggested in 1997 that managers be paid instead of players, the motion was lost despite then chair Des Quinn’s argument that outside expertise was needed to help teams to maximise limited resources. The motion was lost.
Nonetheless, Peter Quinn pithily sympathised with the need for outside assistance.
“I would accept that totally. In my own playing days, a team manager arrived from an outside county with a successful track record. He brought a bit of know-how and we won five championships. Our players were no better in 1969 than in ’68.”
