Seán Moran: Inequality issue in the GAA not going away

This weekend the championship is upon us in earnest - Roscommon’s recent near-death experience in New York making this qualification less formulaic than usual.

If the narrative in hurling has perked up on the back of an exhilarating league final replay, partly because of the excitement but also because two historically less prominent counties, Clare and Waterford, were seen to be reaping the rewards of a lot of developmental work at under-age level, football is more anxious.

As Jim McGuinness pointed out in these pages that is because the shadow of Dublin looms over the championship. He also pointed out that the pessimism can be misplaced given that the champions aren't unbeatable but equally drew attention to a structural lack of fairness in the way they don't have to play away matches.

Next month's opening Leinster match against either Laois or Wicklow will see Dublin on the road for the first time in 10 years and only captain Stephen Cluxton has actually ever played a championship match in a venue that wasn't on Jones's Road.

There’s no intention here to retread the arguments in relation to this and how Leinster Council - in other words the counties in the province - give their assent to this every year but the issue of inequality is creating a dilemma for the GAA in the general administration of its games.

Dublin’s position within the association is the lightning conductor for this issue but lack of equality stretches farther than that.

It goes all the way to the genesis of the association. The genius of a national organisation based on a ripple of concentric allegiances from club to county to province has been one of the strengths of Gaelic games.

It creates local rivalries and distils them until two counties arrive in Croke Park in September.

The problem is that the constituent parts are so diverse that the same championship encompasses Dublin with a population of nearly 1.3 million and Leitrim with fewer than 32,000.

That Dublin now have established a juggernaut presence scares people because there is a belief that after 131 years the county is finally making its demographic (population and age profile) and economic advantages count. This is presumably why the domination of Kilkenny and Kerry in their respective championships never prompts the same level of foreboding.

Hurling is at least content that not everyone can play at the same table but in football the default attitude is unabashed optimism and to be fair a Division Four team can occasionally beat a Division One opponent even if that is generally more of a commentary on the latter than the former.

Pursuit of success comes at a price, however. The most recent figures for the cost of inter-county team preparation come in at €22,000,000 for 2015 - a record - and this is just what goes through the county board books. It takes no account of individuals or bodies who raise and donate money through non-official channels.

This outside involvement makes simple measures like capping the expenditure of county teams very difficult.

The GAA centrally in Croke Park is concerned. The question of how money is disbursed is already under review by a financial management committee. Its work is sometimes represented as a way of ‘equalising’ what counties get and by implication redistributing Dublin’s share in recognition of their commercial appeal.

Jim McGuinness also suggested revisiting the proposal of the 1997 Amateur Status report whereby a big national sponsorship would be sold by the GAA centrally and the money divided out.

This was strenuously opposed by the bigger counties, including unsurprisingly Cork and Dublin, and there were questions as to whether this approach would realise greater revenue than the sum total of local agreements given the incentive for units to make the best possible deal for themselves and work them to optimal effect.

The other concern is the expanding role of back-room teams in the bigger counties. These levels of expertise have to be largely bought in because there’s only so much time even the best-disposed voluntary professional can give but the levels of expenditure are jaw-dropping in supposedly amateur sports.

None of this would be a serious problem were the GAA simply charged with levelling the playing field for senior inter-county purposes but the association operates at two levels: one is organising the elite competitions whose revenues effectively bank-roll everything and the other is administering the activities and promotion of a massive, voluntary recreational organisation.

Dublin is the main population centre of the country and the biggest urban area with the highest-profile competing sports. In order to maximise the footprint of Gaelic games the county has to be well resourced. By doing that the GAA also assist in the strengthening of the county as competitive force.

Similarly, the structures of the championship since the introduction of the qualifiers 15 years ago have contributed to the emergence of a self perpetuating elite.

It’s the consensus view that the football championship only starts in August with the All-Ireland quarter-finals and the teams that progress that far gain experience at the top end of the competition as well as building up panel cohesion and residual fitness. Occasionally, different counties crash the party but the recidivist levels are highest among the familiar names.

Dublin have been to the last four of the championship for each of the past six years, Mayo for five, Kerry for four and Donegal for three - two-thirds of all semi-final places going to four counties.

Such levels of inequality have always been present within Gaelic games. The question now is will they continue to serve the association into the future?