Players back on agenda

GAA president Seán Kelly remains intent on re-structuring the GAA's official Players' Committee, despite the absence of any real movement on the matter for almost a year. The previous committee was made defunct with the start of Kelly's term as president last April, and plans to start up a new one on an election basis have failed to get off the ground.

Yesterday, however, Kelly said the plans were still alive, but he wasn't a whole lot closer to finalising exactly how the new committee will come about.

"As of now we still haven't made any decision," said Kelly. "Obviously we'd like to have more ongoing communication with current players, as distinct from people representing them. That's still what I want.

"So I'd still like to put some mechanism in place whereby they would have straight access to us, and we would have straight access to them."

Clearly Kelly has yet to figure out how to combine his plans with that of the GAA's unsanctioned Gaelic Players' Association (GPA), who for now have made player representation all their own, and who have refused to co-operate with any election. GPA chief executive Dessie Farrell has also stated on several occasions that the players' committee would remain independent and autonomous of Croke Park.

Farrell has also stated that he didn't envisage a situation where players could be members of both the GPA and Croke Park's Players' Committee. A motion passed at the GPA a.g.m. three years ago also resulted in members assigning their image rights to the association.

Originally Kelly intended holding elections for the new committee at the conclusions of last summer's championship. While it appears the plans have slipped further from his list of priorities since then, they aren't yet forgotten.

In a related matter, Kelly also addressed the recent decision by the Minster of Finance Charlie McGreevy to reject the GPA proposals to introduce tax allowances for inter-county players. The GAA, he said, would continue to pursue the matter despite that rejection.

"It is still something that the GAA would like to see happening, if it can be worked out, because it would be of good benefit to the players. So it will be on our agenda when we meet the Government next week. But I can see there might be difficulties working out an equitable system that would be tax compliant and so forth. So from that point of view it might still take some time."

Kelly said he was aware of what the GPA were proposing, believed to involve a flat tax credit of €2,000 to all senior county players, and arbitrated by the Irish Sports Council.

"Yes, I had a fair idea of what they were presenting," he added, "and they felt they had worked it out. Obviously the final arbitrators are the Government department and they obviously were 100 per cent happy that the thing was foolproof. But if the willingness is still there at political level I'm sure something can be worked out in due course.

"And even though Dessie Farrell mightn't agree, I think you need some kind of committee looking at this from both a GAA perspective and the Department of Finance perspective for a period of time before you can come up with something that is truly foolproof."