There's little doubt the arguments outlined in favour of permitting payment to senior county managers are persuasive, writes SEÁN MORAN

THE MOST surprising thing about yesterday's finally released discussion paper, GAA Amateur Status and Payments to Team Managers, is that it took so long to see the light of day.

A comprehensive and thoughtful summary of the situation as it exists, director general Páraic Duffy’s document could have been stuck up on the association’s website 14 months ago and the organisation would now have discussed and formulated a stance on the subject. Instead there looks likely to be a bit of a stampede if the matter is to be resolved before president Christy Cooney leaves office in April but as the discussion document proposes a six-month timetable, the issue may well have to wait until the early months of Liam O’Neill’s term of office. Nonetheless better late than never and the whole question of amateurism will get a thorough airing before the GAA makes up its mind what its amended position – if any – will be.

The problem for Duffy and his forthright desire that the GAA’s policy and practice in relation to amateurism be at last reconciled is that many might be happy with the comfortable ambivalence of saying one thing and, if not in all cases doing another, at least turning a blind eye while others do so.

The mechanisms intended to monitor and enforce a crackdown on Rule 1.10 of the Official Guide, governing amateur status, which form option two in the document, can be deployed – as outlined by Duffy – to make sure the regulated payment of managers in option three is within regulation. But equally their bland acceptance and deft shelving could as easily lead by the back door to option one, the retention of a status quo, which Duffy and, you suspect, most of the voices likely to be raised in this debate will oppose.

There’s little doubt the arguments outlined in favour of permitting payment to senior county managers are persuasive. The time involved, the anomalous need to recruit and direct burgeoning back-room teams of paid specialists and the near-crushing responsibility for a team’s results in the eyes of an entire county all indicate an activity that stretches beyond the boundaries of volunteerism and recreation.

An area not touched on in the paper is the galvanising effect that good management can have on less successful counties. Promotional benefits for counties which win, for instance, a rare provincial title are considerable and help to maintain the faith during the barren times that inevitably follow. For the most part and by definition, that sort of expertise is not available within traditionally weaker counties.

Former GAA president Peter Quinn said the 1997 Amateur Status Subcommittee, which he chaired, had not proceeded with the idea of prohibiting outside managers as a brake on under-the-table payments on the very basis it would handicap the less successful counties to an even greater extent.

Given the importance and the demands of the role, Duffy says: “We must ask ourselves if it is either reasonable or realistic to expect that the person who fulfils this critical and time-consuming leadership can be expected to do so, on an entirely voluntary basis.”

Although the argument that county management is far more demanding than the same role at club level is for the most part sound, some will argue the point and maintain it’s possible for the GAA in clubs and their parishes to benefit in exactly the same way as counties do from inspirational management.

A more existential question is why the GAA gets itself so worked up over the question of amateurism, in whose increasingly broad shade Duffy believes his various options can equally function and the idea of it as a “core value”, as expressed by president Christy Cooney at last year’s congress, is debateable.

For more than 100 years the association has had such a large presence in the country that administering it on a voluntary basis became impossible. With the passage of time the GAA has had to professionalise many of its activities, from the administrative to those governing games development and coaching, as the pool of volunteers became insufficient to fulfil various functions. There is consequently a sizeable payroll cost in relation to running the association at all of its levels and a degree of professionalism required so that it can survive.

That doesn’t exclude the substantial amount of expertise that is made available to the GAA at no cost through its network of members and volunteers but that tends to be on a project-by-project basis, just as people continue to coach teams on a voluntary basis without necessarily wanting to be subject to the demands of intercounty management.

Is there a compelling reason why the ranks of the paid shouldn’t be extended to intercounty managers? Not really, given the train left the station a long time ago. Managers are being paid and will continue to be as long as counties – either officials or supporters – believe it is in their interest.

Money is like water in that it finds a way and Duffy acknowledges there is no guaranteed way of placing absolutely effective restrictions on cash changing hands but his proposals for a registration and audit committee to tighten controls on how counties deal with team management would at least make regulated governance more effective.

Yet ultimately this big question rebounds to the GAA itself, membership and officials. What do they want? Aside from debating the discussion paper and submitting proposals of their own, will the organisation stand over the decision ultimately made? Will county officers implement audit procedures, maintain closer scrutiny of supporters’ clubs and not turn a blind eye when a manager is being paid either above the maximum rate allowed or at all if the decision is to implement the current notional policy? Precedent suggests counties will continue to act in the interests of what is perceived as their teams’ best prospects of success rather than out of any attachment to policy or “core values”.

Of course the fourth option would be simply to delete rule 1.10, regulate what the GAA pays out through its units and simply regard other payments as a matter for consenting adults. In other words if there’s no table, under-the-table business is impossible.