Seán Moran: Policing amateurism in the modern GAA almost requires the skills of Elliott Ness

Jarlath Burns made an ambitious start to his presidency in February, setting out to tackle two of the GAA’s most persistently pressing concerns: the state of football and the future for amateur status.
They crashed into each other at the weekend’s Central Council meeting, as delegates pushed to reverse a seven-week-old decision to suspend preseason tournaments – setting a knee-jerk record for buyers’ remorse even by the GAA’s elevated standards.
It was hard to avoid the conclusion that the desire to practise whatever new rules are in force in 2025 was largely the sheep’s clothing for a more lupine desire to rake in some turnstile action, which made it a very clear money-versus-player welfare matter.
That the suspension just about survived will have sent a sobering message to the Gaelic Players Association.
Jim Gavin’s Football Review Committee has completed its initial work and, in a few weeks, will take its remedies to special congress. Already, the dictates of realpolitik are knocking bits off the proposals, with the four-point goal struck down and rumoured pressure on the two-pointers from outside the 40m arc.
It remains to be seen whether delegates at the end of November choose to respect the process or decide to launch interventions but, one way or the other, football will be trialling at least some proposed improvements next season.
Amateurism was always going to be the more intractable issue. The subject of amateur status pops up periodically to be raked over by committees and work groups – all of which have struggled to find lasting solutions.
Burns appointed the latest committee also in February and entrusted it to David Hassan, a long-suffering academic who has had two tours of duty as chair of the Standing Committee on Playing Rules.
Amateurism – or, more accurately, what breaches it – has evolved beyond the simplistic definition of payment. As the GAA discovered that it needed to recruit more and more operatives, administrators, coaches, etc, lines became blurred and players were eventually allowed to monetise aspects of their county careers.
Burns’s own view of the task facing his committee centred on the sustainability of intercounty activity and the vast sums being spent on preparing intercounty teams, estimated at about €40 million, but also on the challenges to player welfare.
As he said in his first press conference on taking office: “The key people here are the GPA, because the GPA have been telling us for years that there is an intolerable cardiovascular load on our county players, who all have to go to work in the morning and it’s impacting them. Forget about the costs; all the ESRI reports are telling us that as well.”
The president’s view that the GAA should start a conversation about paying managers on contract might appear counter-intuitive given that over-arching concern but it actually makes sense in that it is part of a long-running preoccupation with making managers accountable.
Not alone would it create a fixed cost for counties but the contract could also make demands as to how teams were prepared and accommodated within a county’s structure.
Although there hasn’t been a committee focused on amateur status for more than 25 years, there was a confrontation with the reality of managerial payments in 2012, when then director general Páraic Duffy produced a discussion document on the subject.
He asked the GAA to consider regularising the situation whereby managers were being remunerated, and he outlined three options: keep going as if nothing were happening; enforce the rules; or pay managers in a structured way.
Duffy made no recommendation between options two and three but asked that the association not choose the status quo. They didn’t – at least not openly – but opted for enforcement in the certain knowledge that nothing would be done about it.
The problem with the ostensibly above board solution of regularised payment is that inevitably, there would be the prospect of other money entering the equation through outside benefactors, and the idea that a contract would somehow make managers more biddable sounds fanciful.
The situation that prompted Duffy’s discussion document has deteriorated to the point where the issue is now also rampant at club level. In an interview on these pages earlier this month, Tim Healy, a member of Eugene McGee’s FRC more than a decade ago, estimated “conservatively” that managers were specifically costing the club game €10 million a year.
So, where does Hassan’s amateur status committee look for solutions?
Certainly, reducing the footprint of the season makes sense in that, theoretically, it should reduce the costs of preparation. Yet, information that goes beyond the anecdotal suggests that training windows and official start dates are being ignored up and down the country.
The GAA has previously been in this position where December was meant to be an off-season month with no activity. Then president Nickey Brennan frustratedly protested that they couldn’t police the situation in individual counties with torches, as abundant reports of noncompliance surfaced.
Given that within counties – as former president Liam O’Neill pointed out on RTÉ radio recently – the team manager is frequently better known and more influential than the county chair, appointing compliance officers to county boards would be futile.
Perhaps something could be done at provincial level to monitor the situation: keep an eye on training breaches, player welfare – the most vulnerable players are often the youngest and simply won’t speak out – and overall expenditure.
That a job spec like that of Elliott Ness may be necessary to police just one aspect of amateurism tells you all you need to know about the task facing Hassan’s committee.
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