Grants issue casts far wider shadow
While the GAA ploughed its profits back into massive infrastructure (some ill-advised) and coaching projects, it chose to under-invest in its single biggest earner ? elite players
ELEVEN days ago an Irish international athlete was hurrying out the door of her Munster home when the bell rang and she opened it to two drug-testers.
She was rushing out to run a children's exercise class, an intermittent source of income for essentially a full-time athlete who is pursuing Olympic qualification.
Because she is still marginally below an agreed 'world standard' in her event -- and is too old to fall into the 'development' category -- she actually doesn't qualify for any individual grant from the Irish Sports Council (ISC).
But there were still two officials at her door asking her for a sample and, unless she wanted to risk becoming the next Christine Ohuruogu, she didn't dare tell them to 'p***' off with themselves.
This country's elite GAA players would never find themselves in that position because, like soccer and rugby players, they are only drug-tested after matches or at team training.
But that's not the only reason why athletes like her, and her federation, have it a lot harder than their Gaelic counterparts and why, ultimately, the GAA, not the government, should have forked out the cash to end their grants crisis that was eventually settled with a classic buck-passing 'Irish solution' this week.
This is a quality athlete, a former national champion who helped Ireland to a European team bronze medal in 2002. But few outside her sport would recognise her.
Unlike some GAA players she doesn't have any lucrative sponsorship deals or hopes of getting one because her sport does not get live weekly television or wall-to-wall media coverage. Neither is her federation in a position to bargain for extra funds because it can't command a decent audience for its once-a-year national championships.
Compared to the Big Three team sports (GAA, soccer and rugby), athletics has no 'gates' to speak of and, besides one or two outstanding examples, does not have a vast national network of club-houses and money-generating bars.
Hers is a sport, like so many others that, despite its international and Olympic status, is largely dependent on government funding.
Of course the reason the GAA is not similarly dependent is to the infinite credit of its incredible infrastructure, built by generation after generation of selfless volunteers.
But the GAA, remember, doesn't have a monopoly on brilliant volunteers. Every sport in Ireland, professional or amateur, is built on their sweat and unpaid toil.
The big difference for most of the so-called minority sports, from athletics to wheelchair basketball to surfing is that, unlike the big team sports, they do not have lucrative revenue streams.
'Ah, but yerrah don't they get great grants from the Sports Council?' is the refrain.
Oh yeah? Well just €2million in elite, individual grants was shared out between 250 Irish internationals from 18 sports in 2007.
They included the Irish canoeist who, despite already securing a place at the Beijing Olympics, regularly has to hold his temper and wield his own repair kit when his precious competition kayak emerges out of yet another airplane hold with a smashed-up hull.
Travelling is unavoidable for training and competition yet what was his ISC grant last year? €12,000.
Of course, he gets more grant aid than that because the ISC also gives federations separate lump sums to run their annual 'high performance' plans, which filters down to individuals.
A total of different sports got €5.24million between them last year, but that gets spread thinly.
Despite having four women on the Curtis Cup team in 2006, the Irish Ladies Golf Union got just €100,000 to fund all their 2007 international training programmes, from U18 to senior.
Contrast that with the GAA, an organisation that, three months ago, announced it was giving €38million to regional and club development projects over the next three years, a sum part generated by renting out Croke Park to other sports.
No one denies that the GAA is an awe-inspiring organisation to which this country is beholden, but they certainly had the money, if not the will, to sort out this grant issue themselves.
While their revenue has ballooned so, too, has their top players' frustrations.
Managers expect them to lead increasingly monastic lives and while they enjoy celebrity status -- with all the attendant public expectation and media intrusion - they enjoy none of professional sport's mega-buck rewards.
While the GAA ploughed its profits back into massive infrastructure (some ill-advised) and coaching projects, it chose to under-invest in its single biggest earner -- elite players -- and eventually those star attractions, these uber-confident cubs of a thrusting Celtic Tiger generation, got their claws out.
Truly innovative administrators could have second-guessed them.
They could have engineered the doubling of player expenses, funded a centralised hardship fund (especially for long-term injured) and employed a 'players' ombudsman' in Croke Park to deal sternly with county boards who didn't tow the line.
It could have easily been funded by Croke Park's new rental income and, after years of the GAA selling themselves short, jacking up the prices of sponsorship and tv deals.
None of these tactics would have endangered that damnable red herring called 'amateurism', which ultimately saw the GAA -- a cash-rich, independent sporting monolith -- getting the government to clean up their mess. That they did makes the politicians just as guilty in this classic piece of obfuscation which has used your taxes (not to mention your weekly Lottery spend) to bubble-wrap votes.
And to cap it all, the Irish Sports Council now have to intervene when they have far more needy sporting projects on which to spend their time, funding and expertise.
- Cliona Foley
