Duffy on mission to improve link with players
The GAA's new Director General Paraic Duffy takes his new seat of office at Croke Park
It was as close to an Oval Office as the GAA can aspire to and all the top generals in the war cabinet were assembled to welcome their new director-general.
The GAA's Management Committee well appointed meeting room, tucked away at the end of Hogan Stand at the confluence of the Hill 16 End, is Croke Park's hidden decorative jewel.
Solid walnut panelled walls, carpet to sink in and, in the middle, a bespoke boardroom table shaped in the outline of the GAA crest, triangular with blunted edges that allows a full line of vision to and from every speaker.
Some of the design ideas were apparently taken from the Dail Eireann Cabinet room that was one of Charlie Haughey's less enduring legacies to the seat of Government in the 1980s.
There Paraic Duffy took one of the chairs to one side of the impressive table that seated the other generals, like any self-effacing inter-county manager, declared that his next seven years would be about 'the team.'
Tribute
"It's like coming in to manage the Kilkenny hurlers after Brian Cody retired," quipped Duffy in tribute to his predecessor Liam Mulvihill who will have his desk cleared by February 1, succession day for the 56-year-old former principal of St MacCartan's College in Monaghan.
Keen to stress the importance of fostering team ethic among his staff Duffy nevertheless outlined how, by Congress in Sligo next April, he hoped to have a strategy document to cover the first three to five years of his reign.
"In terms of priorities the first one would be the development a national strategic plan where we outline our achievable aims over the next three or four years and have it ready for Congress in Sligo next April. I prefer setting short-term goals, I don't believe in 10 or 15 year plans. That will be a big process in itself," he suggested.
"It's not a question of me setting personal goals, it's a team thing. We'll develop a clear set of priorities," he added.
"There are issues around the development of hurling and urbanisation. There is a situation now where we have an increase in the number of large towns and how the GAA makes a presence in those areas. The challenge now is to consider developing bigger clubs or new clubs."
Later, away from the exposure that the aptly named Luke O'Toole Room (named after the association's secretary between 1901 and 1909) had given him Duffy outlined one of the association's major aims in the immediate future, a far better relationship between the GAA and its players.
As it stands Duffy insists that players and administrators just can't continue with the relationship that's there at present.
"We have this issue of the grants running at the moment but what I would hope is that if we got that put to bed, and hopefully that would happen soon, then we have to move on to a totally different relationship with our players.
"For the last five years it has been hanging over everybody. This is not blaming anybody but there has been a confrontational language and a series of events. It's not the kind of relationship I would want to see with our players.
"I would like to see us have the best player welfare service you can provide for amateur players. We tried to move towards a little bit of that this year and we would have tried to do more except we were stuck with this problem. I'm not blaming the GPA for that but because this has been there all the time we haven't made the progress I would have liked to make or, I'm sure, they would have liked to make. It hasn't been practical.
"But when this is over a different relationship has to develop between the GAA and its players. Now there will always be a gap between players and administration. That's the natural order, it's a generation thing. We're older than they are so it is partly that.
Firefighting
"I don't think that you have to go on forever in a spirit of confrontation where you are fire- fighting. You have to move on from that. There is responsibility on us but there is also a responsibility on players in that regard.
"Every incident can't become a big row up in lights. We have to get to a totally different relationship."
He recalled hearing from the AFL's chief executive Andrew Demetriou, one time head of the players union over there, at a recent meeting in Paris to resurrect the International Rules, how the relationship between the governing body and its players was on a firmer footing.
"He was making the point that he had a very good relationship with the players' body. I know it is a professional sport but they ask 'what do you want us to do'. And it's not a confrontational relationship. There may be confrontation or problems over contracts and money but that's not an issue.
"We have to accept, we in the GAA have to accept that there is going to be a players' body. You can't turn the clock back. The other side of the coin the players have to realise that the way forward is not to have an ongoing confrontational relationship with the governing body. My God it has to be possible for us to sit down and develop something that gives all of us a bit of peace and at the same time looks after the welfare of the players on an ongoing basis."
He admitted that situations like what has developed in Cork will happen "from time to time."
"We have to learn both at local and national level. We just can't go the way we are going. We are all part of the one family, we all claim we are part of it and it doesn't serve any of us well if we are going on year after year with rows. I believe that the GPA would want that as well. The players that play our game are committed members of the GAA. I don't think anyone wants an ongoing situation of conflict."
- Gaelic Games
