The GAA, a €20m 'amateur' game

Two years ago the GAA undertook research into payments to managers and players within the game. Sceptics might have argued that it was similar to putting turkeys in charge of Christmas, but the conclusion was pretty straight forward.

"The choice facing the Association in this respect is a very simple one: either we do nothing about a practice we dislike so much and continue to wring our hands and piously mutter our disapproval in the certain knowledge that nothing will change and that in five or ten years we will still be lamenting the damage to our ethos and values; or we decide that it would be defeatist and hypocritical not to confront directly a practice that those who care about the GAA know to be a blemish on the Association," read the conclusion.

The first approach seems to be the one adopted, yet the figures mentioned are significant.

If one was to assume that between football and hurling there are 20 paid managers and they average about €50,000 a head, it brings us to €1,000,000. A report last year suggested that under-the-counter payments to GAA managers around the country has been estimated to be a staggering €20 million.

"It’s a serious embarrassment to the GAA and it’s very hard to reconcile its amateur status with the small army of people that are getting paid around the country," McGee has said previously.

Sean Potts of the GPA has stated in the past that denial of payments is damaging to its reputation. The "elephant in the room" as he described it "needs to be out in the open and monitored".

Mick O'Dwyer, not surprisingly, is unhappy that for all the money swirling in the GAA coffers, only the players remain amateur.

"I can’t understand how you can call it an amateur sport when you have a certain amount of people being paid and have full-time jobs and then the players are about the only amateurs left in the game."

Not that this is to suggest that the players, certainly at the elite level of the GAA, are not being looked after to varying degrees. O'Dwyer admits that his star-studded Kerry side of the 70s and 80s were "paid" during training camps.

"We went into Killarney three weeks before a Munster final. We were paid while we were in there training and we were paid the wages we would have been getting as if we had been in the workforce. That was professionalism in its own right.”

Free cars and other commercial adventures are some of the well-deserved perks certain inter-county players receive, though it is far from a level playing field.

Colm O'Rourke received a huge reaction for his piece on the merits of the GPA for the club and lower-level inter-county player. The backlash seemed to ignore the fact that the gap between the haves and have-nots is growing rapidly and finances are clearly a major factor.

Travel expenses and player welfare are critical for the very people who provide so much entertainment and joy for their sporting endeavours. The lines continue to get blurred between expenses and outright payment and for the time being the biggest taboo subject in the GAA is set to continue.

Amateur indeed.