Croke Park remains silent on the thorny issue of Friday night games

By Kevin Egan

Last week we learned that a majority of intercounty footballers and hurlers, specifically 63% of them according to a GPA survey, would be in favour of Friday night intercounty matches, on the proviso that they are not required to take time off work, or that they would be compensated for taking time of work, in order to play the game.

Since it's highly unlikely there would ever be a throw-in time later than 8pm, that means players would have to be at the designated venue not long after 6pm. Therefore, there will always be at least a handful of players who would not be able to finish up work at 5pm and be where they need to be on time, regardless of the pairing and the venue.

So it’s fair to say this is another way of saying that players will play, if they are compensated for doing so. Which is a very radical departure from what most GAA members understand to be one of the foundational tenets of the association.

The deafening silence that has followed this revelation from Croke Park has been notable. Jarlath Burns has just a few months remaining in his role as President before he passes the baton to Derek Kent, so no doubt he’s not looking to make waves in advance of the changeover.

Still, the GAA is under Burns’ leadership today and considering that the Silverbridge club man canvassed for election on the basis of prioritising the amateur status of players, this would seem like an opportune time to show his ongoing commitment to that promise and that ethos.

None of this is to say that any players should be dragged against their will to Semple Stadium or the Athletic Grounds for a Friday night fixture. As someone who has never worked regular office hours, I’ve always held a little bit of resentment about how the entire association is built for nine-to-fivers, or in a lot of cases, nine-to-three workers. Still, as they also say about democracy as a system of governance, it’s a bad option, but it’s also better than all the alternatives. More people work office hours than any other time, so of course it’s natural to build games around that.

If the players do not want Friday night games, that should be the end of it, regardless of what RTE or TG4 might hope for. But the idea of compensating players for their time is so beyond the realm of acceptability that it should never have been asked, and doing so was either incredibly thoughtless (at best) or the act of a provocateur. Either way, Croke Park is letting every member down by refusing to make this clear.

Now it’s possible that if the question was directed specifically at players from counties in lower tier competitions - players who might appreciate getting on the national airwaves in a suitable fixture and out from under the shadow of big Sam Maguire and Liam MacCarthy fixtures - then there might be a different response.

In 2025, Offaly played both Laois and Kildare in the Tailteann Cup, while in next year’s Joe McDonagh Cup, there will be a series of Ulster derbies between Antrim, Down and Derry. Perhaps in the case of games like those, players might happily play at 8pm on a Friday night in O’Moore Park or Páirc Esler, just to get a bit of buzz and national interest around their game.

And again, if those players say no to a Friday night fixture, that should be the final answer – but it’s a very different question in that context than when it’s asked of a Kerry footballer or a Limerick hurler, who will be in the spotlight regardless of when his match happens.

There is no doubt that of late, the GPA feels particularly emboldened, happy to test the boundaries of what was and is acceptable. In general, we’ve entered a new era of world politics where it’s not about the accuracy of what you say, but the conviction with which you say it, and Tom Parsons declaring that these changes would not affect the GAA’ amateur status certainly falls into that bracket.

We’ll park for a moment the idea that if this principle was accepted, every prison officer, nurse, garda, farmer and plenty more would have a long invoice for all the games they played on Saturdays and Sundays, where they took time off from work.

We’ll also look past all those training camps in the sun that are par for the course with well-to-do counties these days, which also require time off work. Instead, we’ll try to knock on the head the core underlying principle that players foregoing their work to play ball is somehow a favour from them to the wider GAA public.

The GPA continues to consistently push the idea that the players are making immense sacrifices to play intercounty football, hurling and camogie, and that there should be some form of tangible recompense for those sacrifices. This mantra is repeated but it is players themselves, and indeed managers and various coaching assistants, who demand this extra effort. Absolutely, the demands that are expected of players are higher than ever before, but that’s an argument to reduce those demands, not for ordinary supporters and members to pay for them.

Equally, there’s no doubt that there is an element of hypocrisy in the fact that paid managers, coaches and specialists are now the norm, while players remain unpaid. But again, the problem is in the first part of that sentence, not the second. In some cases, the counter argument is easy to make. Physios, doctors, dieticians, sports psychologists, these are professionals who are being paid to support players, they’re not pursing their passion for dealing with damaged shoulders, calves and cerebrums.

With coaches and managers, it’s a murkier area and there’s no doubt that greater steps to eradicate the issue would be welcome, but even then, the whole theological debate falls back to one basic truth. Everybody involved in the GAA is involved because of their love for the games. Lotto ticket sellers don’t do what they do because they love asking people for €2; stewards don’t wake up every morning dreaming of a perfectly aligned row of cars in a field; children’s officers don’t do what they do because they love Garda vetting paperwork.

Every reader who is involved with Gaelic games, regardless of their role, is there because deep down, there are very few things in life more joyful than pulling on a pair of boots and going out to play a game of ball with your friends. And even if, like this reporter who has a big pot of cartilage and meniscus soup where my right knee should be, your playing days are over, you still want more and more people to feel that joy, particularly your own family, so you do what you can to facilitate the next generation.

The history, the community, the glory, all of that counts, and it’s all part of the happy cocktail. But ultimately, when you make a perfect contact and swing that ball over the bar; when you reach up into the sky and pull that ball in when you’re at the apex of your jump; or when you make a full length diving block and you look up from the ground to see your teammate picking up the break and starting a counter-attack - it’s the most beautiful feeling in the world, regardless of whether it’s a county senior-final or a Division Five league game.

But no matter how special those moments might be, we all have to work, we all have to live, we all have to be there for our families. Sometimes the sacrifices are worth it, sometimes they aren’t, and sometimes we can’t make them even if we wanted to. And when that happens, there shouldn’t be a playing colleague or a fan out there who would say anything other than “see you at the next game so”. That’s what amateurism means, in case Croke Park has forgotten.