Plenty of topics for debate as convention season looms

It’s the most wonderful time of the year - by which if course, we mean Convention and AGM season in the GAA; that time when administrators, visionaries, pedants, cranks and score-settlers all come into their own.

Round about now, secretaries and treasurers are flat out preparing to be scrutinised by those that have gone before them and also by those who would never dream of taking on a volunteer role themselves, but who certainly won’t be denied the chance to berate and castigate those who do shoulder that burden.

The news this week that the GAA is to discuss a report advising a change in the nature of underage games is one subject that will be discussed in club rooms all across the land, while the proposed new rule changes for both football and hurling should also feature prominently in meetings and conventions.

Outside of those, some of the topics raised will be reactive and current, others will be long-term issues. All too few, however, will involve really thinking outside the box.

In theory, the beauty of being part of an organisation that is supposedly about the promotion of Gaelic games, as opposed to revenue generation, is that there is the freedom to be imaginative. And the beauty of being part of a smaller county like Offaly is that it should be much more nimble and flexible than others.

This week, we're going to float a handful of topics that would make for wonderful conversation pieces at these meetings in the coming weeks, even if it’s probably wishful thinking in most cases to hope that they might find their way onto that many agendas.

It’s time to overhaul and reduce club U-20 action

The two Offaly U-20 football semi-finals will take place this weekend with St Rynagh’s making the long trip to Edenderry on Saturday, while Wheery play host to Clara at 12 noon on Sunday.

The discussion about where to accommodate these competitions on the calendar is an old one. It has plenty of lift still in it, however, because there is no good answer, it will always be the least-bad choice, while the plethora of walkovers that were given in this championship in 2026 will only turn up the volume on this debate.

But instead of going over and bad about where to fit these games in, the question that should be asked, is ‘who are these competitions for?’

It’s often cited that the players that need games are those who need the stepping stone from minor to adult games – but those are not the players that make this grade such a headache for fixture makers.

Some players struggle to balance club U-20 with school/college sporting commitments, then there are those players who are preparing to return to intercounty action, either at senior or U-20 level. None of these guys need club U-20 games to develop, so play a straight knockout by all means, but then why not be creative when it comes to finding a solution for those who do need something else to help them along?

And in the hunt for that solution, why be bound by the club system? For example, imagine a Winter League, where players sign up individually.

It could be open to all adult players who don’t have other teams to play for at this time of year, and panels can be created on roughly geographical lines, with games set in stone.

Forget about training, management teams, fixture changes. Just football and hurling, one game a week for five or six weeks, played in the spirit of five-a-side soccer, with a start time and a referee, and nothing else.

Official GAA social media app needed

Tech companies have some of the brightest and best people in the world working on their products and in the social media space, their stated commercial aim is to command your attention for as long as possible.

Once they have your focus, they will either sell it or manipulate it, but this is their specialty, trapping you in the quicksand of ‘doomscrolling’. Older readers of this paper who grew up in the days of newsprint, radio and TV, struggle to fight this – what chance do teenagers have?

Yet if you want immediate news, results, scores and information, there is nowhere else to go but into the waiting arms of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and their ilk.

Surely it’s time for Croke Park, out of concern for the mental health of members and supporters, to give people an option to get what they need elsewhere, in a social media app with no such agenda?

It would be entirely possible to create different channels; one for following the official channels of whatever clubs and counties you wish to follow, another for recognised and sanctioned news and content sources, another for resources for players and coaches, another for online personalities, and plenty more. Crucially, all of it would be completely free of the divisive and hateful content that the average “for you page” tries to foist upon us every time we pick up our phones.

It’s time to flush away the AI slop

There are no more PROs at county level, they’ve evolved into “Communications Officers”. At club level, the title remains the same but the role is very different from what it was. It’s now about social media updates, video clips, and nowhere near as much official communication or club notes for the local paper.

This column has the world of respect for volunteers in all of these roles, people who are pressed for time and want a handy fix, so it’s entirely forgivable that so many lean heavily on ChatGPT and other equivalents for those homogenous event posters and fixture announcements.

But by now they are so common that they blend into the landscape in the same way that used takeaway packaging blends into our roadside ditches and hedgerows. It’s unsightly, it’s ubiquitous, and as a result, we’ve trained our eyes to not notice it.

Look at our town centres, our shop fronts, our cultural and sporting diet. End stage capitalism eats variety and defecates sameness, and this is more of it. Irish people are among the most naturally artistic and creative in the world. We’re capable of better, and we should strive to be better.

Protect players from jubilation-induced madness

It’s hard to know what was more gruelling for the Mayo footballers in 2026; everything they went through to get themselves physically and mentally ready to end 75 years of hurt in Croke Park, or the subsequent celebratory odyssey that saw them bring the Sam Maguire Cup and all the joy that came with it all across Mayo, Ireland, America, and the world.

It is a testament to the character of those players that in the days, weeks and months that followed Tommy Conroy’s insurance point, there has been no credible report of any misbehaviour or a single misstep. They’ve been incredible ambassadors for their county and the GAA, even while being pulled from pillar to post.

Their behaviour has been so exemplary that it feels likely that they were prepared for it, and if so, that’s one more reason to admire Andy Moran’s setup, and this, every bit as much as his attacking press, should be replicated and emulated.

County final victory celebrations were rarely timid affairs in any era, but now, when everything can be recorded and when everything that’s said or done lives on forever, the risk of things going wrong is high. This was really put into focus when gardaí were called after a party in the west of Ireland two days after a county final win led to a person being hospitalised.

On a smaller scale, every year people involved in celebrations suffer long-lasting consequences from something that 30 years ago, would have been nothing more than a funny story that circulated inside the group, then got forgotten within a month. Surely this is something were a little bit of guidance would go a long way – not to try and push teams to be in bed by midnight on county final Sunday, but to ensure that the only hangover they have is one that can be managed with a couple of paracetamol tablets and a few litres of water the next day.