COULD BARACK OBAMA be the man to sort out the GAA football championship? I hear he’s free soon.
Obama sat down with superstar podcaster Mark Maron last year for a chat that, while amiable, had the hint of an edge: specifically, whatever happened to all that hope and change stuff you used to go on about?
“The world’s complicated,” Obama responded, weary with experience.
“It turns out the trajectory of progress always happens in fits and starts, and you’ve got these big legacy systems that you’ve got to wrestle with and you’ve got to balance what you want and where you’re going with what is, and what has been.”
Sounds like he’s after Paraic Duffy’s job.
Mind you, he might find pushing laws past a contrary Republican Congress a piece of cake compared to changing the football championship. The Central Council proposal that will go in front of the GAA’s own democratic body next month certainly won’t do much on that score, even in the unlikely event that it passes the required two-thirds majority.
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In fact, the new proposal barely qualifies as ‘change’ at all. When the main headline from a restructuring plan is the creation of a new ‘shield’ competition for the country’s weakest teams, likely to draw measly attendances and even measlier column inches, you’d be forgiven for wondering what everyone was unhappy with in the first place.
Inequity
Well how about this for starters: the gross inequity of the lop-sided provincial championships; the interminable gaps between games in peak playing time, and the knock-on effect on club fixtures; the ludicrous four-month pre-season (for that is what the January competitions and the National League, taken together, actually are); the punishing imbalance between training and matches; the weeks of hammerings in the early rounds before the country’s best teams finally get briefly acquainted late, late in the summer.
How to solve these problems? Problems, what problems?
The guiding principles by which Central Council boiled down the myriad ideas they had been presented with were apparently as follows: the retention of the provincial championships, not adding any more fixtures to the calendar, and introducing a second tier competition. So essentially, two of the three principles for change were about not having any change at all, and the third was a change that nobody wants.
As Obama might testify, one of the problems of trying to please everyone is that you end up pleasing no-one.
GPA
Take the GPA. One wonders whether the Croke Park basement in which the players’ association is sequestered has a working internet connection, because the email sent upstairs marked “GPA Proposal for Football Championship” clearly got stuck in Dessie Farrell’s outbox.
Any trace of their scheme, featuring a Champions League-style format as approved by 31 of 32 county panels consulted, is conspicuous by its absence from the big solution. Oh, and the other thing they mentioned? NO BLOODY ‘B’ CHAMPIONSHIP PLEASE!
However there is a better explanation than dodgy WiFi for the GPA’s ideas being ignored. Like most of Obama’s big plans, theirs had no chance of getting through Congress.
And here’s the thing. The main reason why American politics is divided along partisan lines to the point where nothing can ever be really changed is that, at a certain point, some time in the middle of the last century, there emerged fundamental differences as to what the country was actually for.
One camp believed America was a vehicle for Christian, capitalist values, a land where a man pulled himself up by his bootstraps and didn’t want the government suckling his lazier and weaker compatriots. The other crowd saw America as a secular, liberal paradise, which took in huddled masses and gave them a hand up.
Schism
A similar schism exists in the GAA. On one side there is the traditional view of the voluntary community organisation, the very bedrock of Irish life, with a root in every parish that leads you all the way to the steps of the Hogan Stand on All-Ireland Sunday. On the other is the nascent commercial juggernaut, driving the country’s elite athletes to ever higher standards in every sphere of their sport.
These are fundamentally opposing worldviews, and as with the current football championship debate, the GAA is struggling to reconcile them.
How can you find a solution that keeps both camps happy? How can you preserve the provincial championships, tend to the concerns of the club player and keep a sense of folksy amateur charm while at the same time providing a fair, compelling competition that satisfies its quasi-professional players, increasingly sophisticated fan-base and ever-more influential sponsorship and broadcasting interests?
In his interview with Maron, Obama described government as captaining a ship. “You can’t turn 50 degrees, because societies don’t turn 50 degrees, democracies certainly don’t. But as long as they’re turning in the right direction and we’re making progress then government is working sort of the way it’s supposed to.”
For the GAA, the question is in which direction to turn?
Championship changes? No We Can't - Even Obama would struggle to lead reform in the GAA
COULD BARACK OBAMA be the man to sort out the GAA football championship? I hear he’s free soon.
Obama sat down with superstar podcaster Mark Maron last year for a chat that, while amiable, had the hint of an edge: specifically, whatever happened to all that hope and change stuff you used to go on about?
“The world’s complicated,” Obama responded, weary with experience.
“It turns out the trajectory of progress always happens in fits and starts, and you’ve got these big legacy systems that you’ve got to wrestle with and you’ve got to balance what you want and where you’re going with what is, and what has been.”
Sounds like he’s after Paraic Duffy’s job.
Mind you, he might find pushing laws past a contrary Republican Congress a piece of cake compared to changing the football championship. The Central Council proposal that will go in front of the GAA’s own democratic body next month certainly won’t do much on that score, even in the unlikely event that it passes the required two-thirds majority.
In fact, the new proposal barely qualifies as ‘change’ at all. When the main headline from a restructuring plan is the creation of a new ‘shield’ competition for the country’s weakest teams, likely to draw measly attendances and even measlier column inches, you’d be forgiven for wondering what everyone was unhappy with in the first place.
Inequity
Well how about this for starters: the gross inequity of the lop-sided provincial championships; the interminable gaps between games in peak playing time, and the knock-on effect on club fixtures; the ludicrous four-month pre-season (for that is what the January competitions and the National League, taken together, actually are); the punishing imbalance between training and matches; the weeks of hammerings in the early rounds before the country’s best teams finally get briefly acquainted late, late in the summer.
How to solve these problems? Problems, what problems?
The guiding principles by which Central Council boiled down the myriad ideas they had been presented with were apparently as follows: the retention of the provincial championships, not adding any more fixtures to the calendar, and introducing a second tier competition. So essentially, two of the three principles for change were about not having any change at all, and the third was a change that nobody wants.
As Obama might testify, one of the problems of trying to please everyone is that you end up pleasing no-one.
GPA
Take the GPA. One wonders whether the Croke Park basement in which the players’ association is sequestered has a working internet connection, because the email sent upstairs marked “GPA Proposal for Football Championship” clearly got stuck in Dessie Farrell’s outbox.
Any trace of their scheme, featuring a Champions League-style format as approved by 31 of 32 county panels consulted, is conspicuous by its absence from the big solution. Oh, and the other thing they mentioned? NO BLOODY ‘B’ CHAMPIONSHIP PLEASE!
And here’s the thing. The main reason why American politics is divided along partisan lines to the point where nothing can ever be really changed is that, at a certain point, some time in the middle of the last century, there emerged fundamental differences as to what the country was actually for.
One camp believed America was a vehicle for Christian, capitalist values, a land where a man pulled himself up by his bootstraps and didn’t want the government suckling his lazier and weaker compatriots. The other crowd saw America as a secular, liberal paradise, which took in huddled masses and gave them a hand up.
Schism
A similar schism exists in the GAA. On one side there is the traditional view of the voluntary community organisation, the very bedrock of Irish life, with a root in every parish that leads you all the way to the steps of the Hogan Stand on All-Ireland Sunday. On the other is the nascent commercial juggernaut, driving the country’s elite athletes to ever higher standards in every sphere of their sport.
These are fundamentally opposing worldviews, and as with the current football championship debate, the GAA is struggling to reconcile them.
How can you find a solution that keeps both camps happy? How can you preserve the provincial championships, tend to the concerns of the club player and keep a sense of folksy amateur charm while at the same time providing a fair, compelling competition that satisfies its quasi-professional players, increasingly sophisticated fan-base and ever-more influential sponsorship and broadcasting interests?
In his interview with Maron, Obama described government as captaining a ship. “You can’t turn 50 degrees, because societies don’t turn 50 degrees, democracies certainly don’t. But as long as they’re turning in the right direction and we’re making progress then government is working sort of the way it’s supposed to.”
For the GAA, the question is in which direction to turn?
‘He’s a massive competitor which fits in really well with AFL football’
Check out the 49 GAA games that TG4 will show between now and the championship
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