GALWAY, WHICH LAST year became the first county to spend more than €2 million on the preparation of their teams, has seen spending this season soar close to €2.5m.
But despite the spend of an extra €288,238 on Galway inter-county teams, the county still shows a profit of €367,430 for the year.
A total of €2,449,735 was spent on the six Galway teams, most of which was spent on Padraic Joyce’s senior footballers and Henry Shefflin’s senior hurlers. The breakdown of the spend will be presented to delegates at next Monday’s Galway annual convention.
The amount spent does not include €191,010 which was spent on a team holiday for the Galway senior footballers which they recently went on, in recognition of reaching last year’s All-Ireland final.
Galway chairman Paul Bellew, who has led a restructuring of the GAA in the county in the past few years, has consistently stated they will not skimp on funding their players, teams and facilities and increased funding will be found to finance them.
To that end, income in Galway in 2023 jumped by over €1.3m to €5,869,684. Expenditure has also increased by over €1.3m, leaving an overall profit of €367,430 which is down by €43,000 on last year’s surplus.
A big drive on fundraising — Galway are currently raffling a house — has led to a big rise in income and expenditure in this sector with the profits set to boost next year’s figures, while sponsorship increased from €700,613 to €824,594.
Gate receipts for club matches in Galway has again topped €1.1m during the year, while income from the live streaming of club games has jumped from €98,798 to €257,963.
And GAA GO still want more money
Still a few million off winning an all Ireland in either code if the lase couple of seasons is anything to go by.
@Ray Ridge: Beaten narrowly in football final 2 years ago. Won minor sand year. Not far off at all.
@Eamonn Maloney: Ah Stop they are light years behind Dublin and Kerry.
@Ray Ridge: Light years? The sides were level with : minutes left? Kerry got a very lucky free and pushed on. If that’s “ light years” I wouldn’t like to see your idea of a close game.
@Eamonn Maloney: That was 18 months ago.
@Ray Ridge: exactly. Not light years
Any chance they could spare a few grand of the 350k plus and put a bit of concrete on the walkway in front of the stand. A few showels of chips and puddles of water is totally unacceptable for a dual counties county stadium. It’s a disgrace actual the state pearse stadium is in.
@Ray Ridge: hopefully they are curtailing expenditure in Salthill in favour of Tuam Stadium.
@jim reddington: True. The best they could do at this stage is to tumble pearse stadium and develop tuam for football and possibly ballinasloe or athenry for hurling.
Volunteers will love this one, just pay the players and stop pretending its amateur, managers also. Is is just to try fool people they are doing something for the community they expect it for free ?
@Declan Gowran: True. Spare a thought for the idiot who’s driving 100 mile round trip after a hard day’s work just to wave a white a flag in the wind and rain at some under 14 b league game.
@Ray Ridge: and King Henry on a 100k a year, nice money for a totally inexperienced inter county coach
@tom o neill: and a penthouse suite in the Lough Rea hotel.
@Ray Ridge: Is he an eejit? Any more an eeji than the hundreds of thousands of volunteers in this country who mark pitches, train teams, cut grass, wash jerseys, fundraise and God knows what else. And not only in the Gaa.
@Bert Carolan: I could have used a better word for sure. I shouldn’t have used the word idiot.
@Ray Ridge: No harm done to be sure. I was that soldier for many years and called myself a lot worse.
Interesting that Idiot is perceived as toxic but eejit isn’t.