THE LAST POINT: When the split comes before integration

What was your big sports story of the past week? Shane Lowry’s domination of the Irish Open or VAR again making a mess of a seemingly open and shut case of off-side in the Manchester derby? Maybe your focus was that little bit more local, how the various teams fared in the Club Championship games over the weekend. Or perhaps, just perhaps, you were consumed by the almighty row that engulfed the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association when Mary McAleese detonated a bomb on the Integration process with her resignation last Tuesday!

Brendan Behan famously quipped that the first item on the agenda of any Irish organisation was to organise the split – Behan may have been referring to the Republican movement but in this case, the GAA, the LGFA and Camogie Association may be ahead of themselves with a public split in the ranks before they’ve formally integrated all three groups!

​Last week’s column touched on the issue of integration in a round-about way, not because I had any inkling of what was to come - the Observer was gone to the printers by the time Ireland’s former President announced her resignation and threw a can of petrol on the simmering fire that is integration - but because the conflation of Katie Taylor’s achievements with the idea of advancement of women’s sport in this country is both dangerously naive and ill-serving to the task in hand.

Hand on heart, I wasn’t even sure I’d cover this topic in this week’s column, not because of any fear of treading on the wrong toes or offending anyone but more from the notion that of all the column inches and opinions set forth on the airwaves over the past week, I’m not convinced I can bring anything to the table. And having read quite a bit about the row over the last, what I do know is hyperbole has gone into overdrive – the GAA will go bankrupt financing Ladies gaelic football and camogie inter-county teams; that the GAA’s decision to slow down the process of integration is a slap in the face to every female member of the Association who ever volunteered, washed jerseys, played gaelic games or even attended games and that, at its heart, misogyny is at the root of the current imbroglio.

For some, the GPA are the root cause of all problems with their demand for proper travelling expenses for LGFA & Camogie players. The Gaelic Players Association and the Women’s Gaelic Players’ Association merged in 2021, a year later the three Associations came together to set up a steering group to chart the road to amalgamation and I’ve often wondered if that campaign precipitated the rush to amalgamation? Lest anyone be in any doubt, I’m not anti the GPA – they do valuable work advocating for players but I never got the feeling that there was any great urgency to integration before then.

I’ve often wondered about the insistence that no player should be out of pocket to represent their county – on the face of it, all fine and dandy but when I think about it, I know of international athletes, donning the Irish vest at Olympic, World and European level, who don’t so much as get a farthing in financial support from the Government, as GAA players do via the grant scheme that has so elegantly moved the burden of players’ grants from the GAA and their County Boards to the Government? Are GAA players suffering financially any more than those sportspeople playing rugby, basketball, soccer, equestrian events, track & field, swimming or any one of a hundred different sports?

Integration is the way to go, if only for practical reasons – are there hurdles to be overcome, some pretty big ones that go to the core of governance, membership, playing and eligibility rules? Of course there are, to blithely say that they can all be solved down the road will lead all three associations into even bigger rows and bust-ups – better to have the tough discussions now, as frustrating as it must be for all involved hoping and praying for integration, than to have it all blow up in everyone’s faces with no framework on how to solve the problems.

Think I’m off my rocker – take the funding of inter-county teams, the hot-button issue of the day. There is a fascinating debate going on right down about the difference between equality of funding and equity of funding. Some want Ladies teams to get the same level of funding as their men’s team, others maintain that the level of funding being brought into the merger should be maintained, that is Ladies teams receive the same funding they currently get.

That’s not going down well in some quarters but there is a bigger problem – imagine being a Waterford footballer or Leitrim hurler, and I am just picking those two counties as pointed examples where one game is an absolute poor relation to the other, and seeing Ladies football teams receiving equal funding to the county’s hurling or football squads? The Deise footballers and Leitrim hurlers are no less dedicated – should they receive the same level of funding as their county’s hurlers and footballer teams, is that not equity of funding?

Safe to say the issue has got a fair airing over the past week and it is equally fair to say that GAA has coped most of the grief, certainly the LGFA & Camogie Association have escaped quite a bit of the flak. The mood in the national media and on social media is very much pro-integration but on the ground, if the conversations I’ve had over the weekend are anything to go, there is a simmering anger among rank and file GAA members about how the Association is being portrayed.

Mary McAleese’s decision to step down and launch a broadside at the GAA certainly brought light to the issue, something I’d normally think can only be for the better. As the days have passed, I’ve begun to wonder, has it done more damage than good, has it given more conservative elements in all three Associations the impetus to dig their heels in? Assigning blame isn’t going to serve any real purpose – the integration of all three Gaelic games associations is a no-brainer, it is certainly in the best interests of all three groups but it is no simple task either and if it takes a bit of time to achieve, Irish sport will be the better for it in the long run and that is the only thing we should consider.