Former GAA president fears that player payments could follow if managers are paid
Nicky Brennan has no issue with current GAA president Jarlath Burns debating the issue of paying managers but feels it could lead to Gaelic Games become unrecognisable in time
Former GAA president Nicky Brennan fears that payments to managers will lead to payment to players - and transform the association into a professional sport.
Brennan said he welcomed current president Jarlath Burns' recent highlighting of the issue, although the Kilkenny man admits he is not a fan of the proposal to issue contracts to managers.
Gaelic Players Association chief executive Tom Parsons said on Friday that the GPA would support such a move after a survey last year indicated that over 90% of players were in favour.
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"Well, I read what Tom Parsons said the other day and it's exactly what I would expect Tom to say," said Brennan. "He is leading a players' body and of course he's not going to turn around and say a manager shouldn't get paid.
"I'm expecting his bona fides in terms of the fact that players don't want to get paid. But I would caution that (by saying) if you want to pay the intercounty manager a sum of remuneration under contract, it could very well be the road to other people involved in playing the goal being remunerated as well.
"There's no call for it at the moment, I'm absolutely accepting the GPA's bona fides in that regard. But I do think that if it was to come in (for managers), of course it is going to open up the possibilities of it happening (for players) and then you have a very different GAA than the one we know today.
"It is going to become a big issue, of course it is. It's understandable that a player will say 'the guy who is dishing out the instructions is getting paid and I'm the guy putting in the heavy shift for the 60, 70 minutes', whatever it may be.
"And it will start creating a lot of discussions in that regard - and discussions that I would be uncomfortable with and it will lead to a very different association to what I grew up with and loved all my life."
Speaking on RTE, Brennan said the issue of paying managers was a "real concern" for the GAA at the moment. Burns was therefore right to highlight the issue, he accepted, but Brennan believes the issuing of contracts could be a step too far in terms of how they would be managed.
"The bottom line is that for intercounty teams this year, the overall cost was somewhere between €40m and €50m and that's a 100% increase from the time I was president of the GAA," he stated.
"It's an alarming figure that's causing horrendous problems for county boards to try and meet - and bear in mind what's happening in the club scene nowadays is mimicking what's happening in the county scene in terms of costs increasing.
"What's the impact going to be on club volunteers, because they're not going to stand around and see more and more people being paid and have the weekly club lotto being run simply for the purpose of paying those coming into the club to provide support facilities for the team.
"My own view is that I would be vehemently opposed to the payment of managers because it has a lot of implications for the association.
"To simplify the matter we have 32 counties by two teams in each county, and are the expectations and what's contained in the contract in terms of what's achievable and enforceable, can they be the same?
"There are multiple, multiple challenges there in terms of what would a contract look like and who is going to oversee the contracts, who has the capability of overseeing the contracts and have we the adequate HR skill set within the association to deal with termination of contracts.
"There is a multiplicity of challenges there, plus the fact that the team manager - we're talking about intercounty, first of all - is operating in an environment where plenty of professional people are assisting in providing support to the intercounty set-up."
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