Talking Balls Issue 34 - Well Informed Ignorance
Talking BallsThis Advent season… deck Squareball with boughs of holly…
Yes, with all this chat about the Advent of grants before the 1 December, we thought we’d introduce you to our own exclusive Squareball Christmas giveaway. Talking Balls recognises all your support for us and the mother ship Squareball all year so in the season of Peace, Love and the GPA we prove that we can be as generous as the next man.
We are giving a 15% discount to all Talking balls readers, on top of the free postage and packing! The offer ends 16th December and our special discount code for you is GPAP!
That’s right GPAP - Gaelic Players Aren’t Paid.
This week’s Talking Balls shows we’ve been thinkin’ long and hard about the Gaelic and Athletic, we have written in honour of the birth of the new enfant terrible at this time of nativity - the paid GAA player. When you start dreaming about it you know you’ve got problems.
If you’re getting paid for something you love doing, you must be in a county squad. For everyone else there’s always Talking Balls.
There’s Me in the Mental of FUNdaMentalism
I dreamt a dream the other night
… and I couldn’t sleep a wink,
my heart was palpitatin’
the sweat had soaked me sheet…
I dreamt Nicky Brennan was down in Croker,
with a load of wee school weans,
they had won a prize in the Examiner
to visit headquarters for the day.
They went through the famous dressing rooms,
the museum and the pitch,
they climbed the steps of the Hogan
and dreamed of returning there one day.
He took them up to Elvery’s for a souvenir or two,
that’s when it all went pear shaped
and now we’re in the stew. . .
Nick lifted up the official toy, Rua is its name,
he grabbed one from Armagh, one from Cork
and the Dubs’ Rua completed the game.
‘Such a holy trinity’ says Nicky to his shame,
‘they should have called these fellas,
Geezer, Donal Óg and Dessie, instead of Rua
- sure what’s in a name?’
Well one of the youngsters travelled home to Cork
and touted on old Nick,
he was Donal Og’s young nephew,
and he thought an Uachtarain had blasphemed the man
with the boat-varnished-hurley-stick.
The GPA convened to meet, enough was just enough,
image rights were on the agenda,
and a strike was not a bluff.
Who did Nickey think he was, to be
giving names without negotiations too,
these image rights are important
just ask Sony Playstation 2?
Players have their images, to think about you know,
they can shift a case of Energise
and Paddy Power knows the score,
Corona Beer and Opel, Halifax finances too
- the list gets ever more.
The odd appearance fee’s a handy one
for the Christmas shoppin’ too,
especially if yer wan indoors has a fetish
that needs lookin’ after by you. But use
the players’ names on that oul Rua thing,
sure the haircolouring wouldn’t be right
and there’s other things
that players can’t have and neither I’d say would you.
For Geezer the shirt’s not tight fit,
the jaw’s all wrong to whit,
the quads and biceps aren’t bulging
and the hair just isn’t it.
Has Geezer in your experience
had a hurley near his hand?
An’ what about Donal Óg?
sure the doll just wasn’t him,
the eyes weren’t red, the shirt’s not striped
and the hurley’s far too thin.
The Dessie doll was silly too
but that’s beside the point –
sure youngsters now won’t remember the times
when Dessie was playin’ round the joint.
But image rights are image rights
and what’s done is said and done
the Gaelic Players tied Nickey to Croker’s goalposts
and flogged him for the fun.
To blaspheme about the holy ones,
it undermines our teams,
they put the Me in Fundamentalism,
and Mental in it too, what a schism we are facing
- the Association’s gone to hell.
This’ll lead to demonstrations
the grassroots folks did fear
- they’ve their own Mullahs up in Monaghan
and they’re mobilising now we hear.
Tie Cusack to a tractor
and whip him till there’s tears,
bind Geezer with a hawser and
tan him on the rear,
Farrell he’s the leader and Fatwa’s just the job
- image rights aren’t civil rights,
how much does he get paid in that job?
The GPA negotiations were for parity of esteem,
but equal rights aren’t civil rights,
it’s not the same for every team.
When they realise the pup they bought
it’ll shatter their dream. The row it grew
and spread and flowed till
there’s a split in every home,
‘Rua’s rights are our rights,’
was the cry from the grassroots alone.
Negotiations were called for
but everyone has taken sides –
there was no-one there to arbitrate
- the GAA was barely alive.
Imam Duffy sez ‘We’ll haveta send
for someone who can lead us from this mess,
these image rights have caused a row
and we’re under a pile of stress.
We’re dealing with FUNdamentalism,
these beliefs go to the core, we’ve been
down this road before. The demands are mad,
Nickey’s not that bad but it’s
our very heart they’re tradin’,
there’s only one man can sort the job –
that’s Osama-Bin-Laden…
At this I jumped into the air - the awful nightmare ended,
I lay awake my soul was bare my GAA heart offended.
Thank God I thought, twas just a dream,
these things won’t pass… I turned to sleep relieved.
There was something on the pillow, soft and nice to keep
- I held it close… as I drifted off,
no longer cold, like a cork upon the sea…
the last thing I saw
as the sheep took off,
was Rua swing his hurl at me…
Never on A Sunday
Speaking of Fundamentalism, Gaels in the north are long aware of the askance looks they get from the Brethren when they talk about going to matches on a Sunday. The very thought of kicking a ball on a Sunday will have the average Fundmentalist Christian kicking and flagellating themselves with a passion that Dan Brown and the Da Vinci code could only dream of. According to Keep the Sabbath Holy and anti-devils buttermilk league, any soul turning up at the pearly gates hurley and sliotar in hand and size five under foot would get shorter shrift than an English schoolteacher in Sudan.
But all that is set to change as minority sports organisation the Irish Football Association has taken the first tentative steps towards Sunday football. For over 300 years sport on a Sunday was regulated under the Sunday Observance Act (Ireland) of 1695. The Act barred the playing of games on the Sabbath ‘by reason of tumultuous and disorderly meetings, which have been and frequently are used on the Lord’s Day under pretence of hurling, communing, football playing, cudgels wrestling, or other sports.” The fine for a breach of this law was one shilling - a substantial amount at the time. These activities ceased being a Criminal Offence in the South in 1997 by the way.
The question we ask is does the two men and a dog that attend a typical Irish League match potentially constitute a tumultuous and disorderly meeting? Surely the law was targeting hurling matches in Clones or Ulster Club Championship matches. Either way, there could soon be some competition on a Sunday. Bring it on sez Talking Balls - is nothing sacred?
Set Top Boxing
TV3 has reportedly shelled out €6 million for the rights to show a whean of Championship matches following the Powers that Be’s decision to split their tv rights into eight separate packages. We reported before how they had retained some English fella to advise on this.
The last one year deal with RTE was worth €4 million for everything and we are told 10 championship matches outside the main All Ireland series are valued at €2 million. There are a number of issues here of concern for the ordinary Joe who likes nothing better than to site on his sofa moving occasionally to lift the remote, drink beer or eat dry roasted peanuts. RTE are facing Setanta and TV3 for the allocation of the remainder of the rights to television - a further seven packages in total.
In a more competitive environment in yesterday’s Sunday Times Michael Foley rightly suggested there is increasing concern over the counties that may actually feature. With the GAA and RTE regularly behaving like an oul married couple, stuck with each other but enjoying nothing better than a good row, things could be interested. For the Ulster fraternity will they face continued blackout because altho’ UTV have said they are keen to recover coverage of the GAA and BBC have now lost all credibility with the grassroots through their consistent non-coverage followed up with statements cloaked in corporate-speak. As for TV3 in Ulster - we have been inundated with enquiries - who are TV3 and where can you watch it being the common question.
Talking Balls has bid for one of the 25 packages. We are seeking exclusive rights to all schemozzles and handbags on the pitch, in the tunnel and also in exchanges between the likes of Billy Morgan, Mickey Moran, Ger Loughnane, John Maughan and the media. We are also developing a new software package called ‘Schemozzle-Tracker’ which will feature state of the art video analysis to analyse any outbreaks blow by blow. Watch this space.
Altogether now… And it’s One Two Three, Is This What We’re Fighting for?
Colm Bradley, the Fermanagh player, journalist and GPA sceptic has raised an interesting issue post the resolution to the Players Strike issue. Colm questions whether the two tier outcome to the negotiations are in line with what the players vote for. In other words did the negotiating team get a mandate to produce a scheme that does not deliver the ‘Parity of Esteem’ that was mentioned in GPA documentation. Furthermore, a craggy old veteran of a number of trade union issues suggested to Talking Balls that the deal from the Irish Sports Council, the Powers that Be, Bertie’s Government and the GPA should have been taken back to the membership for a vote on whether to accept it or not.
Just so you understand, here is the explanation the two tier non-elitist non-discriminatory agreement that has been reached that guarantees the amateur status of the GAA and won’t lead to pay for play. Make up your own mind.
Annual Team Performance Scheme
The Annual Team Performance Scheme will be based on the performance of teams during the championships and will apply to the 12 Gaelic football teams qualifying for the third round of the All-Ireland Qualifier series or reaching a Provincial Final, and the 12 hurling teams participating in the McCarthy Cup. The level of award available to teams will be calculated on a sliding scale increasing with continuing involvement in the Championships.
Annual Support Scheme for the Development of Excellence in the Indigenous Sports of Hurling and Gaelic football
The Annual Support Scheme for the Development of Excellence will be based on the achievement of standards and performance-based criteria designed to raise/maintain the levels of preparation and skill of the teams and individuals not qualifying for the Team Performance Scheme. The GAA, the GPA and the Irish Sports Council will agree a set of standards and performance based criteria for counties and their senior team squads eliminated in the first two rounds of the All-Ireland Football Qualifiers, and those participating in the Tommy Murphy Cup, the Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard Cups. Recognising that the achievement of excellence necessitates increased sacrifice and effort by counties and individuals, this scheme will assist them in achieving/maintaining the required standards. Support will not be made available to individuals or squads that fail to meet minimum standards.
(Talking Balls Link: http://gaelicplayers.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=60 )
(Talking Balls is unsure what the term ‘Indigenous Sports of Hurling and Gaelic Football’ actually means. Are there other sorts of football and hurling that are not covered we ask? Anyway our pedantry doesn’t have to be your pedantry.)
So we have to wait to see what the performance based criteria will be and what the sets of standards will be. In the world Talking Balls lives in - everyone can’t be ‘Excellent’ so that is meaningless for starters. We also have the situation where county committees have to administer this and develop key performance indicators. Yes key performance indicators. Sounds like Dessie and the lads have been on a funky management course - either that or made a withdrawal from the cliché bank.
Anyway, these county committees - many of which are bitterly opposed to this concept as they have enough problems getting their minds round prima donna players - have to develop these schemes. Well in our experience Key performance indicators are often a stick to beat people with so that could be an interesting departure for the county committees. The hand of the Irish Sports Council is all over the final agreement with its chat of anti-doping controls and all that malarkey.
Having raised the spectre of a strike and caused a lot of heated debate nationwide and undermined the amateur status of the association - apart from having the issue discussed - what has been achieved. This statement of agreement surely was not worth all the b***shit that preceded it. What the GPA have done is alienated a lot of grassroots members with their arrogance and county men will be getting grief about this that they don’t deserve.
As the office WAG said: ‘Surely this could all have been sorted out old style with a big brown envelope?’Some things are certain in life and more’s the pity. Crossmaglen win finals - that’s a fact - ye could put the house on it and some probably do. There’ll be rows at club championship matches - guaranteed. The Pope’s
Pad-Joe Gets the Straighteners Out
After Birr’s narrow victory over the unfortunate Ballyboden St Enda’s, legendary manager Pad Joe Whelehan admitted that he came back to manage Birr because he saw potential but the players needed straightened out.
We aren’t sure just exactly what he was talking about but sure it worked!
“I knew there was something left in them. There are great young hurlers in Birr and I knew that. The last two years in Birr I was kind of worried about them because they were going the wrong way,” he said.
“I came back to straighten them out. The most important championship we won this year was the intermediate championship because we saw the young lads play and kept happy. It brought all the young lads into the fray.”
If Pad Joe can keep them on the straight and narrow and not derail typical Offaly hurler style then they could be in with a good shout for one of the most open Club Championship series in a while. It will likely be his last foray in club management though:
“I told them I would come back for one year and I will stick to it. If we lose… I will walk away.
“I’ve had offers from a few teams, but I’ve no interest. I’m 62, too long on the road. I’d say Brian will hang up the boots if we lose. Simon is getting married and Barry is suffering with injury for a while, so we’ll have to see how they feel next year too.”
Donal Og: We’re Going to Go Away You Know
Legendary Cork keeper has stated that the Cork players in dispute with the County Board over the selectorial matter will simply down tools for good and depart the scene is the dispute isn’t resolved.
Speaking from New York where he was as part of the elite All Stars tour, featuring the cream of indigenous Irish hurling, Donal Óg said:
“What the players said in their statement, it’s not even strike - they are just going to go away.
“There would be a number of hurlers I would be very close to and I know they would do that because they know hurling will go on.
“When Christy Ring left, Cork hurling continued on. You don’t get paid for this, so in a way it’s not a strike. They just won’t be part of it and if more guys want to be part of it, that’s fine.
“Guys believe in the principle of this thing. Either you believe it or you don’t. Hurling is my life, that is what I get out of bed in the morning for. But in terms of selling yourself, guys just won’t do it.”
It Pains us… But For Once We Agree with Liz Howard
Talking Balls wouldn’t be a big fan of Camogie’s Chief Druidess, Liz Howard but for once we have to agree with her stance during the week when she rightly spotted the anomaly that means camogie players are not recognized by the GPA/Government Irish Sports Council/GAA carve up.
At a time when Talking Balls was trying to get a hold of the GPA to ask a few questions about their stance on women in sport - after all camogie and ladies football are gaelic sports and their exponents are gaelic players - Liz stepped up to the mark on behalf of the sisters and but a well appointed stiletto though the glass ceiling:
“I am delighted that a resolution for grants has finally been agreed between all those involved, this is a big step for Gaelic Games in the country and players deserve to be recognised in this way.
“However, the commitment shown by top level female GAA players is on a par with their male counterparts. With this in mind we feel that our players should be included in a similar grants scheme to recognise the outstanding contribution that they make to our national sport and to meet the additional cost and expenses that they incur when competing at the highest level.”
Howard went on to say, “We have an excellent relationship with the Irish Sports Council and we are conscious that they have always been well balanced in their distribution of Government grants to both males and females throughout Irish sport.
“We hope that, given the level of inclusiveness that has always been present in the ISC, we can come to an agreement that will also recognise the contribution and needs of our top female GAA players. We will be in touch with Minister Brennan on this subject over the coming weeks and we will expect a positive outcome”.
We are looking forward to the ladies burning their bras - metaphorically of course we hope. After all, the suffragettes took on the might of the mother of all parliaments and won. Who’s to say that mna na hEireann can’t achieve more than their male counterparts. I tell you solemnly, if I were Minister Brennan, I would relish the though of Liz comin’ a callin’ at my door. No siree!
The Dinamics of Amateur Sport
This week Resident Expert Ger Manas looks back on a historic week and asks what is the world comin too?
So then, them hoors in the GPA have got what they wanted have they? They’ve turned the games me’n’ you loved into a f***in national laughing stock. Tell me this - how can a game be amateur when you get paid for playin it?
In the seventies and eighties them communists used to tell us that those runners like Ludmilla Krotchbelowa and Kataerina Titz were amateurs and them with no job te speak off, more drugs than f***in Boots and probably a big set of balls on some of them an oul bull would be thankful for. They were amateurs same as I’m a Muslim, don’t eat pork, don’t drink stout, pray every Friday and I’ve a teddy bear called Mo.
They used to kick ass all round the place - football, athletics, ice hockey - Jaze ye’d these big Russian fellas who were supposed to be in the army and them skatin’ round batin’ the shite out of anyone came near them. I went to Dinamo Kyiv one time - I met yer man Valeriy Lobanovskyi in a lift in London in a hotel one night - the bar had closed and there was an oul do on upstairs with a few dodgy boys and apparently some Ukrainian hookers.
Now straight up I wouldn’t be into that, ye might get yer chernoballs singed but there was the chance of a few more jags of whiskey. Lobanovskyi was a wile man on the beer - I couldn’t understand much about him but the long and short of it was he asked me to come over to Kyiv for a bit of craic - that’s Kiev to you fellas - when he heard I was into me sport. He loved hurling Lobanovkyi did and greatly admired the skills. Jimmy Barry Murphy was his favourite player and at one stage he talked about coming to Cork to see him play but sadly now we couldn’t get it sorted for him. Anyway, off I went, over there to see him in Kyiv - took me four days to get there mind you, same to get back and about two weeks to get over the vodka I had with Lobanovskyi but I’ll tell you they might have toul fellas they were amateurs but they weren’ - everything had a system and at the head you had Valeriy pulling the strings with a few key men on the pitch. The played nice football too and were successful for a so-called amateur team. Anyone who thought they were playing fellas with a job the rest of the time was talking balls.
When I heard the news last week I sez to the wife - that’s be the end of it - the thin end of the wedge. All that chat about strikes - sure them fellas were never going on strike. All they wanted to do was rev the job up and push it on. What they have done if get up the noses of fellas like mesel’ that have been bustin’ me hole for forty years trainin’ fellas. Forty years, never asked for a penny - occasionally got things I never asked for like a lot of abuse, a few bad doses of the flu and tidy kickin or two - and I occasionally gave things back - got a pile of beef one time gave me the runs I ate that much of it on the bounce, and I got my roof fixed for free for a fella but I tell ye - this getting paid will be the end of it all. Ye’ll get fellas lavin’ one spot to go to another - now that counties can reward excellence whatever the f*** that means they will think of all sorts of ways to do it.
We’ve all heard of the brown envelopes that players did get and the players that should have got brown envelopes that didn’t sure it’s a farce. We asked a well known county man from another county to give our under 14 lads presentation and stuff and we were toul he’s be needin’ a couple of hundred for that. I was wonderin’ was he for bringin’ it home to pass on to the man that taught him to be the player he is before he became a county player. And I know other fellas at university - they have no cash at all with drivin here and there and maybe runnin’ a girlfriend or two - one in the City, one at home the job’s easy with two mobile phones I’m toul’ - can’t afford to eat decent food and they’re runnin’ looking hardship funds. Sure its madness. Granted there’s a strange situation when the fellas working the hardest in Croker in the All Ireland Final are the ones not getting’ paid.
There’s a fella in our club he’s a great man altogether - great umpire altho’ there was a spot of bother over the weekend and he got sent off and him nearly sixty - all for a row over a point. He washes shirts and gives lifts, he’d carry your coffin for you if you asked him, dead yet or not, he does this for nothin’. How does he fit into these schemes of excellence and achievement and what’s the performance indicators for the man that lines the pitch, washes the shirts, cleans the bogs and takes the gate? F*** all squared except the club runs week in, week out, 365 days a year, ad infinitum.
And how do I know that paying boys is such a disaster? Look at Kyiv now. They’re shite. They might be in that oul Champions league but sure so are Rangers and Celtic and they’re f***in useless too. What happened Kyiv? They started payin’ fellas and they sold lads to bring better lads through. The ones they sold went to Europe, ate, drank, bulled, shoplifted, gambled, got mafia-ed. You name it. Introduce money and it f***s things up. Mark my words. Great man Lobanovskyi - would have been a great man in charge of a county team alright… Some things are certain in life and more’s the pity. Crossmaglen win finals - that’s a fact - ye could put the house on it and some probably do. There’ll be rows at club championship matches - guaranteed. The Pope’s