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What in the name of God is going on in the GAA. Last Saturday was one of the busiest of the year in terms of football matches and none were shown on free-to-air television.
Dublin were playing Derry in a crucial match for All-Ireland survival, Meath met and walloped Kerry in one of the shocks of the year, Galway needed a result against Armagh to survive.
Yet the only place you could see these crucial matches was on Croke Park’s lucrative streaming service GAA+ – where you are charged for the privilege.
No team, of course, could actually play in Croke Park because the GAA top brass had given the stadium for the URC rugby final, which Leinster thankfully won against the mighty South African Bulls.
I have nothing against rugby but surely the national Gaelic stadium could have been used as a neutral venue with so many do-or-die All-Ireland series matches going on, and not rented out to rugby.
It seems to me that the GAA is now ruled by the well-paid suits who are more interested in hitting their revenue targets than doing the right thing in the public interest.
The powers that be in Croke Park seem more interested in making as much money as they can from their GAA+ streaming service than letting their members all over the country watch vital important matches for free.
What they are doing is totally and utterly wrong. There are hundreds of thousands of people – many of them old-age pensioners who gave their lives to the association for free – who would have loved to watch these matches on RTE or Virgin Media.
Croke Park need to realise they are not the Premier League, but yet they are starting to behave like them with their pay-per-view strategy.
The GAA is a national organisation built from the grassroots up who have a moral obligation to look after their members and do the right thing.
Doing the right thing means showing these games on free TV as we know it, and not charging the various county fans who already spend a fortune following their team, more money for the privilege.
Most pubs in the country can’t afford GAA+ and if they do have one of their games on it is probably from a “dodgy” box.
By not doing the right thing, the GAA is losing out big time. They will argue that the highlights of these matches will be shown on RTE’s Saturday Game but it is just not good enough.
I was in my local pub last Saturday evening and guess what was on – the rugby.
It was full of who I would call GAA people and everyone would have loved to have watched Kerry and Meath, followed by the Dubs.
Dublin themselves have such a huge following and it is wrong that the majority of their supporters would not have seen the game unless they could afford to pay for the pay-per-view.
The Dublin lads in our bar could not believe the Derry match was not being shown live by RTE. But to be fair to RTE it is not their fault – it was the GAA’s fault.
My late father Johnny spent half his life as a volunteer in the GAA involved with his club, the Oliver Plunketts and the County Board in Louth. Like many others of his generation he gave his all to help build the association in what it is today.
There was no one prouder going to the new Croke Park than him. Every penny of taxpayers’ money that was given to the GAA at the time to build the new-look stadium was worth it.
In the last years of his life, when he was not as mobile as he used to be and couldn’t go to games anymore, there was nothing he enjoyed more than watching all the various inter-county matches on the telly.
But he lived in a time before the GAA decided to go down the streaming route and he would be turning in his grave at what’s happening right now with vital matches not being shown free-to-air. He would rightly feel betrayed.
The GAA, for as long as I can remember, is all about the community. Every town, parish and village has their own pitch and club.
It should, as an organisation, be all about serving its members and not making money.
We all know that unlike the FAI, the GAA is an amateur sport run by professionals. But sadly the professionals in Croke Park these days have gone too far and need to get a grip.
One of the best games of the year was the Munster Hurling Final when Cork beat Limerick in a penalty shootout the weekend before last.
It was rightly shown on RTE and the whole nation was enthralled by it. It was a wonderful advertisement for the sport.
The people of Ireland should have been able to see Meath demolish Kerry, they should have been able to see Galway battling for survival against Armagh with the last kick of the game.
Last Saturday, the only GAA matches you could watch on traditional TV were two Ladies Football Championship matches – I have nothing against the ladies by the way – and the All-Ireland Hurling Minor Semi-Final, and all on TG4.
If you wanted to see anything else you had to pay for it on the GAA streaming service.
The GAA will argue that Sunday’s Monaghan vs Down and Donegal vs Mayo were shown free on RTE 2. Not good enough.
Three of those teams were from Ulster so what about the rest of the country – do the other teams and games not matter?
This issue should be raised at the next Congress and GAA President Jarlath Burns needs to step in and do something about it.
They also need to spread the season over the summer and not be playing so many cracking matches on one weekend. The All-Ireland final should never have been moved from the traditional third Sunday in September and the idea that the national GAA season ends in July is insane.
As Pat Spillane rightly says, it just gives a free ticket for all other sports to promote their games.
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