New committee will aim to protect GAA's amateur status

A decade ago, an academic paper was published to examine how the GAA could adopt an innovative approach through strategic decision-making to maintain its amateur ethos while successfully competing in the professional sporting market.

The comprehensive and prescient paper was entitled 'Amateurism in an Age of Professionalism: An Empirical Examination of an Irish Sporting Culture: The GAA' by Ian Keller and Dr Angela Wright of Munster Technological University.

It focused on many areas that are still a source of concern to the GAA.

Fundamentally, the MTU study recommended that the strong links between the GAA and the community must be both nurtured and enhanced.

It recommended that the challenges that the branding success of foreign sports brought should also be embraced by the association.

And it shone a light on how player welfare issues for the elite players should be addressed while continuing to protect the club and its amateur structures.

The study looked at not just the importance of the amateur ethos to the GAA, but also development of the marketing, branding and profiling of Gaelic games that could enhance the performance of an amateur sporting organisation in an era of increased professionalism in sport.

A range of recommendations were made, including a player welfare system that would protect the elite players while always retaining the amateur ethos, better education opportunities for elite players that would incorporate elite education grants, the creation of a better club and county balance by a centralised directive from Croke Park, and the creation of a players’ fund for county teams based on a percentage of the revenue generated from a county's participation in championship games were all suggested.

A strategic