Shoddy investigation by RTE into GAA managersÕ pay

It has been in place for years, everyone knows it is happening, the authorities are often reluctant to talk about it and nobody seems to know how to deal with it. We refer, of course, to that thorny issue of payments being made to GAA managers.

One night last week RTE promised to ‘lift the lid’ on the whole controversy and failed miserably to do so simply because they could not prove anything, got nobody to admit anything or couldn’t substantiate assertions that county – and even club – managers are raking it in.

It was a very strange sort of Prime Time. It was touted as an investigation into payments being made to managers and spent the first five or 10 minutes showing some violent scenes on the pitch – it was almost as if they did not have enough material on managers’ pay that they had to fill the slot with something that was completely unrelated.

But, anyway, the rather shoddy report into payments made to managers provided absolutely no proof that it is going on. The spoke to people who knew it was happening but at no stage could they say for definite to what extent.

We all know that there are managers out there who are making an absolute killing on so called ‘expenses’ but the programme failed miserably to track one down. They spoke to officers in a small hurling club in Laois who have a manager from within the club and it is costing them nothing. I am mystified to know what this was supposed to prove.

The programme also failed to highlight the fact that there are managers out there touting for business. Many of them claim that they are doing it for the love of the game and yet have no problem with accepting an envelope stuffed with notes every month or every quarter.

Look at the number of managers who have taken charge of other counties and never their own native one and it is plain to see that they are ‘on the game’. This is a business for most of them and many earn the equivalent of the current industrial wage on top of their own salaries . . . but it’s for their love of the game.

Unfortunately the Prime Time programme only scratched at the surface of the problem and didn’t really touch on the fact that some club managers almost make as much as their inter county counterparts which is why loyal club members are traipsing around from pub to pub every Saturday night sell lotto tickets.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.