Emmet Moloney writes for the 'The Irish Farmers Journal' and is a former sports columnist with 'The Kerryman'.

It was a typical GAA weekend with some stories very good, some very bad and some just downright ugly, writes Emmet Moloney...

The good story from last weekend is of course that of the Dublin hurlers. What is rare is wonderful and for once we managed a nail-biting end to the National Hurling League. We see this in other sports – the last series of exciting games – but we’ve never quite managed it in hurling. Well, we did it on Sunday. A free either way or a referee playing another 30 seconds in either match and we could have had Waterford or Galway in a league final. Instead, the gods smiled on Anthony Daly – and the GAA.

They smiled on Wexford too. Some of us with short memories will recall those who wanted hurling abolished in Wexford after Galway gave them a hiding in the first round of the league back in dreary, cold and mucky February. Where are ye now, lads? Hard luck naturally to Offaly, but don’t despair. We suspect that a redrawn league format will soon be upon us and all top table (and side table) counties will be welcomed back into the Division 1 fold.

The bad story from last weekend happened at Congress where we once again had to listen about how payments to managers are a cancer on the game.

Before every US election a candidate will say: “Let’s make America strong again.” Before every boxing match an opponent will insult his opposite number and tell us he’s going to knock him out. Before every big Tipperary match Babs will indirectly offend someone.
And before any Uachtaráin of Cumann Lúthchleas Gael steps down, he will bang this drum: “We must stamp out payments to managers.”

Then that Uachtaráin retreats to the safety of the Ard Chomhairle and life (and payments) go on like never before. It’s a joke. And it’s our joke.

Firstly, if these payments are illegal, then it is a matter for the Revenue and the managers in question – not to mention those who may or may not be paying him. It’s that’s simple. If you are that concerned about it, Christy, why don’t you put a list together of those whom you suspect and pick up the phone?

I didn’t think so. So, calm yourself. This issue is far too easy. You play to the gallery and the choir that is Congress, none of whom are getting paid big money to manage teams, and you get your applause. You might even announce another one of these high-powered committees and that will be that until the next man stands up and says the bainisteoir has no clothes. Yawn.

Who exactly wants all these payments stopped? Obviously not the counties trying to get the high-profile manager to win All-Irelands, because they’re the ones hiring these managers!
This country is under pressure like never before and the GAA, so often the pulse of the nation, has been found wanting. What we did before is no longer enough. Our games are struggling because our people are struggling and that’s what Congress should have been about.

If Congress was a back garden, then all it ever does is trim the odd hedge. Now and again the odd row of turnips might go down beside the spuds, but that’s it. Last weekend the gardener talked about that patio we’ll never, ever see, while the room was busy pruning bushes. Yawn.

We needed to buy the field next door, knock the adjoining hedge, bring in a digger and make a bigger garden. We needed a gardener standing up last Saturday frightening us nearly with his plans, the work in front of us but inspiring us with the prospect of a swimming pool, decking, pitch for the kids and all the vegetables the man from Del Monte would ever would want!

What we got instead was a headline-grabbing rant about payments to worker bees – the dust still on it from the last time it was delivered.

But enough with the green-fingered analogy (it must be the good weather). You get my point, I hope. We need some big thinking from the GAA right now because it is the most important, most influential and, when roused, most effective organisation in the country. Why not behave like it?

What am I talking about now? These last few weeks the plight of inter-county stars who cannot get jobs in their native counties – some of them All-Ireland winners – has been a major talking point. Clubs, naturally, are being decimated by the emigration hitting every community and the problem is lack of jobs, lack of industry, lack of investment, lack of hope and lack of initiative.

Into such gaps do great or dangerous men come. We need the great. And quickly. The GAA should announce in the morning it is setting up a company; a separate branch of the organisation. This company over the next 10 years will provide 100,000 jobs. Those jobs, in conjunction with private and public funding partnerships, will be in all walks of life. Why doesn’t the GAA go into business everywhere?

We’ll start with merchandising. Let’s open factories, let’s build a huge marketing department around it. Let’s make stuff. Clothes, jerseys, sliotars, hurleys, nets, goalposts, hang sandwiches. Let’s start our brands in everything. GAA water. GAA petrol stations. GAA drink!

Let’s build three or four mini-Croke Parks around the country. Let’s build a thousand hurling walls. Let’s put a gym in every GAA club.

Let’s launch our own GAA TV channel and radio channels. Let’s start a GAA newspaper. Hell, why shouldn’t we start our own bank? All GAA money and related funds will go into this bank. All profits to be reinvested.

The impossible dream? Perhaps. But in a field in Listowel was born the industrial giant that is now Kerry Group. That enterprise started with three men in a small caravan about 40 years ago. It is now the world leader in food ingredients – a multi-billion dollar company employing thousands.

Why can’t Christy Cooney marshal the GAA forces to grab this garden by the throat and transform it? Right now, the GAA are in business in a number of areas and are very good at it. Why not expand? What are they waiting for? Someone else to do it? Or do we need to cut out those pesky manager payments first? Priorities and all that.To catch Emmet's latest column, get 'The Irish Farmers' Journal' every Thursday...