Joe Quaid's announcement of his premature retirement from inter-county hurling at the age of only twenty eight is a sad metaphor for the general treatment of players in the GAA, writes An Fear Rua ...
Quaid has warned that unless 'Dis Great Assosseayshun Of Our' bucks up considerably in its treatment of players that many more will call time and, like hime, take that final shower in the dressingroom. In the end, the straw that broke the camel's back in this case was a small thing, an absurdly trivial thing. Quaid, as someone who had represented his county in the championship, had been allocated a ticket for the Munster senior hurling final by Limerick County Board. Now, nobody, goes to a big hurling match on their own, not least the 'ofeeshals' of 'units of De Assosseayshun' like Limerick County Board. Joe Quaid asked to purchase an additional ticket for his wife. He was refused and was told one ticket was his allocation.

Now, that decent man, the Chairman of Limerick County Board, Dónal Fitzgibbon, has given the predictable explanation. Basically, because there are never enough tickets to go around, the Board limits players to purchasing a single ticket. In fairness to the man, he concedes that players who participate in the senior championship should get two tickets and he agrees that after an All Ireland final, players should get more than a measly two complimentary drinks in the 'Holy of Holies' Upstairs Bar in the New Stand at Croker. So, it looks like Limerick are going to raise the ticket allocation with the Munster Council.

The point of all this is not whether Joe Quaid wanted one ticket more or a hundred tickets. The real issue is the bureaucratic and negative attitude towards players the refusal to sell him a ticket for his wife betrays. Ye can have all the fancy new stadiums ye want ... ye can hob nob in the corporate area with the likes of bank clerks and insurance agents ... ye can have more money than ever flowing into the coffers of the GAA ... but - make no mistake - this is still the same old 'Assosseayshun' at heart. Where players - like children in Victorian times - should be seen and not heard.

The fact of the matter is that Joe Quaid - an excellent servant of Limerick hurling - was treated shabbily. He has two All Star awards but tasted bitter All Ireland defeat on two occasion. He has been wrongly blamed in some quarters for triggering the fiasco against Offaly in '94. He was quite superb in 1996 in the final against Wexford. If his was an isolated case, that would be bad enough. But it's not. It is all too typical of the attitude towards players among 'ofeeshals'. Still, the GAA still has a long way to go to descend to the level of the Eircom League in terms of maltreatment of players. If ever there was a sporting entity run for the benefit of 'the blazers' it's the Eircom.

The GAA attitude, by the way, is not based on 'badness'. After all, many of our top and not-so-top 'ofeeshals' were themselves inter-county players, some of great distinction. AFR believes that among these people there's a kind of attitude which says: 'Ah shure, wan ticket was good enough in my day ... and it should be good enough for them today as well...'

Well, of course, it's not good enough. Just ask Joe Quaid...