And so - without even the full complement of senior semi-finals completed - it has come to pass. Not even the hotly-debated proposals from the Football Development Committee nor the so-called 'Back Door' in championship hurling could compare with this breaking controversy which is set to run and run, and may even divide households and pit brother against brother, rather like a re-run of the Civil War in Kerry - but this time without the rifles.
The GPA/Marlborough Recruitment sponsorship deal is a defining moment in the continuing evolution since 1884 of DGAOO - 'Dis Great Assoceeashun Of Ours'. It's up there with abolition of 'The Ban' in the pantheon of GAA milestones. How it is played - by all sides in the rumbling controversy - will largely determine the future role and face of the GAA in all our lives. Whatever the outcome, once those players sat down in a Dublin hotel with GPA golf shirts on them, the words of Yeats in relation to the 1916 Rising came to mind: 'All is changed... changed utterly....'. Verily, we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in the life span of DGAOO - away from the parish club, away from amateurism and further along the rocky road towards corporate power, elitism and a semi-professionalism for players that will eventually become 'the full Monty'.
In simple terms, the GAA's Rule Book precludes individual players doing commercial sponsorship deals on their own account. Under new regulations, the GAA has proposed the appointment of a leading company of public relations consultants to negotiate such deals from this point forward, with a breakdown like this: 50% to player; 30% to player's county panel; 10% to county board and 10% to players' hardship fund. Quite frankly, this seems an eminently fair and reasonable way of dividing the monetary spoils. By contrast, the GPA arrangement cuts out the rest of the panel, the county board and the hardship fund, leaving a straight '80/20' split between the individual player and the GPA.
The 'GPA 10' and Marlborough deal is cleverly structured as a GPA/Marlborough rather than a player/Marlborough deal. The lawyers - 'the men with the keen, long faces' as Patrick Pearse called them (and he should know, since he was one of them himself) - will have a veritable field day with this one. Though, as An Fear Rua often ruefully says, most of those lads and lassies wouldn't know one end of a hurley from the other (Bryan McMahon of Clare and 'The Honourable Mister Justice' Joe Brolly being possible exceptions!). Because if it can be proved that the GPA is a limited company, which in all likelihood it probably is, then the player/GPA contract itself could be outside the Rule Book. Leading to what the not-so-eminent British judge, Lord Denning, once called 'the appalling vista' of prominent inter-county players being disciplined for breaches of the rules with perhaps colleagues refusing to take the field in sympathy with them.
On this critical topic for DGAOO, AFR is far more concerned with principle and morality than with legal nicety. His approach would be informed by a statement he heard once which he will call 'The Mattie Merrigan Principle'. For the benefit of some of his younger readers, AFR would explain that Matt Merrigan was one of Ireland's doughtiest trade union representatives, who never compromised during his long and fruitful life. Indeed, AFR was privileged some weeks ago to stand among the hundreds of mourners from many walks of life as Matt's coffin was consigned to the flames of the Glasnevin crematorium in Dublin. Ach, sin scéal eile!
Merrigan once declared that there were two great contending, historical views of how life should be run: 'The Community Principle' or 'The Competitive Principle'. If you went the first way, you believed that people should look after themselves but should also make sure that others were looked after as well. On the other hand, the 'Competitives' believed that the best way to achieve the overall good was 'every man and woman for themselves' and let the rest look after themselves as best they could. Maggie Thatcher, God bless the mark, would have understood this latter position very well.
This fundamental difference in approach is really the nub of the GPA/Marlborough controversy and each of us will have to think about it and make up our minds where we stand on it. If there is money coming into the GAA (in whatever way or from whatever source) should only individual players benefit to the fullest extent they can, or should groups of players benefit as well from the gain of an individual? Put in that way, this is not an issue that will be easily resolved. In fact, it's just another version of the tussle over wages, profits, health care, pensions, taxation and social welfare that goes in the wider society outside the GAA.
As with all these types of socio-economic questions, where we stand will be determined as much, if not more, by emotion than by reason or logic. For that reason, An Fear Rua has no hesitation in saying where he stands. He is with 'Community' over 'Competitive'. The GPA deal - if followed through for all sponsorship deals - would take money away from more players than it would benefit; it strikes at the very heart of the 'team' ethos of Gaelic games (how often have we seen a so-called 'star' carried by his or her team mates?); for these reasons, it is unconscionably elitist and it is not just a back door ... it kicks open the front door to full-blooded professionalism over a relatively short period of time.
So far, the GPA has proved adept in the PR 'stakes' over this announcement. For a GAA matter to receive editorial comment in the three national daily newspapers must be unprecedented. After all, newspaper editorial writers are a class of person who are probably the most out of touch with the needs and concerns of ordinary mortals. In fact, this attribute apparently makes them eminently suitable for pontificating on issues they know little or nothing about. The late Seán Lemass once told the Dáil that 'Irish Times' editorials read like 'they were written by some old lady sitting in a bath with the water going cold around her fanny'!It transpires that the GPA have engaged the professional advice of Declan Kelly, a former 'Examiner' reporter, who is now one of Dublin's hottest of PR 'hot shots', in the firm of Gallagher and Kelly. These boyos don't come cheap. Rumour has it that our separated brethren in the FAI were paying them £10,000 a month for advice in relation to the ill-fated Eircom Park venture, plus a 'success bonus' of £3 million if the project was completed! You'd want to be recruiting an awful lot of clerks, typists and computer progammers for David McKenna in Marlborough to pay for PR advice at that kind of price. Even at that, AFR's contacts among the ponytailed 'creatives' in the world of marketing and advertising tell him that the lads have sold themselves way short. The deal works out at £1,000 a throw per player for each event (and if tax comes out of that, twill' be worth less). Even Biddy from 'Glenroe' gets a lot more than that for only opening a supermarket and, so far as is known, she never played inter-county GAA.
Apart from the Brians -Whelahan, Corcoran and Lohan - and Ja Fallon, AFR was not too impressed with the quality of the eight unveiled at the GPA news conference (at the time of writing, the other two are not known). They seemed more like a collection of 'Has Beens' and 'Might Have Beens' than real 'stars'. As one of the bright buc