At the GAA annual Congress, held in Bekan, County Mayo on Saturday, delegates voted by a majority of 89.8% to approve the amalgamation of the main body with the Camogie Association and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association.
There are valid arguments for and against the integration of the three organisations – and in any event camogie and women’s football are already mostly part of the playing and administrative arrangements in clubs that have male and female codes – but the debate mostly took part on an ideological field.
For some delegates it was clearly a case of “don’t hit me with the twins Equality and Diversity in my arms.” The motion was proposed by the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) and its chairperson Tom Parsons pitched it as something that he was surprised that anyone would even question, even though the opposing speakers referred to logistical not philosophical problems which were also mentioned in his speech by President Larry McCarthy.
Expressing perhaps disappointment with the 10% of delegates who voted against the proposal, Parsons said that “When it comes to equality you want 100%, but we will take 90%.” Which some might have smiled at ruefully, as the last thing the GPA is about in reality is equality. It was established by and for elite male senior county footballers and hurlers.
The motivation for that was to allegedly improve the status of all county players, but there was, and is, clearly a financial aspect. That has resulted in the GPA winning better expenses for players, but it has also allowed a small number of players to benefit from advertising. Which is perfectly legitimate, and the very opposite of the crude equalitarianism they espouse when it otherwise suits them, but the commercial side has marginal if any positive benefits for someone hurling for Fermanagh.
There is clearly a similar motivation on the part of players from the top women’s football and camogie senior teams, which is again a valid ambition on their part, and already some women players are prominent both in advertising and in the media. The moves towards integration within the GAA were presaged by the merger of the GPA and the Women Gaelic Players Association.
While the GAA has an agreement with the GPA which was only approved by delegates after the GPA itself wrote a commitment to maintaining the amateur status of inter-county players into its own constitution, the commercial raison d’etre of the GPA is indicated by the scale of its current operation.
In some ways it resembles its fellow non-profit bodies in the Non-Governmental Sector. In 2020 the GPA had a total income of €6.44 million. The core funding from the GAA, which represents 15% of net commercial revenue, amounted to €2.35 million with a further state grant through Sport Ireland of €3 million which is used for player welfare. Commercial revenue took a substantial hit due to the Covid restrictions and was down to €532,727 from over €900.000 in 2019.
One difference between the GPA and the NGOs, however, is that the former pay their own staff a much lesser proportion of their overall income – which reaches an average of 66% for the large NGO companies. In 2020 the nine GPA employees contributed to an operating cost of €646,879 or around 10% of income. The vast bulk of expenditure does go towards player welfare in the form of expenses and other programmes.
Nonetheless it would be remiss not to note this aspect of the current debate. None of the possible arrangements that will follow on foot of the Congress motion will have any immediate or maybe even longer-term impact on ordinary club members.
The Congress motion still requires to be approved by delegates at the LGFA Congress to be held this weekend. It is quite possible that the motion to formally integrate will come under much closer scrutiny there and that the proportion of delegates voting against may be larger than at the GAA Congress, even though it is almost certain to pass.
In 2020, the President of the Women’s Gaelic Players Association Maria Kinsella, who proposed the GPA motion on Saturday, referred to a lack of appetite on the part of people in all three associations for integration. That was taken to be a criticism of what some others have described as the “officer class” in the LGFA and the Camogie Association who some women county senior players believe are opposed to the formal merger. That pressure, of course, mirrors the strategy that was previously deployed by the GPA.
Despite the likely opposition of a significant number of women involved in football and camogie to the merger, some of the delegates at Belkan were happy enough to imply that anyone who was against the GPA motion was some sort of sexist caveperson. A Cork delegate said that separation was “no longer acceptable” and made reference to the “male-dominated floor.”
The Antrim chairperson Ciarán MacCavana was even less reticent in using language that has little or nothing to do – or rather ought to have little or nothing to do – with how the GAA administers its affairs when he alleged that there were people intent on “stopping equality” who need to be “called out”. “Let’s expose the people who don’t want equality” he demanded, in the fashion of someone addressing a political conference.
And what of the women involved in camogie and women’s football who “oppose equality” as it has been defined? Are they to be consigned to some unWoke category?
Nobody of course in the GAA has the balls – pardon the unfortunate pun on two levels – to “call out” the mindless devotion to the Great Idol Equality. It is meaningless in the context of sport as it indeed is other than where it denotes equality of opportunity, equality before the law and ordinary decency and respect in any sphere.
It is a canard no better exposed than where it is now being used in order to force women in sports to compete against biological males who would not look out of place in the All-Blacks front row or the Limerick half-back line. Or worse still, to be forced to share spaces with them in public toilets and even prisons.
The only physically demanding sport where women compete on a completely level equal basis with males is, I think, horseracing. Rachael Blackmore and Hollie Doyle and Tabitha Worsley and others mix it with the best of them and are of the very best at what they do. They lack for nothing in courage, intelligence and all the other qualities their sport demands.
Nor do any of the top camogie players, but it is a nonsense to think that they could compete with the top male hurlers. Does that make them any lesser sportspeople? Of course not. No more than Florence Griffith Joyner was a lesser athlete than Usain Bolt.
Because, all the current sloganizing aside, there are very good reasons why women have had not only separate sporting competitions, but other female only associations and facilities, including in education.
That of course does not mean that women’s sports ought to be underfunded or otherwise disadvantaged especially at lower levels in schools and clubs, and I have yet to see any concrete claims that they are.
Perhaps the considerations of the LGFA this weekend and of the Camogie Association in April will see a more nuanced debate, and perhaps even one that recalls some of the historical reasons why both came to exist in the first instance.