IN ALL FAIRNESS - Money is the route of integration problems

On the face of it, the merger of the GAA, the Camogie Association, and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) shouldn’t be that difficult to achieve.

They are all part of the one GAA family, largely using all the same facilities, pitches, and stadia while personnel in terms of coaches and administrators move seamlessly between all three.

When the integration process is complete, the main beneficiaries will be Camogie and the LGFA as they will be able to delve in the same pot of funds as the GAA which dwarfs what they have at the moment. Currently the three organisations have a combined income of €106.2m, but the breakdown shows the scale of their differing values: GAA – €96m (590k members); LGFA - €7.3m (170k); Camogie Association €2.9m (110k). Through matchday revenue, that gap widens substantially, with gate receipts showing: GAA – €33m, LGFA - €807km, Camogie Association €546km while commercial income also demonstrates a disparity: GAA – €22m, LGFA - €602k, Camogie Association - €407k.

Perhaps most notably for all three is the engagement each association appreciates from the public through broadcast and social media. In broadcast, last year’s finals in each of the four sports, men’s football and hurling drew almost 1.25m more viewers than the two women’s finals in the ‘average audience’ segment: All-Ireland Football Final - 862k; All-Ireland Hurling Final - 774k; All-Ireland Ladies Football Final - 204k; All-Ireland Camogie Final - 188k. In terms of social media, the GAA has approximately 1.14m followers across its main official platforms, with LGFA engaging 134k and Camogie with 92k.

Last week saw the inter-county camogie and ladies football players launch a protest, backed by the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) who are the first truely integrated Gaelic Games body at where they states the country’s female footballers and hurlers will play out the remainder of the championship ‘under protest’ due to the failure of the GAA, LGFA and the Camogie Association to implement a ‘player charter’.

In a statement released through the GPA and signed by the ‘senior intercounty ladies football and camogie panels’ they state that the GAA, LGFA and the Camogie Association are treating them as ‘second class citizens’. It is understood their unhappiness centres around the findings of the GPA’s ‘State of Play’ report which it says shed light on ‘significant issues within our training environments’. While not specified in the GPA statement, it’s understood the charter seeks assurances around expenses, playing gear and access to pitches and medical services, amongst other issues.

The first form of protest which came last weekend was a symbolic one where prior to all senior championship games in camogie and ladies football, players from both teams linked arms in the centre for the field, with some doing it in a seated manner. All got a strong round of applause from the supporters present as what they are looking for in terms of supports is only what the men are getting.

However, this is where the issue arises for as shown above with the revenue streams between the three organisations, there is no way the LGFA or the Camogie Association have the financial resources to cover the cost of what their players are looking for. They need the GAA to fund most of it, despite they not being the governing body of camogie or ladies football yet.

The GAA certainly has the resources to cover the cost, but it would mean significant funding cuts to other areas as it wouldn’t come cheap. When you consider that the county teams expenditure for most GAA county boards exceeds one million euro each year, predominantly eaten up by the senior hurling and football squads, if you were to give camogie and ladies football teams the same services in terms of travel expenses, post-training meals, gear, physio, medical etc…, it would be double that as what the ladies are doing in terms of preparation for their camogie and football championships is the same level of commitment as the men do.

So how can it be addressed? It will ultimately fall on the GAA to provide the funding and they need to take the lead and show some goodwill here. They might say they are providing much of what camogie and ladies football use in terms of facilities free of charge, but the inter-county female game is growing exponentially and needs to be funded to a larger extent, until such a stage where more people start attending camogie and ladies football championship games in larger numbers, from where they can bring greater revenues to cover the costs.

However, when the GAA, the Camogie Association, and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) become fully integrated in whatever name the new entity is called (it should still be the GAA as to most people they think Camogie and Ladies Football are GAA anyway) they will all be pulling from the same pot and it could well be that this protest is a way of speeding the integration process up as it does seem to be dragging on and as with most mergers, money is always the sticking point.