Jack Anderson: the lessons Down Under for the GAA and Irish sport

In reality, for most Melbournians, the Lions is like US college football teams playing at Lansdowne Road or Croke Park; good for local businesses and the host stadium; an event to go to and be seen at; but of little enduring, sporting impact.

The Tuesday game against the First Nations/Pasifika team was highly competitive and maybe hints that in future if the Lions do return to Australia, it may be in conjunction with games against proud Pacific island nations, not franchises shorn of Test players.

Outside of Tuesday’s game, one of the bigger Lions-related stories this week has been the former England and Lions coach, Clive Woodward, calling out the Wallabies’ “losing mentality”. 

In reply, the Australians rolled out English-born winger Harry Potter (I know, parents, as Phillip Larkin put it) to rebuke Woodward who 20 years ago decided to bring a bloated touring party to New Zealand, including Alistair Campbell for press liaison purposes. And the rest – a spear tackle and three losing test games – is history.

As media spats go, Woodward v Potter wasn’t exactly Dumbledore and Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic. Instead, Melbourne this weekend will be bewitched by footy (AFL) as the season fast approaches its finals or playoff stages. 

The Lions (Brisbane) are the form team (though neither Kilkenny’s Darragh Joyce nor Tyrone’s Conor McKenna have featured much this season). 

Meath’s Conor Nash is playing well for an up-and-coming Hawthorn team and Kerry’s Mark O’Connor is steady as ever for consistent as ever Geelong, for whom Mayo’s Oisin Mullin is really coming into his own. Probably the best Irish player this season has been Ballygiblin and Cork’s Mark Keane at Adelaide.

About to start shortly is the AFLW competition featuring a whopping 39 Irish players. Over the relatively short history of the AFLW, the scheduling has varied from holding it in the pre-season of the men’s game (Feb/March, which, though stinking hot, suited Irish/LGFA players), to, as now, coinciding with the later stages of the men’s game (thus posing problems for football back home).

This is the 10th staging of the AFLW competition which originally had eight teams and has now expanded to 18 to match the AFL men’s league. The AFL is worried it may have expanded too quickly. The AFLW is losing €28m a year, which is more that what the AFL made in profit in 2024.

This season, as previously, the 18 AFLW teams will not play each other once; rather, there will be 12 rounds plus playoffs. The distances (hence costs and logistics) in Australia are huge. A flight from Perth to Sydney is over four hours (you’d get from Dublin to Moscow quicker). 

If, as was once hoped, the 18 teams were to play each other at least once, the AFL has projected that yearly losses would likely quadruple.

As with all professional sport, the three key metrics that have scared the AFL are, in combination: the annual losses; TV ratings down 70 per cent on the AFLW’s inaugural season; and attendances plummeting by 60 percent.

In a brutal, unsparing review to club CEOs early this month the AFL executive was clear that the current AFLW model is in trouble. To stem losses, private investment may be needed, as will cost-cutting. According to a report in the Melbourne Age, AFLW players now rank as the fourth highest-paid sportspeople in Australia behind AFL, NRL and cricket. 

The average AFLW wage is €50,000 a season. The AFL has said that to be financially viable the AFLW will need its own bespoke broadcasting deal. To attract more spectators, the game will have to increase its skill levels and adjust some rules. Jim Gavin may yet be the latest and oldest recruit in the Irish Experiment in the AFL.

In both of the above examples – rugby union in Australia, which can now only sustain 4 professional teams, and the AFL which, despite earning hundreds of millions in broadcasting monies, is struggling to maintain an 18/18 split in its leagues – there are lessons for Irish sport, and particularly the GAA.

The first is that the GAA currently has a committee looking at its amateur status, which recently surveyed GAA members. The survey’s methodology was poor – too many comment boxes, leading questions and re-heated ideas such as stipends for managers, bans on overseas intercounty training camps, a closed season etc.

The success of the FRC work on Gaelic football’s rules was that Jim Gavin and his crew clearly knew their end point, i.e., where they wanted to go in making Gaelic football more entertaining to play and watch. With the amateur status committee, you get the impression that they are struggling to know where to begin.

The difficulty for them is that there is a gross hypocrisy among the Association’s membership (include me) on what they say they want the GAA intercounty and club scene to be, and what they know it is. 

It’s a bit like the TV dodgy box argument: we know that piracy of sports broadcasting undermines the value of such rights, in turn undermining the finances of the very sport we want to watch; but what harm the firestick? 

Similarly, we know that paying managers etc, is putting county and club officials to the pin of their sweaty collars; but what price success for the parish?

At its strictest, the definition of an amateur in the GAA’s rule book might read: is one who does not receive or agree to receive, either directly or indirectly, any remuneration or reward whatsoever (whether by match payments or expenses or otherwise) in respect of their participation in the GAA. But that day has long gone in the GAA, if indeed it has ever existed. 

You can’t put the Deep Heat back in the tube.

The Committee probably needs to be guided by three key principles. First, replace the idea of “amateur” with voluntary. The GAA is built on the latter not the former. Second, stop the “how do we stop” mentality. 

Ideas such as clubs and counties not being permitted to appoint “outside” managers etc will not work and will do particular damage to hurling. Third, and to borrow a line from Anthony Daly, why is every GAA committee one of “review”. 

For what it is worth (very little), I think the future of inter-county GAA is not in pay for play but in a collective bargaining agreement on every aspect of such competitions (budgetary caps, backroom teams, training schedules, commercial arrangements etc) agreed every three to five years by the GPA, central GAA, and county board representatives. 

Too ambitious? Maybe. But as Sunday showed, better ambition and anticipation (Tipp) than reaction and regret (Cork).