Mayo View: J.P. McManus donation to GAA raises many talking points
by Caoimhín Rowland
WITHIN an hour of Philip Lanigan breaking the news in extra.ie of J.P. McManus donating a million to every GAA county board, division and faction was emerging.
Former Kerry footballer Darran O’Sullivan asked how long it would be until this thoughtful, heartfelt gesture would be weaponised by that great Irish instrument, begrudgery.
Journalists, ex-players and supporters all chimed in to sing the praises of the generous man from Adare.
The soccer fans then entered the fray, asking why the FAI doesn't have a backer like this – seemingly oblivious to Denis O’Brien’s goodwill and generosity to all by handing blank cheques to his pal John Delaney, the former CEO of the FAI, to ensure Ireland could nab an international boss of calibre like Trappattoni, a man who didn’t even know we had a league in this country.
But it seems the price to buy the hearts and minds of the single most powerful cultural tool in this country, the GAA, is a million-euro donation to each county board.
How it will be paid out remains to be seen, but for any club or struggling county board a cash injection is always welcome. It just doesn’t wash well when it’s coming, as I suspect, to justify McManus’s over-the-top spending on Limerick hurling.
Every county would love a McManus. If he was in Mayo, pumping this county’s coffers to successive All-Ireland wins, I wouldn’t scoff for a second.
But it’s difficult to balance the glee I felt when Newcastle were turfed out of the Champions League, their owners welcoming Vladimir Putin like a deity in Riyadh, denying basic human rights to women or butchering dissenting journalists. McManus, of course, is nothing like Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudis, it must be rememberd, want to buy up the rights to the global game of golf, bring major tournaments to their back yard and inflate the budget for their passion project to bring unheralded success.
No, it seems the princely sum of a million euro is the GAA supporter's price; indeed there’s no other sport that cribs so often about finance than the amateur association's supporters.
Season tickets have entered talking point central once again due to their price increase and poor value for money. Tickets for league games have risen to €20 and must be bought online and now the latest is that Croke Park will not accept screenshotted images of tickets, only downloaded copies. This is all before we start on Mickey Harte’s disloyalty and eye-watering 'management costs'.
What is a million to a billionaire? Sometimes we feel it’s just a slightly more wealthy millionaire – and sure don’t we all know a millionaire, haven’t we bumped into one on Stephen's night, home from England or America, and 'not once did they reach into their pocket at the bar'.
A billion is a thousand million, an incomprehensible figure for mere mortals, impossible to spend in a lifetime, but give any county board the task and I’m sure a few delegates would be up to the challenge.
OVERSTATED
Horse racing and greyhounds reap far too much public money. Their importance to rural Ireland is often overstated. The thousands they employ, on a pittance of a salary, are not the backbone of the economy.
More popular sports such as GAA and soccer are arguably sleeping giants in terms of the potential return on investment for local economies the length and breadth of the county.
When the FAI were court marshalled in front of the Oireachtas to face a grilling from TDs and Senators, it was pointed out how the CEO, Jonathan Hill, earns more each year than the winners of the league. It’s lunacy, in essence, and shows the backward mentality still ingrained in the FAI long after the departure of the one who can’t be named.
It’s a damning indictment of sport in this country that its financial success and backing is dependent on the goodwill of benevolent billionaires and not the public purse we all pay into and expect to see a return from in our day-to-day lives.
Sport is the most important of the unimportant things, bringing people from all walks of life together banded in unison, crying in ecstasy and wallowing in defeat. Mayo GAA for us has that special place in our hearts, sparking conversations with loved ones across the globe and renewing old friendships beneath the Big Tree on Dorset Street.
For me that’s priceless, but seemingly it can be bought for a princely sum and a PR sportswashing project. Slick in its response the plaudits were drawn and any dissenting voices lambasted as begrudgers.
The real cowards in this are not the tax exiles, wealthy enough to escape paying for public services here, but the government who allow soccer grounds in this country look like third-world playgrounds and GAA clubs saddled by crippling debt in a spiralling cost-of-living crisis.