On the Sunday Paper Review, our panel looked at the row between the GAA and GPA over the funding of the inter-county game.
The situation came to a head this week when the GPA released a statement about GAA General Secretary Tom Ryan's comments about the state of funding of inter-county teams.
The statement read, in part:
"It is disappointing for our members, that the inter-county game to which they dedicate 31 hours of their time each week, as they proudly represent their counties, is once again being presented as the GAA’s problem child.
"Far from being a problem child, inter-county games, and the players that make them the spectacle that they are, continue to be the jewel in the crown of the GAA."
However, journalist Cliona Foley believes that the GPA got the wrong end of the stick.
"It is like they took offence to something that nobody was giving offence to.
"Tom Ryan was saying that the costs associated with the inter-county game were spiralling and [they] have to get a hold on them.
"The GPA then came out and said 'we are the people that are creating all this' - basically saying 'you can't be criticising us.'
"He wasn't criticising them - that is the mistake."
Foley believes that the GPA are mistaken in believing that the GAA accepted partial responsibility for the current state of the inter-county game.
"Nobody was saying that this was their fault - the fault is with managers building up these huge backroom teams that are costing so much money and perhaps in how they are spending the money.
"What I thought was really missing in the GPA statement was that not only taking offence to something that wasn't criticising them, but they were also leaving out the other vital thing, which is the volunteers in the GAA.
"The GAA's wealth is not just built on the inter-county player, it is built on the back of all those people in those clubs that help those kids to a point where they can become great."
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