Is the GAA the new Religion in Ireland?

Updated: 3551 Gaelic

World History(a bit long-winded)Throughout history there have been many superpowers who's influencehas stretched far from their original borders. A lot of these havebrought a trail of destruction with them but essentially the onesthat have the best legacy have been the

Is the GAA the new Religion in Ireland?
Darren Brett Tipster Competition Manager

Horse Racing, greyhounds and snooker specialist with thirty years experience of writing about sport across multiple platforms. A QPR and Snooker fan

World History(a bit long-winded)

Throughout history there have been many superpowers who's influence has stretched far from their original borders. A lot of these have brought a trail of destruction with them but essentially the ones that have the best legacy have been the ones that have the ones that have brought something constructive to humanity.
Regardless of what they did or didn't do for the greater good they tended to rule through a similar tactic and that is fear. Either through fear of being impaled on a spike, sent to the gallows, tortured, or eternal damnation in the afterlive by a ball of gas in the sky.
Analysing the behaviour of all megalomaniac structures historically & modern it's evident that the key ingredient needed for any of these to succeed is a structured class system where the masses are generally subservient sheep who take everything on face value.(It isn't a coincidence that religions use the imagery of Shepherds in their writings and refer to their followers as a flock.)

So where do the GAA come in??

Well, not to sound overly Jim Corr & David Icke-esque in my theories suggesting that the top members of the Association are members of the illuminati or something. Nope, from those noted loop-de-doops it would be assumed that the enlightened ones would have a superior intellectual power than most. The same can't be said about the upper echelons of the Drumcondra mafia. There hasn't been a century old conspiracy it's more of a series of random lucky events that brought us to this situation. And those series of events have taken the control from the members of GAA into the hands of a chosen few.

GAA Methodology(Skip if you are easily bored)

Genuinely, read the next paragraph first and if you think it's unsubstantiated drivel click below to see where I try to quantify some of my theories.

Click Here to show

So what's that got to do with the GAA

OK, if you've read through that well done. If not, you may need to click on the hidden bit and have a read to substantiate it.
What has all that got to do with the GAA???
Simple, the GAA started off with a noble cause but throughout time it has gone from a decent past time that was fun and a decent combination of social activity and competitive exercise to this all encompassing super power within Ireland that has taken the place in a way of the church and filled the Irish desire to hope for something bigger than themselves.
The use of imagery taken straight from the RC book, mega structures to symbolise the association and language such as pilgrimages to Croke Park has cemented Jones' Road in Drumcondra as the Irish equivalent of St Peter's Square.
Irish people tend to want to follow things they can't really put their hand on. Noted as pagans in ancient times they were full of people who thought the Sun, Moon & Stars were deity and places like Newgrange show the level of devotion to this.
After this with a help from the Vikings & British a bit of civility was brought to the Barbaric lands of Hibernia and the Catholic Church fuelled the need to follow something bigger than themselves. That continued until recent scandals when the intense hypocrisy and shockingly criminal behaviour from all levels of the church really rocked the flock.(When I say all levels, I don't mean all members, I'm not tarring individuals, just the organisation, there are loads of good ones out there don't worry).
There was a gap and in the mid 90's that was filled through the organisation that had it's club system set up on the Catholic parish lines, none other than the GAA.
They exercised a propaganda campaign second to none and turned the Association from an amateur driven one to a massive business which rakes in massive profits year on year.
There's nothing wrong with that, hey, most sporting organisations are the same. Yes, but the problem is that most other organisations won't tell you bare faced porkie pies consistently.

So what's the current state of the GAA

To be honest I don't think the GAA exists any more as an association based on the principles of which it was founded. It's GAA Ltd at the moment and despite what they want you to hear, it's a business.

Where's the evidence??

Let's move to 2 massive movements in the last 12 months. The first from the Munster GAA and their decision to revert back to a seeding system in the Munster Football Championship basically assuring bar miracles that Cork & Kerry will be in the Munster Final every year. Why was this done???? Money, money and more money. It was a simple financial decision. You have an open draw then there is a chance that they could either meet in the 1st round or semi final, leaving a potential final between the winners of that and a minnow either Tipperary, Clare, Waterford or Limerick.
This, as happened in 2012 when Clare played Cork in the final was a financial hit for the Association. Not only that but it was harder to market the game abroad when there was such a mis-match. Here-in lies the main issue behind my argument. There was a choice to be made here, as with many massive choices the GAA has to make regularly, and while the Greeks had philosophers that could help in times like to bring logic to the table, you had no Platoic figure within the GAA, no figure who would take on the money men in suits who would see fit to ruin the fareness of the game and attempt to construct an Orwelian type Animal Farm structure within the organisation.
Some say there wasn't an alternative option. That wasn't the issue, there's always options. The problem was that there was nobody there from the affected counties smart enough to see what was needed. Years of meeting sub standard teams in sub standard league competitions has seen the weaker counties become weaker and conversly the strong become elite.
The league structure needs to be torn asunder and turned into a Champions League style format which would help to bring on the general standard of play in all counties, not just a few. But that wouldn't work within the GAA. You need a class structure, you need the haves and have nots. Without that you don't have power and as such you can't force people to abide by your will. So much so that when the weaker counties decided to protest and boycott the preseason McGrath Cup they were threatened with sanctions from the Munster Council. To illustrate what the McGrath Cup is for those who don't know it would be the equivalent of the Intertoto Cup(google it if you are too young to remember). I won it once myself(McGrath, not Intertoto) and didn't get my medal. That's it in a nutshell.
It's a handy preseason pipe opener but nothing major, yet the money men are starting to take over there too. It was conceived as a competition to bring on football in Munster and was a competition where the so called weaker counties could have a chance of winning silverware without being bullied by the big blokes. It was decided to bring the superpowers in at a point in the mid 2000s and has helped to completely retard the growth of football in the other counties. Guess what, the Munster Council see it as a roaring success because the big two are in the final year after year.

The Latest Issue - The SKY deal

Recently it emerged that Sky had bought a package for the 2015 season. I wasn't shocked. I actually welcomed it but what happened in the aftermath just shows what state the country is in. Tabloid led reporting with the intellectual content of a fridge was flooding in scaremongering and convincing the "flock" of this new religion that the sky(no pun intended I assure you) was going to well and truely fall on our heads. Guess what!!!! It won't.
If you asked the people who are claiming their civil liberties and basic human rights are taken away what games they watched on TV last year(notably the TV3 package which is basically the SKY package now) you'll find that most didn't watch these games that are now akin to those civil liberty infringements that Martin Luther King marched to reinstate in the USA in the dark days of the 50's and 60's.
My opinion on this is that extra money and exposure can never be a bad thing. I can't see anything but good happening from this deal in the long run and because of the National Treasures law the EU have you'll always have the All Ireland free to air so tabloids can relax a while but they aren't much for fact checking anyway.
After many digressions and tangential discussions here's my point. The GAA's attitude to this has shown where the structure of the organisation is at right now. It's run by a small few who make the big decisions. The DG calls the shots as he showed incredibly well on Prime Time recently when he was supported by the puppet Presidents (present & past). To think that he didn't have to go to the congress for a decision that was essentially a commercial one was something he couldn't understand was questioned. This is because of the recent trend since a very cute Corkonian decided to stave off his trip to the GAA gallows by making himself a professional employee of the GAA and not an elected official these professional employees now run the show.
From club, colleges, provinces and at national level the power isn't with the members. Members are largely irrelevant. It's down to the power brokers to sort out what's what. Provincial Councils have CEOs, County boards have full time secretarys. Amateur Association run by the members. No chance.
Why has it got to this stage, propaganda and frenzied euphoric devotion to flags and pieces of clothing. Sounds familiar, they've replaced the kissing of the cross or Bishop's ring with kissing a badge on a jersey and thou shalt not say anything bad about club/county no matter what happens.
What a load of rubbish. We're all human, we, I would hope, have the power of conscious thought and while many can be manipulated as evidenced by history, let's switch our brains on and realise if the President does something that it can be illegal, the Pope is not infallible and the GAA can be right but it can be wrong also. Don't read a headline and take it as gospel(there we go again, the gospel isn't all truth I'll have you know, a little thing called science sorted that out).
Make up your own mind, don't even believe what I say as true, because it merely an opinion of one player who thinks he can see what is happening based on evidence and my interpretation of such using my logic. Use your own but if the Association needs to get back to a purely sporting organisation and not some power hungry pseudo-political/financial mish mash that it currently is raffling off players like commodities and milking the cash cow until it's well and truely dry then questions need to be asked.
There are two extremes in this debate though and the other is the sky falling in brigade, especially the gent from the Dublin supporters club who came up with an argument (that would have had the likes of David Koresh & Jim Jones thinking it was a bit strange) which suggested Sky Sports ruined the English soccer. That's insane. To argue that you have people making a quarter of a million pounds a week is a bad thing is deluded. Awarding elite talent with cash is good, bearing in mind this is not a common wage. It rewards results and hard work. It's a bit like saying why have innovation when it just make the people who innovate rich. It's not fair on the guys who can't innovate or don't take the risk. It's bananas. The 2nd point the guy made which was equally crazy was that they ruined it because there was an influx of foreign footballers to the league. Without meaning to go overly yokel into the "they took our jobs" mode based on this and the recent Eurovision fiasco on the late late it's pretty evident that there's a distinct Xenophobic attitude within a few people in the country. Lets get real for a second. If you do a job and someone does it better, regardless of race creed, you either work harder/better or they'll take their job. What makes a player from the Ivory Coast different to a player from Grimsby. If your place is taken by a player it is assumed he will improve the team, you bring a larger catchment of talent, you'll have a larger average of abilities, thus improving the overall product. When Sky took over route one was the order of the day. George Graham was a tactical genius and Niall Quinn was much sought after. Now the Premier league footballers are quicker, faster, smarter and more skillfull and the ball touches the grass more than the clouds.
If that's a bad thing then keep it going.
It leads to a separate point though. Who has a right to feel aggrieved about the Sky decision. I've spoken to people who feel angry about it and genuinely feel as if their rights are challenged. These are supporters, not members. I class them separately for a reason because you can have supporters who are members and I would class them as members but for this I'm using pure supporters. I'll put it into context, these are customers, not supporters in the eyes of the GAA, and in my opinion, rightly so. They shouldn't have any right into the say of what the GAA does unless they decide to get off the parapit and change it from within. If Apple changed the name of the ipad to the "Balloon in a Fridge" in the morning would the customers have any right to complain? Nope, they have the choice to continue to buy or not. They have the power to influence change by their behaviours but not the right to expect it. That right comes in the form of the shareholder who will be hit in the pocket by decision makers decisions.
Welcome to the glory of the GAA. A bit like the RC organisation it's basically nested in a series of webs that really helps the top brass run the show how they like it. In an even better coincidence any bit of collective solidarity would be quashed before it starts purely because of local rivalries and the chances that some of these big brass being members of certain clubs. It's a magical combination of pseudo politics and religion that leaves us in a place where it will continue until the bubble bursts.
All I can say is I'm glad my intercounty days(I nearly got a scare during the year when I was asked if I'd be interested in going back) are behind me because you get better treated cattle and battery hens in agriculture than the modern day gladiators.
Modern day gladiators are what they are. We've come full circle through all the religions and back to where it all started in the Coliseum in Rome where men were thrown to the lions for the amusement of the baying public.
Will I still play it in the morning, yes, I've training later on this evening for my club and even though I'm grossly out of shape I'll still give it a go because form is temporary and I enjoy the game of Gaelic Football. It's a lovely mix of rugby and soccer which suits me but it's possible to separate the game from the organisation that runs it.

Final Word

Insane ramblings over you'll be glad to hear. If you take anything out of this please take the following. Question more, don't take anything at face value but at the same time don't jump to conclusions without facts.
When money mixes with sport you find corruption and pollution of values. This is the same in politics and religion so while the church & the main pillars of Irish political life go pear shaped the GAA has stepped in to take over the baton.

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