The Club Players Association - not before time.

[rebelicecreamman]

Launched nationally this morning in Dublin.

Its mission, to Fix the Fixtures.

The CPA are asking all adult club members to sign up online in the coming weeks. It takes 30 seconds and it's free. The CPA are asking for the consent of every club member in Ireland to represent them centrally on this issue that is slowly killing the clubs. The other major sports give all their participants a set fixture list at the start of the season - why should the GAA treat 99% of their playing membership differently?

Congress 2016 rejected a proposal from Paraic Duffy to shorten the inter county season by bringing the All Irelands back into late August - Croke Park and the county boards are clearly not taking the club player seriously. To this day, it is not unusual for club players to wait several months between championship fixtures, never knowing from week to week when the next game is, only to then play four times in a month when the weather, (and the pitches) have turned to shit.

There is no reason, in this day and age, to accept this shoddy treatment. The club is supposedly the bedrock of the GAA. I have never yet heard an incoming GAA president NOT pay lip service to the plight of the clubs and their players. And yet, since the late 80s when I became an adult player, the situation has become worse, not better.

This can only be solved at CP level, and the club player cannot leave this issue any longer to the clubs, the county boards, the provincial councils, or the innumerable committees at CP. The club players need their own voice to be heard and taken seriously at head office.

Derek Kavanagh is spearheading the CPA in Cork, and has put together a network that hopes to see every adult player personally receive an invitation to join via their regular notification network (Whats App etc) in the coming week.

Please support.

gaaclubplayers.com

 

[SoundMan]

Why didn't the GPA do this? Can there be dual membership CPA and GPA?

Would the CPA stand up to the clubs that are banning players from transferring for two years?

 

[rebelicecreamman]

Why didn't the GPA do this? Can there be dual membership CPA and GPA?

Would the CPA stand up to the clubs that are banning players from transferring for two years?

1. The GPA represents inter county players, and good luck to them.

2. The CPA is open to ALL club players.

3. No clubs are banning anyone for any length of time.

4. The CPA would seek to tackle the biggest issue facing club players in the GAA - the fixture list. Is that not enough for you? Or are you seriously complaining that this organisation of players is not fixing every ailment in the GAA simultaneously?

 

[TonyCork80]

I would be very supportive about this in principle but when I heard the guy in charge today saying it's as important a day as the founding of the association I got a bit of a no feeling. Read an interview with him as well a few weeks back and got a small bit of a Noel Edmonds vibe off him.

We will see. It will either be a great force for good or will crash and burn. Hopefully the former. Having it to begin with is a good thing but it needs to be harnessed properly or it mightn't last. It's all well and good saying it's about club players but club players will want very different things too. Getting a one size fits all solution will be nearly impossible. What works in a one-code football county with only a handful of hurling clubs or vice versa will be very different from what might work in a county with two strong codes and a load of dual clubs or counties with divisional structures. If they can achieve a set of principles that acts as a framework that will be a great achievement.

May they go well.

 

[SoundMan]

1. The GPA represents inter county players, and good luck to them.

2. The CPA is open to ALL club players.

3. No clubs are banning anyone for any length of time.

4. The CPA would seek to tackle the biggest issue facing club players in the GAA - the fixture list. Is that not enough for you? Or are you seriously complaining that this organisation of players is not fixing every ailment in the GAA simultaneously?

The GPA could very easily have decided to represent both, as they're ALL Gaelic Players.

OPEN to and Actively encouraged to are two different things. Are GPA members going to all join CPA en masse or will some/all of them stay aloof, which would effectively weaken the CPA imho.

Where do you get the notion that clubs aren't banning people for transferring? If you're going to say it's the CBs are doing it, just who exactly do you think they're doing it for? The CB stand to materially lose out on a player - there's nothing at all in it for the CB whether he's playing for one or other club within the county.

Why has it taken the formation of a CPA to rectify what everybody acknowledges is an annual ballsup for almost all?

I wish the CPA the very best - about time the amateur players had a voice to represent them in an association that's generating 10s of Millions of Euros each year by the sweat of their brow.

Personally I don't think it's being launched in Dublin sends out the right message to be honest but let's see how it goes. Fingers crossed

 

[rebelicecreamman]

I would be very supportive about this in principle but when I heard the guy in charge today saying it's as important a day as the founding of the association I got a bit of a no feeling. Read an interview with him as well a few weeks back and got a small bit of a Noel Edmonds vibe off him.

We will see. It will either be a great force for good or will crash and burn. Hopefully the former. Having it to begin with is a good thing but it needs to be harnessed properly or it mightn't last. It's all well and good saying it's about club players but club players will want very different things too. Getting a one size fits all solution will be nearly impossible. What works in a one-code football county with only a handful of hurling clubs or vice versa will be very different from what might work in a county with two strong codes and a load of dual clubs or counties with divisional structures. If they can achieve a set of principles that acts as a framework that will be a great achievement.

May they go well.

I can only vouch for the sincerity of Derek Kavanagh in this, as he is the only one with whom I have had contact. And I would forgive some of the spokespeople some of the hyperbole on the grounds that a) today's launch is about making as much noise as possible in the brief publicity window available, and b) said spokespeople have volunteered over 30 hours a week in recent months to getting the CPA off the ground - they are passionate in their beliefs.

I don't think anyone in the CPA believes there are simple, one-size fits-all solutions. These are club men who understand the nuts and bolts of GAA fixtures better than anyone. The club people understand the difficulties of dualism better than anyone too.

The clear strategy is to build a strong membership with which to approach CP. And the behemoth of the inter county system looks like the first target, and rightly so, imo.

 

[TonyCork80]

I can only vouch for the sincerity of Derek Kavanagh in this, as he is the only one with whom I have had contact. And I would forgive some of the spokespeople some of the hyperbole on the grounds that a) today's launch is about making as much noise as possible in the brief publicity window available, and b) said spokespeople have volunteered over 30 hours a week in recent months to getting the CPA off the ground - they are passionate in their beliefs.

I don't think anyone in the CPA believes there are simple, one-size fits-all solutions. These are club men who understand the nuts and bolts of GAA fixtures better than anyone. The club people understand the difficulties of dualism better than anyone too.

The clear strategy is to build a strong membership with which to approach CP. And the behemoth of the inter county system looks like the first target, and rightly so, imo.

Yeah no doubt about the bone fides of the idea and the majority of people involved. I see Aaron Kernan and Kevin Nolan involved as well. I just thought how your man Brennan chose to describe it was a bit OTT. Exposure is well and good but if you're saying things like that you run the risk of making people question your credibility. It was a bit post-truth for my liking.

I think though you might find that the nuts and bolts of fixtures mean very different things in different places. With respect a clubman from the likes of Kilkenny or Cavan isn't likely to understand the difficulties of dualism and divisional structures in the same way as someone say from example your own club which plays dual senior county championships with a sprinkling of inter county panellists some of whom play in division competition for another club in a different code. I'm definitely not having a go at your club here, and ye are by no means alone in your circumstances, just using it to make the point that club players have extremely diverse needs.

I would think it stands the best chance of achieving it's aims if they adopt the most positive approach possible from the outset. Saying "we want this for the betterment of club players because xyz". If they go too much down the road of making it an adversarial thing with the inter county scene too soon (and a lot of the social media pronouncements by some lads I'd know are going into that territory) then they're going to run into trouble because inter county games now are a massive financial and cultural behemoth. If it does become adversarial there's no way in hell the media are going to give the CPA fair play because they will always put the IC scene first because of the revenue it generates for them. It was a smart move in terms of exposure launching it in Dublin and having it after the start of the preliminary competitions and before congress. That augurs well for the level of cop-on in the organisation.

Proceed very much with caution would be my view because it could be a once in a generation chance to fix it that could collapse if there's a split.

 

[blackie]

Clubs in Cork out from mid January in some cases to mid October.

 

[CORKBHOY]

Launched nationally this morning in Dublin.

Its mission, to Fix the Fixtures.

The CPA are asking all adult club members to sign up online in the coming weeks. It takes 30 seconds and it's free. The CPA are asking for the consent of every club member in Ireland to represent them centrally on this issue that is slowly killing the clubs. The other major sports give all their participants a set fixture list at the start of the season - why should the GAA treat 99% of their playing membership differently?

Congress 2016 rejected a proposal from Paraic Duffy to shorten the inter county season by bringing the All Irelands back into late August - Croke Park and the county boards are clearly not taking the club player seriously. To this day, it is not unusual for club players to wait several months between championship fixtures, never knowing from week to week when the next game is, only to then play four times in a month when the weather, (and the pitches) have turned to shit.

There is no reason, in this day and age, to accept this shoddy treatment. The club is supposedly the bedrock of the GAA. I have never yet heard an incoming GAA president NOT pay lip service to the plight of the clubs and their players. And yet, since the late 80s when I became an adult player, the situation has become worse, not better.

This can only be solved at CP level, and the club player cannot leave this issue any longer to the clubs, the county boards, the provincial councils, or the innumerable committees at CP. The club players need their own voice to be heard and taken seriously at head office.

Derek Kavanagh is spearheading the CPA in Cork, and has put together a network that hopes to see every adult player personally receive an invitation to join via their regular notification network (Whats App etc) in the coming week.

Please support.

gaaclubplayers.com

I signed up to this last week. Long overdue.

 

[rebelicecreamman]

Yeah no doubt about the bone fides of the idea and the majority of people involved. I see Aaron Kernan and Kevin Nolan involved as well. I just thought how your man Brennan chose to describe it was a bit OTT. Exposure is well and good but if you're saying things like that you run the risk of making people question your credibility. It was a bit post-truth for my liking.

I think though you might find that the nuts and bolts of fixtures mean very different things in different places. With respect a clubman from the likes of Kilkenny or Cavan isn't likely to understand the difficulties of dualism and divisional structures in the same way as someone say from example your own club which plays dual senior county championships with a sprinkling of inter county panellists some of whom play in division competition for another club in a different code. I'm definitely not having a go at your club here, and ye are by no means alone in your circumstances, just using it to make the point that club players have extremely diverse needs.

I would think it stands the best chance of achieving it's aims if they adopt the most positive approach possible from the outset. Saying "we want this for the betterment of club players because xyz". If they go too much down the road of making it an adversarial thing with the inter county scene too soon (and a lot of the social media pronouncements by some lads I'd know are going into that territory) then they're going to run into trouble because inter county games now are a massive financial and cultural behemoth. If it does become adversarial there's no way in hell the media are going to give the CPA fair play because they will always put the IC scene first because of the revenue it generates for them. It was a smart move in terms of exposure launching it in Dublin and having it after the start of the preliminary competitions and before congress. That augurs well for the level of cop-on in the organisation.

Proceed very much with caution would be my view because it could be a once in a generation chance to fix it that could collapse if there's a split.

I agree on the need for positivity. The quest for recognition at Congress is evidence of this IMO. Last month, Wexford cb unanimously supported a motion for recognition to go before congress, at the urging of Liam Griffin. The same support will be directly sought in Cork.
Notwithstanding a positive, cooperative approach , it is great that hopefully the club player will soon be represented at the top table, with no agenda other than getting fixture fair play for the 99%.