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You are > Home > Shame on Minister Cullen
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Shame on Minister Cullen
If Sports Minister Martin Cullen had a conscience, he’d burrow a tunnel somewhere and hide there for the foreseeable future.
Last Tuesday week was Bloomsday, where the works of James Joyce were celebrated. In the offices of the GPA, it was most certainly doomsday.
Brian Cowen has enough on his plate at the moment, but for a man with a strong interest in the GAA, hailing from a traditional GAA county, you’d think he’d intervene to ensure things wouldn’t have come to this.
Yes cuts have to be made, but the figure required to finance the players’ grants is small change in comparison to the government’s annual expenditure.
It’s blatantly obvious that the minister hand-picks sports of his own preference, such as horse racing.
Your average sports follower, whether a fan or not of horseracing, doesn’t need to be reminded of just how much money is being pumped into the industry.
Leaving the GAA issue to one side for the moment, we’re the laughing stock in the world of athletics when it comes to facilities.
Our leading athletes have to fight tooth and nail to get funding. Many of those who competed very well in the last Olympics have seen their rather small annual grants cut as they prepare for the games in London in 2012.
There has always been a big link between Fianna Fail and horseracing.
The ‘large tent’ in the Galway Races became the ideal location for many years for a reunion between the big players in this country.
Martin Cullen has tried to justify cutting the GPA grants after one year.
Why should the government have to fund players I hear you say, should it not be the GAA many will point out. Once again, that debate leads us down the road of the amateur/professional debate.
The GAA’s contribution to players should be greater but the money created by GAA activity in this country for the government amounts to millions.
Many intercounty players have fallen on hard times with no rush from those who benefit from their efforts to lend a helping hand.
In just three intercounty panels (one hurling and two football), there are 28 players out of work. According to Sean Cavanagh, a leading voice for the GPA, eight of the Tyrone panel are out of work at the moment.
As if tensions weren’t bad enough, after years trying to get official recognition, the players now see their grants, which average €1,500 a year per player, hanging by a thread after one year. When you think of all the money that the government wastes, €3.5 million is very little to fund the player grants.
As one pundit pointed out recently, the money wasted on the e-voting machines would fund the player grants until 2024.
This week, Minister Cullen will sit down with the GPA to discuss the matter.
While officially the grants have not been axed yet, the GPA’s response to the news was that basically it was only a matter of when and not if.
The minister said: “I am sure we would all agree that the contribution that Gaelic players make to sport in this country, particularly the sports in which they participate, is significant.
“The problem I have is that this year I do not have that sum of €3.5 million to start with. All I have is the Irish Sports Council (ISC) grant, having regard to the reduction in it compared to last year’s grant.
The GPA players rightly say they will take a ten per cent reduction like everybody else but I do not have the sum of €3.5 million.”
Really Martin. But you have €68 million to give to horseracing.
A day after the minister said this, he changed his mind, and suggested the grants would be cut but not totally wiped.
When Taoiseach Brian Cowen reshuffles his cabinet Minister Cullen could be given his marching orders as sports minister.
His body language always seems to suggest he’s not too bothered no matter what the issue.
If he doesn’t play ball with the GPA concerning the player grants, his parting shot could be the most damaging of all.
And finally....
The more you think about it, it’s getting harder to digest that the sums paid in transfers of soccer players are continuing to rise despite the global recession.
A quick word on the transfer of Ronaldo.
He’s now the world’s most expensive footballer and unless Lionel Messi decides to leave Barcelona, it’s unlikely the €93 million paid by Real Madrid for the Portuguese star will be bettered in the transfer market for a long time.
Ronaldo was right to leave Manchester United, a club with a large number of fans who never appreciated him.
There are those so deluded that they’d rather see Ronaldo go than lose a player like Wayne Rooney.
No club would ever bid anywhere near the fee paid for Ronaldo to buy Rooney, so Man U fans needn’t worry.
Ronaldo is the only Manchester United player in history to be named World Player of the Year.
It’s unlikely any player in the club will ever have the season he enjoyed in ‘07/’08.
But despite all he achieved, the chorus for Rooney still rings loudly. Rooney is not as great as his fans crave him to be.
Eric Cantona was a hero at Man U. Yet the same fans will tell you Ronaldo was too arrogant and had too much of an ego. The latter has achieved a lot more at 24 than the former had in his entire career.
How long if ever will it take for another Man U player to score 42 goals in a season, and doing so without playing as an out and out striker?
If Wayne Rooney ever manages to win a league on his own and scores 42 goals while playing either on the wing or behind the front two in a season, I’ll run for Fianna Fail in the next election while draped in a Dublin football jersey with tattoos of Martin Cullen and Bertie Ahern on each arm, all of which will be sponsored, of course, by Anglo Irish Bank.
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