McCloy softens stance on grants
Despite still being opposed to player grants in principle, newly returned Derry County Chairman Seamus McCloy believes that Gaels in the county may have to resign themselves to the prospect of financial remuneration for county players following amended proposals by the GAA’s Central Council.
A major sticking point in the original plan to award grants to players was that they were to be administered by county boards. The Oak Leaf chairman had already made it clear that the Derry board would have nothing to do with disbursing the money but, according proposals arising out of Saturday’s Cental Council meeting, grants will now be administered centrally.
From a personal point of view McCloy still opposes the payment of grants to players but feels that there is little he can do to prevent the process going ahead now that county boards will not be involved in the process.
“Personally, I am opposed to grants to county players but you can’t be like a Japanese soldier stuck on an island still fighting World War II years after it has finished. One of the big bug bears for us was that amateur officials were going to be charged with the responsibility of signing off on the payment of money to players. It seems that that will no longer be the case and to some degree it’s out of our hands,” he explained.
Saturday’s proposal from Central Council stressed that money is being provided by the Irish Government and the GPA had formally accepted that the GAA would not be responsible in future for providing grant money should the funding be cut off at a future date. As long as the grants are administered by the Governement, McCloy believes that there is little that can be done to halt the process.
“If the government wants to hand out grants to county players well then what can you do? If a club plays a county player £200 or £500 to speak at a dinner dance then there’s nothing you can do about that either. If any individual organisation outside the association, be it a businessman or whatever, wants to give money to players I don’t think that there’s and awful lot that we can do about it. There is no point a few of us fighting a war on our own that we can’t win,” he said.
