The Gaelic Players Association started out life as a loud and noisy protest group fighting for greater recognition for inter county GAA players. It still has the passion and the volume but in 2014 it continued its own development into one of the most important and influential groups within the health and wellbeing of our society.
It is still there first and foremost to serve the needs of inter county players but it is in the amplification of what goes into them, and comes from them, that the organisation has become a role model for the power of role models.
It is in a sense a trade union but one where the financial negotiation take up only a small part of the working day.
Recognition
The winning of grants for players was hailed again yesterday by Minister for Sport Michael Ring and GAA Director General Paraic Duffy as being important in terms of the recognition of players’ worth and what they do within what remains an amateur sport.
It is though in making the players into the best citizens they can be that the role of the GPA extends far beyond the narrow confine of an elite dressing room.
631 players during the year participated in education and skills training. 160 completed courses in starting up and developing their own businesses. 117 undertook personal counselling , tailored specifically for the unique life they lead having encountered challenges in health or other areas.
This is the base camp of what the GPA’s ambitions are. In 2015 it will commence an ambitious Leadership programme made possible through US based personal philanthropy from the Madden Family.
Read more about the Madden Leadership Programme.
It also has designs on creating an Institute of Player Development which will combine all the areas in which the Association works.
This plays to the shared ambition, with the GAA to deliver “a better level of player development service than is seen in any other sport in the world,” in the words of Paraic Duffy yesterday.
Next week will see the launch of the Women’s Gaelic Players Association, living on its own but supported by groups including the GPA and indeed Sport for Business to extend the platform of a players voice towards all senior players of gaelic games.
These advances in the way in which players see themselves and are seen by society have been made possible by the drive of those who stand behind the GPA. There is of course a team ethic borne from playing at the highest level but the way the GPA operates takes that and shapes into something so much more.
Purpose
From Chairman Donal Og Cusack, through CEO Dessie Farrell and executives including Siobhan Earley and Sean Potts, every step is considered and then delivered with a sense of purpose that is itself a model for the way we organise ourselves.
That the GPA can call on the support of organisations like PwC where yesterday’s launch of the annual report took place is a measure of how they have grown and the potential they have.
“There is a healthy tension between the GAA and the GPA but relations between us have never been better,” said Paraic Duffy. That tension will surface through this year as negotiation of new agreements comes before both bodies but you get the strong sense that this will not deflect either group from delivering more than sport, more than money, more than we might expect over the next twelve months and beyond.
It could mean a doubling in size of the organisation, a doubling of annual expenditure but also a step change in how the Association can provide leadership and role models from within.
At a time when more vacuous celebrity is the ‘go to’ place for young people looking to see how they should live their lives, this is up there among the most important projects that sport can deliver in the years to come.
Image Credit: Inpho.ie
