There was a surprise line item in the notification of decisions taken at the GAA Ard Chomhairle meeting over the weekend when the decision was taken to prohibit the promotion of charities or specific campaigns on GAA playing gear.

There was context given in that it was felt that there were other opportunities to promote charities without modifying playing gear but it does remove an element of sponsorship activation which has proven to be both popular and successful over recent years.

Dublin GAA and AIG have perhaps been the highest-profile users of the option to replace a logo with a campaign message.

Charities and campaigns including Aoibheann’s Pink Tie, 20X20 and Support4Drummo have benefitted from the awareness and fundraising potential of all four codes shirts switching out the AIG logo on one high-profile weekend of the season.

Indeed the campaign doing so in 2022 for Support4Drummo, was highly commended at the European Sponsorship Awards in London earlier this month.

It may have been felt that the number of campaigns looking to use the shirt was expanding and that in many cases the cost of repurposing a shirt could actually be put to better use with the charity utilising the community reach of a club or county to better effect in other ways.

Last week the GAA named the five official charities it would be supporting through 2023.

In place since 2008, the GAA charity partner process has now delivered almost €1.5m to over 50 charities. The charities were unveiled at a special photo call at Croke Park.

The GAA charity partners for 2023 are:

• Women’s Aid

• ALONE

• Young Lives v Cancer

• Movember

• Trócaire

Each of the five charities will receive a donation of €20,000 from the GAA in addition to a number of opportunities to raise awareness about the important work they undertake.

Ironically, Trocaire CEO Caoimhe de Barra is a long-time member of the Cuala GAA club in South Dublin where different underage teams in recent years have worn the Trocaire logo on the sleeve of the shirt and where an element of the fundraising done by those age groups was directed towards the charity.

Under the new rules, the fundraising may obviously continue but the wearing of the logo will now be prohibited.

Gambling sponsorship is prohibited on all GAA playing gear as is the promotion of alcohol or pubs on all underage jerseys.

Charities seem to be a strange addition to that particular mix of restrictions.