The GAA’s Annual Congress gets underway at Croke Park this evening and will continue through the weekend.
There are a number of motions to increase the penalties for bad behaviour among clubs, players and sidelines and an area of likely contention is that of redefining age grades again between U17 and U18.
One motion that is of interest but unlikely to succeed is a motion that every club in the country should introduce mandatory hurling for U7 to U10 year-olds, except in a few limited circumstances. It is being proposed by Liam Griffin from Wexford though how it will go down in parts of Tyrone and other counties not on the hurling map will be interesting.
Every three years the headline decision at Congress is the election of the person who will become the next President of the Association.
In 2020, just before the Covid curtain came down, Larry McCarthy won the popular delegate’s vote and became the first candidate to be elected from an overseas base in New York.
His runner-up Jarlath Burns goes again this time around and is one of two candidates from Ulster, though neither is standing as a County or Provincial Chair.
Niall Erskine is the Chair of World GAA and has been in administration roles since becoming registrar of his local Killybegs GAA in Donegal at the age of 17.
Burns himself is the most familiar as a pundit on TG4 and the BBC and having captained Armagh in the 1990’s.
The most traditional route to the Presidency is that of Pat Teahan who is standing as the recently retired Chair of Leinster GAA and has served in the most roles at a national level. Offaly County PRO for 18 years he is perhaps the favourite to emerge tonight with the role of the President ready for him to adopt from 2024.
Sport for Business will have a full round-up of the decisions and the votes from Croke Park on Monday morning.
