‘GAA fans from other counties might consider what they’re spreading on their toast every morning.’
MONEY talks, as the big boys walk the walk. Or does it?
Should we be surprised that this weekend’s All-Ireland semi-finals will feature three of Gaelic football’s biggest spenders.
The other, Tyrone set the original standard in terms of raising the hard cash required to fund inter county success.
From the ashes of the 1995 All-Ireland final defeat by Dublin rose ‘Club Tyrone,’ who have raised over €5 million for GAA in the county over the past 22 years.
Their mission statement says: “We exist solely to help drive forward the GAA in Tyrone.”
Money is not the be all and end all, but it sure as hell helps.
Yet, behind that impressive financial clout and hard graft lies real passion for their county and the game.
It’s the exact same thing with Kerry, Mayo and Dublin.
Yet, last year Tyrone spent ‘just’ €484,000 on all their inter county teams, less than a third of the budget afforded to Mayo and Dublin, and an astonishing 25th on the table for cash pumped into inter county teams in 2016.
Mayo spent more than anyone else last year, at €1.632 million, but had six teams in various All-Ireland finals, and paid off €150,000 carried over from the year before. Kerry spent just under €1 million on all their inter county sides last year.
Mayo are also paying of multi million euro bank loans on the redevelopment of MacHale Park, Castlebar, to the GAA (interest free) and the banks.
Indeed, Mayo kindly broke down their 2016 figures, showing that €992,000 alone was spent on Stephen Rochford’s senior side in his first season in charge.
That was up €417,000 on the figure pumped into Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly’s team in 2015, as Mayo’s relentless pursuit of a first Sam Maguire since 1951 goes on.
Mayo have their house in order though, and are pulling in plenty of cash.
Last year they raised €478,141 in sponsorship, with fund-raising arm, Cairde Mayo generating a cool €638,396, to alleviate against spiraling costs.
But, don’t ‘you still have to have footballers to kick the ball over the bar?’
Yeah, yeah.
If that was all there was to it, Kerry would hardly be bothering with their high performance link up with IT Tralee, or building a state of the art training centre at Currans, because they always have fellas to kick the ball over the bar.
So, is it the vast resources pumped into the top inter county teams, which yield the players and results?
Or, is it the coaching and structures put in place by scores of amateurs across the county.
No need for conflict here. It’s both.
At the very top end of the market though, you have to have the money to finance an inter county side, which makes Tyrone’s achievements on a shoestring budget compared to Kerry, Mayo and Dublin all the more remarkable.
The Dubs really started to get their act together around the time of Pat Gilroy’s appointment as boss back in late 2008.
By the end of Gilroy’s first season Vodafone had replaced Arnotts as jersey sponsors and would go on to pump in the region of €6 million into Dublin GAA over six years, before current sponsors, AIG, took over.
Vodafone and Gilroy were a game changer for the Dubs and the GAA in general.
Gilroy — the Managing Director of Dalkia Ireland — called on his vast business experience and people management skills- on and off the field — to get Dublin moving.
He was the driving force behind the building of ‘the bunker,’ Dublin’s St. Clares facility at DCU.
During the O’Byrne Cup and the League Jim Gavin trains at Innisfails’ club facility, ‘rough and ready’ smiles Dublin Chairman, Sean Shanley.
But, when it comes to championship the Dubs move to St. Clares. It’s a sign of intent.
Gilroy — with Mickey Whelan as coach — put a proper high performance setup in place, before anyone else.
That, of course, doesn’t come cheap.
Conal Keaney, who was in with Gilroy in 2009 and 2010, before moving to the Dublin hurlers, says: “Everything was being monitored from your weight before training to how much (weight) you lost, to how much fluid you have to take in after training.
“All the stuff that’s normal now, but at the time it was a bit different.
“Commercially he (Gilroy) was really good. He knew how to get the most out of the Dublin hype, and the corporate end of things.
“They raised loads of money. They built dressing rooms, all these top end things to help recovery, inside in the changing rooms, and they are still using them to this day.
“That will stand as down to him (Gilroy) alone.
“He drove all that, and while other managers would have been either doing it for themselves commercially, his idea was that everyone should make a few quid out of it.
“If there is an interview going, and giving someone a few quid, ‘let’s pass it around so it’s not the same people.’ ”
The natural follow-on to that was the appointment of Tomas ‘Mossy’ Quinn, who had worked for Gilroy’s Dalkia company, as Dublin Commercial Manager.
(12 partners in total are listed on the Dublin GAA web-site — AIG, Linwoods, the Gourmet Food Parlour, Aer Lingus, Subaru, Ballygowan Water, Skins, the Gibson Hotel, Ross Nutrition, O’Neill’s, Energise Sport and Jack and Jones).
In other counties an odd player might get a sponsored car.
The Dubs are a prudent lot though.
They could have went gung-ho for a €45 million 25,000 all-seater stadium at the Spawell complex, but once the costings were done it was “totally out of the question,” according to Shanley.
Financially, a stadium would have sent them back close to square one again, and the annual €1.5 million spent on inter county teams would most likely have been chopped back considerably.
Instead, five pitches — all floodlit and one astro — will be built over the next three years, as the leases held there — yielding €600,000 in rent per annum — run out.
Besides, the Dubs had already spent a jaw-dropping €9 million on the Spawell site, near Templeogue, just off the M50.
That’s in the region of what Tyrone have spent on their entire Garvaghey facility
Not many counties could afford the Spawell, but then not many counties have to pay that kind of dough.
No-one else faces the same restrictions in terms of the price of land as Dublin.
Tyrone, Dublin’s All-Ireland semi-final opponents on Sunday are notoriously careful with their money, but they’re impressive in terms of fund raising.
The ‘Club Tyrone,’ model has been copied all over Ireland.
Tyrone recently copied Kerry in going after the London market with a launch last week, featuring the likes of Peter Canavan, Mickey Harte and Owen Mulligan.
They’re once again in the business of securing the future and a recent ‘Dragons’ initiative saw a raft of patrons pledge €6,000 per annum over five years.
Owen Mulligan was at the launch in London: “He (Harte) commented on Dublin (at the launch).
“He said, it’s not Dublin’s fault either (that they are able to raise so much finance).
“It’s maybe down to boys having that will to win, and to push themselves that wee bit extra.
“Alright, financial backing is important as well and that’s why Tyrone were over in London.
“They were over in San Fran, in America — they feel as if they fell behind Dublin and that they need the financial backing too.
“I think they are trying to pay Garvaghey off first.
“They are going now with a strength and conditioning (centre) at Garvaghey.
“Facilities are a massive thing now. But Harte says it’s low-key because he likes that sort of thing.
“He doesn’t like spending massive money on different things. He likes to go to the wee rural clubs if that’s what it takes to train.
“It’s a professional set up in Tyrone. That’s all to do with the driven thing in Tyrone.”
Tyrone have never gone on a foreign training camp under Harte, prefeing weekends away in the likes of Carton House and Johnstown House, where Kerry go abroad every year now.
Saying that, the Kingdom, with their vast pulling power all over the world, were surprisingly slow to get moving on their state of the art training centre at Currans, helped in no small part by a €1 million ‘gift’ from sponsors Kerrygold.
(Fans of other counties might consider what they’re spreading on their toast every morning).
However, a star-laden tour of the USA and London two years back, with big guns like ‘the Bomber’, ‘the Gooch’ and the O’Se brothers wheeled out saw Kerry raise over €1 million.
The tour and Kerrygold were two incredible pieces of work , which no other county could pull off.
But, no-one has the commercial pulling power of the Dubs when it comes to the blue chip companies, and they’re not afraid to spend it.
The record spend ever on inter county teams came back in 2012, when Gilroy was Dublin senior manager, at €1.64 million euro.
Gilroy, the man who smashed the 16 year All-Ireland famine, and got the Dubs moving again — on and off the field.
The others are still playing catch-up.
