ASRC propose 'Inter County Certification Programme' 

By John Harrington

The Amateur Status Review Committee (ASRC) has published its Report on the Current and Future Amateur Status of the GAA, which can be viewed and downloaded at the bottom of this article.

It’s the product of a comprehensive process that saw the Committee meet on 24 occasions in 19 months, engage with over 120 provincial and county officers, consult with inter-county players and managers, and conduct an online survey completed by almost 5,000 GAA members.

The overwhelming feedback was that the Association is not sufficiently safeguarding its amateur status and that action must now be taken to protect it.

To this end, the ASRC has drafted two motions that will come before the Annual Congress.

One of them seeks to update Rule 1.8 of the Official Guide, which defines the Association’s Amateur Status.

The other proposes the introduction of an ‘Inter-County Certification Programme’ which would require counties to adhere to agreed ‘conditions of entry’ to participate in inter-county competitions.

These conditions may, if agreed upon, potentially define set levels of annual expenditure, the size and function of backroom teams, strict adherence to any ‘return to training’ or ‘closed season’ stipulations, and the recording and sharing of data on player injuries.

The requirements of the certification programme would be determined annually by Central Council on the advice of a proposed new ‘Certification, Governance, and Oversight Committee’, which would finalise and define the composition of the programme.

It’s well established by now that the costs associated with preparing inter-county teams have risen by over 100 per cent in the last decade, and in the same time frame, the demands placed on both players and volunteers have reached unsustainable levels.

The ASRC’s central finding is that the absence of a modern and accountable governance structure which can be consistently implemented and assessed is the key driver of this phenomenon, which presents a threat to the Association’s status as an amateur sporting organisation.

“There are three main concerns that are fairly well established concerning the GAA’s amateur status,” ASRC Chairperson, David Hassan, told GAA.ie.

“The first is the demands that are placed on players and, by extension, those placed on amateur and volunteer officials.

“In simple terms, there's a concern that the expectations of what is required, particularly to play at inter-county level, are not consistent with what it means to be an amateur athlete.

“The second point, then, is just the sheer level of expenditure that is required to remain competitive in the current inter-county competitions.

“And, almost certainly, you're looking at that incrementally increasing year-on-year beyond the €50 million mark, unless some form of control measure is agreed upon.

“The third issue, very often seen as totemic, concerns the issue of payments, specifically who gets paid and who should be paid.

“They're the things that members point to and allow them to argue, increasingly cogently, that the Association's claim to be an amateur one, particularly in relation to the playing of the games, lacks validity. So those are the three issues that come up time and time again.

“The GAA doesn't want to be a professional sporting organisation. It doesn't even want to be a semi-professional organisation. It wants to be an amateur organisation.

“Also, the players don't want to be professional. They don't want to be paid. Every survey the GPA has undertaken with inter-county players has confirmed that they remain content with the amateur status.

“Our simple conclusion is that if there's widespread consensus around those two issues, then the logical conclusion is to safeguard the Association’s amateur status by putting in place some basic standards or entry conditions, which will go a long way to safeguarding the key elements that people are concerned about.”

The proposed ‘Inter-County Certification Programme’ would, potentially, have two phases – a ‘Pre-Season’ phase and an ‘In-Season’ phase.

In the ‘Pre-Season’ phase, counties would have to meet certain basic requirements before the start of the season, such as having senior inter-county team managers in place who have completed a GAA inter-county manager induction course and have appointed backroom teams with qualifications appropriate to their roles.

County teams would have to be compliant with player welfare initiatives such as the provision of GPS data and an agreed Annual Maximum Expenditure Limit (AMEL) in the previous 12 months.

Failure to meet these basic requirements could result in the county not being certified to participate in that season’s League or Championship until these issues are addressed.

The ‘In-Season’ phase would require ongoing compliance in several areas, such as payment to backroom personnel remaining consistent with amateur status rules, and adherence to agreed backroom team numbers, panel registration provisions, return to training or closed season stipulations, and injury data protocols.

Breaches of the minimum requirements during the season could carry sanctions on a suggested “penalty point model” basis, with a set number of points for each breach that would accumulate towards a maximum limit that, if exceeded, would ultimately lead to a sanction being proposed.

“Currently, there's an absence of any form of regulatory engagement for admission to inter-county competitions, which means that essentially there are no minimum standards required for counties to meet to participate,” says Hassan.

“Through the consultation process, there was broad support for the introduction of a form of regulatory framework that would govern things like panel sizes, backroom team sizes, expenditure, and so on.

“There's also support for things like improved data and evidence around the physiological demands placed upon players.

“If we have a better understanding of the demands placed on players and when those players are being injured and the length of time it takes them to return to play, that would enable us to be better informed about what an optimum training load for an amateur GAA athlete should look like – at present we simply do not know the demands being exercised upon players, at least in any complete sense.

“So the focus isn't just solely on expenditure, it's also about the demands on amateur athletes, and how they can best sustain their engagement in competition, particularly inter-county competition, for a longer period of time.

“This process isn't about imposition; this is about initiating and enabling agreement about what those new, modern standards should look like. And, of course, the other major benefit of this is that you then, over time, increase the competitive balance factor of the competitions.

“You would make it more possible for a greater number of counties, both in hurling and in football, to be competitive. And that's a good thing for any championship or any league, irrespective of what sport we are considering.”

A total of 13 separate reports and outputs completed between 2011 and 2025 have either explicitly or implicitly addressed the question of the GAA’s amateur status, which is reflective of an acceptance that it is very much under threat.

There is also a widespread recognition that the cost of preparing teams at both inter-county and club level cannot continue unchecked.

Because if people cannot truly believe that the GAA is an amateur sporting organisation, then the manifesto ‘Where We All Belong’ loses validity, and volunteerism becomes a much harder sell.

It feels like the Association has reached a tipping point, and Hassan worries about what the future will bring if we don’t grasp the nettle now.

“The danger is if you don't act now, then the situation year by year becomes ever more difficult to address,” he says.

“Then ultimately, would we reach a situation where it's no longer credible to refer to ourselves as an amateur organisation?

“If we reach the 150th anniversary of the Association in 2034 and there remain question marks over whether or not we are still an amateur organisation, then we would have to regret that very much and ask if we could have taken action earlier.

“Because if we move to a semi-professional organisation then we'd have to accept there's really no going back from that. That's what's at stake here.

“If you take it to its logical conclusion, then you reach a situation where fewer teams are even able to participate, never mind compete, in some of these competitions.

“We spoke to some counties who said, ‘Look, if something isn't done on this reasonably quickly, then we're going to have to make decisions in the near future about what competitions we enter. Whether we field an adult hurling team and a football team or whether we just field a football team.’

“There is a material impact, and we just don't have enough money to go around anymore.

“If material change doesn't come about, then in less than 10 years you could have a situation where counties just decide not to compete in certain competitions, and I think then people would really realise the impact of this situation if it is not corrected.

“We don't think what we're proposing is very radical. It's the beginning of Phase One of a process that the counties will have control over every step of the way. It'll be through agreement. Every step of the way through the Central Council or through Annual Congress counties will have the opportunity to speak on these issues and vote on them.

“Let's create a framework where we can have agreement around what the future is going to look like so the GAA that people recognise and clearly love now is still the GAA that their children and grandchildren will recognise in the future.”

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You can read flipchart version of the ASCR report here - https://online.fliphtml5.com/fhqhq/oshh/#p=1

A pdf of the report can be viewed and downloaded below.