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‘TWAS the Friday before Christmas, and from the Big House,
The GAA failed to show the courage even worthy of a mouse’.
The GAA’s decision not to end its association with sponsor Allianz due to its parent company’s links to the Israeli government was bad enough.
The timing was even worse. Insulting to those who care deeply about Gaza, and deliberately so.
An email at 6.22pm.
The GAA was, quite rightly, annoyed when the British government slipped out its refusal to fund the re-building of Casement Park on a Friday evening.
In political circles that is the classic ‘good time to bury bad news’.
Saturday papers have largely been ‘put to bed’. It’s too late for the Six O’Clock News.
A GAA spokesperson may have been available for comment, but time was limited to address this important story properly.
Such slipping out of a press release seems sleekit, as if the sender does not have the courage of their convictions.
In fairness to the GAA President, he did argue the Association’s case on RTE Radio 1’s Saturday Sport.
Jarlath Burns, in my experience, is a good man, trying to do the right things.
This is not about him. Any GAA President would probably have made similar arguments as those he set out.
I’ll not keep name-checking the Silverbridge man; nor will I refer to that company by its name either. Fair’s fair.
However, the Association’s arguments must be addressed.
Peter Canavan and Joe Mcmahon pictured at Garvaghey ahead of Saturday's March for Gaza in Belfast. PICTURE: JASON MCCARTAN (Jason McCartan Photography) The GAA President undersells the GAA when he suggests that it would struggle to get a replacement sponsor.
That massive foreign company is not handing money over to the GAA out of the goodness of their hearts.
They do so because they see it bringing them a worthwhile return.
They calculate that it makes them look good, makes them seem caring, involved in the community – due to its involvement with the biggest, greatest community-based sporting organisation in the world.
Gaels with a choice of insurers may well go with them because the company gives to the GAA.
That company clearly reckons that they get more value out of their sponsorship of the GAA.
Otherwise they wouldn’t pay over a single red cent.
Other companies would also appreciate an association with the GAA.
People take part in a protest calling for the GAA to end its sponsorship arrangement with Allianz (Cillian Sherlock/PA) While we’re talking numbers, the GAA President implied that the significant number of past and current players who signed a petition against the company was not actually all that large.
“800 might seem a lot. In the vast scheme of things, it’s 0.13% of our membership. I think in the last month I have been to something like 27 clubs - at no stage has anybody brought me aside and said I’m very uncomfortable with this.”
Those are unnecessarily dismissive remarks.
By that mathematical standard he was elected President by only 0.025% of the Association’s membership. In truth, 57 per cent of delegates backed him.
The GAA President could have honestly acknowledged that more than a quarter of its county boards – nine of them - had called for an end to this link, including his own, Armagh.
Surely that matters.
The GAA President also basically made the bizarre contention that this company is effectively the only insurer available to the Association.
“We would find it very difficult to find a new insurer. We would be asking our volunteers and our clubs to do a complete new asset inventory of every single thing that they have.
“That would place an intolerable burden on the association and what would we get for that really?”
Irish Health Workers for Palestine pass the Gaza Solidarity Nativity Scene (Niall Carson/PA) The argument about how much data is held by that company is a spurious one.
Does that company own that information? Does the GAA not have access to any of it?
The obvious consequence of that situation, ironically, is for the GAA to future-proof itself.
What if that company collapses? Such things happen.
Shouldn’t the GAA be prepared for that eventuality?
It’s also risky that just one company covers the GAA’s public liability, employers liability, personal accident, property, asset insurance, and event insurance, plus it is the official claims administrator for the GAA injury benefit fund.
In fact, it’s crazy that just one company has control over all those financial aspects of the Association.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket is sound financial advice.
Additionally, how much money is that company making out of all those arrangements?
The GAA President made another contentious claim, suggesting that “in this modern world of quantum entanglement it would be impossible to find a [new insurance] company that wouldn’t have some sort of a sibling relationship going right back to that conflict.”
Really? There’s not a single insurance company in the entire world which is not linked to Israel?
He also stated this: “The third thing we would have to do is legally unravel the existing contract which runs to 2030 which would make us a toxic prospect for any other sponsorship company.”
There are a number of ethical investment funds, and companies which would be happy to associate themselves with a sporting organisation which stands up strongly for the Palestinian people.
Sponsorship contracts come and go.
Teams and organisations can get out of them.
Many Palestinians are spending winter in makeshift camps (Jehad Alshrafi/AP) (Jehad Alshrafi/AP) The message from the GAA seems to be ‘Ach, this would be a wild pile of bother. Let’s just move on.’
Send that message to the people in the Gaza Strip who are still being bombarded and killed despite the supposed ceasefire.
The GAA cannot stop Israel’s attacks on Gaza on its own, but doing nothing is pathetic.
As I’ve stated before, sport played its part in bringing down the awful apartheid regime in South Africa.
The GAA can, and should, continue to voice its opposition to Israel’s barbaric attacks on Palestine territory, which have been going on for decades, not just since the heinous Hamas assaults on October 7, 2023.
Some of the motions passed by those nine counties should go before the 2026 GAA Annual Congress.
The new GAA President-Elect should only be voted in on a platform of ending this shameful link.
# Wishing all readers a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year.
