The GAA and Gaelic Players’ Association (GPA) remain at loggerheads over the restoration of the 2019 Players’ Charter. This week the GPA will consult its membership with a view to framing further protest action after a weekend when a directive to teams and managers asked that there be no post-match co-operation with media.
As it stands, there is no immediate plan to replicate that at next weekend’s fixtures.
The nub of the disagreement is that whereas in 2019, expenses were payable for as many sessions/matches as were asked of panels, the GAA has imposed a limit of four. Anything beyond that is to be negotiated locally with county boards and will not be eligible for the Croke Park subvention of 18 cent.
The GAA has confirmed that it is proceeding with the payment of mileage at the 2019 rate of 65 cent, which was reduced to 50 cent during the pandemic with the agreement of the GPA, but has not been paid so far for 2022 because negotiations on the new charter were ongoing.
They broke down last week and the GAA issued the 2022 charter unilaterally.
In a letter to the counties, association director general Tom Ryan outlined what he said was the only difference between that agreement and the new charter.
“For the purposes of clarity, the sole difference between the 2022 charter, and the charter that was in place pre-Covid, is that the 65c per mile expense rate provided for in the new charter covers up to four collective training sessions/games per week only.”
In an interview with Off the Ball on Newstalk, GPA chief executive Tom Parsons said that the players’ baseline was restoration of the 2019 position. Asked was he open to concessions on that, he was adamant.
“No. The 2019 agreement has to go back. That’s a definite.”
He said that if that didn’t happen, the GPA would formulate a response.
“The players will continue to air their frustrations in different manners. This weekend was a symbol of that, not getting access to players in terms of getting their post-match reflections or managers’ reflections, it just doesn’t sit well but players feel very strongly on this and they will take action.
“Players are meeting regularly and they’re discussing it and hoping that the GAA will come back and whatever aspiration the GAA have in terms of how many sessions they’d like to land at a week, let’s work on a different initiative on the basis of player welfare, maybe we might land in the same place.
“I actually believe that we’ll land in the same place. I believe that for some periods of the year it might be five, in other periods four or three. We just can’t have a symbol of the players being in a control mechanism or a rate being negotiable for different counties.”
