GAA Digest: DCU's Niall Moyna and Donegal's Jim McGuinness spar over Martin McElhinney O’Byrne Cup

A round of this week's GAA news

Former Mayo boss John O’Mahony believes the time is right for the GAA to pay managers after a Croke Park report designed to promote debate on the issue.

GAA director general Paraic Duffy urged the association to tackle the issue of payment to managers and coaches head on after the publication of his discussion document.

O’Mahony, who won two All-Irelands with Mayo, is in favor of the third option in Duffy’s report which allows for inter-county bosses to receive regulated payments.

“The motivation of nearly all managers is the desire to win and be successful -- not to make money,” said O’Mahony, who is now a politician for Mayo, in The Irish Times.

“Why not legitimize payments to managers and bring transparency to it? I would be in favor of that.

“There’s not too many millionaires from managing inter-county teams. I’ve heard it said about particular managers that they’re very mercenary but I haven’t met one who’d swap an All-Ireland for hundreds of thousands.”

Meanwhile, Dublin manager Pat Gilroy is adamant that he would not take on the Dublin job in a full time capacity if the offer was made by his County Board.

“If someone said, ‘You’ve to give up your job to do football’ I wouldn’t put my hat in the ring for it. My career is important to me -- this is my pastime and what I enjoy doing. If it was my job, it wouldn’t seem the same for me,” he told the Irish Independent.

“I could totally understand guys in different counties thinking differently -- we don’t have big distances to travel in Dublin, but personally the whole thing suits me as it is.

“I think it would be healthy to have a very open debate about it because it seems to be a thing that is talked about in dark corners.”
 
Galway Cuts

Galway boss Alan Mulholland is to cut his squad ahead of the National Football League after trying out new players in the Connacht FBD League.

“We wanted to give the young lads a chance to see who is good enough at this level, and the lads we have brought in have done well and shown they are up to it,” said Mulholland after Sunday’s win over Sligo.

“What we are trying to do now is get down to the 30 or 35 players we are going to carry for the Allianz League, and we will do that in the next week to 10 days. Finalizing the panel will be very difficult. The problem you have is with the lads that are not under-21 anymore. There is no safety net for them.

“If we don’t carry them into the League panel then they go back to their clubs and, with all respect to the clubs, the training they will be doing would not be as intense as we will be doing at inter-county level.

“Those are the real heartbreaking decisions for me, and how to keep them involved when they are not going to be playing regular games with us is the real challenge.”
 
Brawl Investigated

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