Irish American Football Association responds to Navy charges of forced payments

IAFA responds to his charges.

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The Emerald Isle Classic will feature University of Notre Dame's Fighting Irish versus Navy in an American Football match played out at Dublin's Aviva Stadium. The event is expected to draw tens of thousands of tourists to Ireland, and create a major boost for tourism.

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Last week Navy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk stated that there was an attempt to have them pay the local American football football organization in Ireland before the Navy/Notre Dame game was authorised Here the IAFA responds to his charges.

To understand the issues surrounding the Emerald Isle Classic, you need to understand the structure of sport in Ireland. Unlike the United States, sport is regulated. The Department of Transport, Tourism & Sport and one of its agencies, the Irish Sports Council (ISC) recognize one National Governing Body (NGB) in each sport which has an organized national structure. To maintain this status, NGBs must adhere to prescribed standards in areas such as corporate governance, finances, child protection, coaches certification etc and hit annual development targets agreed with the ISC.

The system can be described as a ‘social contract’ whereby the NGBs regulate their particular sport in return for development funding from Government. All competitive sport must adhere to the various guidelines, not just those activities run by the NGB.

Public policy also dictates that local grassroots sport must benefit from all large sporting events hosted in Ireland. While each NGB is ultimately responsible for the development of its own sport, such events are expected to contribute. NGBs in Ireland jealously protect their right to seek development contributions from the promoters of large events as part of the sanction conditions.
The Irish American Football Association (IAFA) is the NGB for American football. Like many of the smaller NGBs in Ireland, it is a voluntary members’ organization with no paid staff. Since its formation in 2001, its membership has increased from less than 100 to over 1,700. It achieved NGB status in 2004. Its principal activities include running Ireland’s kitted football league – the IAFL, which as 11 teams and a further 6 in development; a schools flag football program with approximately 700 kids; and training courses for coaches and officials. It is regarded as being one of the better run NGBs in Ireland – hence it is one of the very few which has not had its grant aid cut due to Ireland’s economic recession.

When the Emerald Isle Classic was first muted, the IAFA contacted Martin Cullen TD, who was Minister for Sport at the time. It highlighted the need to put in place certain development initiatives to cope with the additional pressures that the surge in demand generated by the event would place on its volunteers. Lessons learned from previous large football events, showed that a failure to put these supports in place could have a very negative impact on the sport locally.

For the Emerald Isle Classic, the IAFA identified childrens’ flag football and university sectors as being the areas most in need of support – hence the inclusion of the schools program and the equipment donation to universities as the principal development initiatives. The IAFA’s schools flag football program is already oversubscribed and has a long waiting list of primary schools (grade/middle schools) wanting to participate.

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