GAA President To Tackle Illegal Payments

The GAA President is to blow the whistle on illegal payments to team managers.

Nickey Brennan made a commitment to the clamp down shortly after the monumental decision last week to provide grants to top GAA players.

Mr Brennan announced he is to commission a committee to look at the problematic Rule 11, which is being circumnavigated by teams to pay their managers under its provision for 'expenses' due its vagueness.

In defence on how the recent decision on grants has affected his plans for rule 11, Mr Brennan said: "It is no great secret that the whole amateur code is being tampered with by a number of people and it is nothing to do with players' expenses or grants.

"I have felt Rule 11 is very loose and bland at the moment and I think we need to re-define it in the context of amateurism today and what we mean by it."

However, Mr Brennan is yet to quell speculation that the recent rule change is not the tip of a slippery slope pointing to an eventually professional GAA.

He said: "It is clearly defined now that players can market themselves and get paid for that and still not infringe our amateur status.

"You have players now getting cars for winning All Stars and we just need to make sure that our rules incorporate that."

The outgoing president further said he believed the it was important to look again at rule 11, and that it would not erode the amateur status of the game.

(DW/JM)