Babs Keating on modern GAA: Reducing minor hurling to U17 was a joke
HURLING ICONS: Tipperary's Michael 'Babs' Keating and Cork's Gerald McCarthy gave it all to the counties as players and managers. Picture: Paul Mohan/SPORTSFILE
TIPPERARY hurling legend Michael 'Babs' Keating has criticised the current governing body of the GAA and fears they're "divorcing themselves from the older generation".
After starring for his county from his teens, and winning the big prizes as a player, Keating went on to bring Tipp back to the summit at senior level as an outspoken manager in the '80s and early '90s. He also had a controversial stint with Offaly and a second coming with the Premier in 2006 that ended in disappointment.
Never afraid to speak his mind, in a wide-ranging interview with , Keating has expressed huge concern with some major decisions taken in recent years at GAA headquarters, from the decision to run All-Irelands off by July to only selling tickets online and moving minor down to U17.
Lowering minor from U18 was done with the intention of decoupling underage and adult competitions but expecting 17-year-olds, many of whom are only in fifth year, to step up en masse to the senior sections of the clubs has proved disastrous for player retention. In Cork, a knockout U19 grade was introduced but it's a stop-gap solution, only offering one guaranteed game to each club, and marred by scheduling issues.
The GAA had promised a Special Congress to sort the issue of their own making this off-season but instead they've pushed it back to next year's regular congress, dragging the problem into 2023.
“I just don’t understand so much of the GAA’s decision-making anymore," Keating told Christy O'Connor. "The way the Jubilee teams were treated before the All-Ireland final was a disgrace. If they were going to treat those great players so poorly and introduce them an hour before the senior match when nobody was in the ground, why couldn’t they have played the minor final?
“Anyone who knows anything also knows that reducing the minor to U17 is a joke.
"I also think there are too many football people making big decisions. If it continues the way it’s going, I’d be saying to the hurling counties to break away and run our own association.”
The move from taking money at the gate for matches to expecting everyone to pre-purchase online has proved controversial too.
“The GAA isn’t relating to the people who supported the association all their lives. They are divorcing themselves from the older generation, who were every day match goers. This idea of asking older people to go online and buy tickets is a joke. Even myself, I don’t have a facility to print a ticket to go to a club game. I was at a ladies football match recently and luckily enough, someone knew me at the stiles because I didn’t have a ticket."
Here on Leeside, the split-season has largely been welcomed because it's the only way club players can get a meaningful programme of games through round-robin championships, but it is unusual not to have any inter-county action in August.
“I don’t think the GAA hierarchy are fully tuned in. I understand wanting to give the clubs more time and space, but having the All-Ireland finals in July is the biggest joke of all time. We finished with the inter-county game before the Premier League started and a full season of the Premier League will nearly be over by the time we see another hurling championship match.
“It’s nearly the same in some counties with the club championships. To have the Wexford county hurling final over before August 14 is hard to understand.
The 78-year-old also re-iterated his complaint that the sliotar is too light, something he wrote about repeatedly in his columns over the years.
“With the ball travelling so far now, it often wouldn’t worry me if I never saw a hurling game again. Hurling balls are not supposed to travel 130 yards. Would it happen in cricket or any other game? No way.
"The way hurling is now, my generation have no interest in it.”
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