THERE was a lot of frustration this week in relation to GAAGO and rightly so.

To me, it’s a case of ‘let’s fleece the Irish public, let’s charge them, sure they’ll pay’.

This isn’t a poor connectivity rural broadband issue or an age argument. Well, at least it shouldn’t be.

The key games in GAA should be free to air and that’s about it. The GAA is built on hundreds of thousands of volunteers at school, college, and club level.

These are the people that make the GAA, these are the people who develop players to reach a high level and bring us intercounty rivalry and excitement.

And yet, what do the GAA do?

Put the top games behind a paywall and make those same volunteers pay for the privilege of watching the players that they and others developed.

GAAGO is co-owned by our state broadcaster RTÉ, where our television licence is already paid to, and who receive significant funding in the millions from our government from the public taxes.

I’ve heard the arguments all week. RTÉ’s Head of Sport Declan McBennett is on the board of GAAGO. Their argument is that there are so many games in a condensed season that they can’t show them all on RTÉ.

They can certainly show the big games and we all know what ones those are. 

It’s not by chance that it’s the big games that are behind the paywall.

We also have Virgin Media Television and TG4. Virgin Media Television came out with a statement on Tuesday evening; ‘’When Sky Television decided not to renew its GAA rights, the GAA did not approach other broadcasters to ascertain whether they would be interested in broadcasting these games but arbitrarily decided to put them behind a paywall.”

The question must be asked, did RTÉ pay anything for these rights or did they just agree to keep them behind a paywall to drive incremental revenues for both partners in GAAGO i.e., RTÉ and the GAA’.”

That says it all really.

The public is being utterly disrespected by our national broadcaster and the administrators of our national game.

On to happier matters, huge congratulations to our Cork minors who won back-to-back All-Ireland titles last Sunday and their fourth in five seasons.

DOMINANT

Since Jerry Wallace took over this grade in Cork, we haven’t looked back. To reflect back to my earlier paragraphs, it’s the schools and clubs of these players that should be extremely proud and Jerry pulls their great work together and steps it up a notch as a unit.

The 2020 campaign was cancelled, and I remember that being very upsetting for the girls. At that point, Cork were going for three in a row and confident of getting it. We lost 2021 to Kilkenny but bounced back to win the last two.

Waterford failed to get out of the blocks in the opening quarter, testament to their lack of experience on big days such as this and Cork pounced, an Emily O’Donoghue goal on seven minutes effectively keeping the distance between the sides once Waterford found their stride.

With 1-5, O’Donoghue deservedly got player of the match having kept her composure to point three in the closing quarter, two from play, after missing a couple of earlier frees. Erin Curtin with four points from play and Laura Dunlea also impressed.

Waterford needed to get more ball into the dangerous Maggie Gostl at full-forward, but Cork did well to minimise the supply.

Tipp defeated Cork in the Munster junior semi-final last Sunday. This competition, going only as far as Munster with no All-Ireland arm attached to it for Cork, goes under the radar somewhat.

There was very little to separate the two with Tipperary’s Jean Kelly’s late strike ultimately deciding matters, 1-10 to 1-6.

It’s still a healthy competition as it gives players intercounty action that they otherwise may not see and it brings more players to the eye of Intermediate selectors.

Elsewhere, Miriam Walsh, the 2022 GPA Players Player of the Year, side-lined since February with an ACL injury, underwent her operation three weeks ago.

A huge loss to Kilkenny, no more so than the loss of Ashling Thompson to Cork.