The demands on inter-county GAA players have been the topic of much debate in the last year. Lee Chin made headlines by admitting he was going forward without seeking a traditional full time job. Being the best he could be for the Wexford hurlers takes up the majority of his attention.
Chin's decision is merely an unusual step in a bigger trend for GAA players. Playing for your county requires the commitment of a full time job, if not more. The GAA playing body at present is filled with eternal students and teachers, with their evenings and summers free.
Is it what they want to do though? When GAA has left these guys behind in ten or fifteen years, where will their career be? If not for their playing career, would they have chosen teaching for the next 40 years? Would they have 3 degrees but no practical experience by the age of 30? Is the lives and careers being left behind GAA players as they strive to get the very most out of their short playing careers.
It's a subject that's very close to the heart of former Dublin football captain Coman Goggins, who heads up AIB's National Sports Ambassador Programme.
Speaking to Balls at the announcement of AIB's 5-year extension to their sponsorship of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship and All-Irleand Club Championships, Goggins explained the idea behind the the Programme, which was set up in 2016.
In AIB, there has always been a tradition of having sportspeople in the organisation, and particularly GAA players.
So I guess the programme is aimed and looking to see what GAA players have we in the organisation. How can we make AIB an attractive place to come and work for somebody who's given so much time to sport, and trying to be the best they can be on the sporting field.
And then how do we maybe help those people build out their career, supporting their on-field commitments against their long term career, and how do we support them and help them develop within that, given that they're playing 35/40 hours a week in an amateur sport.
How do you then help them try to grow in their business role and support them to try and achieve that? So I guess the role is trying to capture all that.
The subject of leaving your career behind when playing inter-county GAA is something that Goggins recognises himself but says that current players are getting better at anticipaying what will come after sport, and are willing, like Chin, to use their high profile to their advantage. Too many though, according to Goggins, are willing to just wait it out and put their career on the backburner during their playing days.
I'd say some are good, and some less so. I probably wouldn't have been overly great at it. You arguably have a profile while you're playing inter-county football. Some guys might leverage off that to try to build their career. They might have a defined career path off that they follow and that leads to further down the track. But a lot of guys and girls invest so much time trying to win an All-Ireland that they maybe park their career and are happy to just have the 9-5 job and an income coming through.
I guess the real value in looking at something like this is how do you leverage off your profile to try and build your brand within your organisation and how to do map out a career path and can we help assist with that?
I would say guys and girls now are a little bit more tuned in to their career than maybe I was, but there's no harm in trying to help them talk to the right people within the organisation to see where are you trying to bring your career to and how can we assist with that, so that in ten or fifteen years time when they're finished playing inter-county football that they're at a standard within the organisation that helps them to move quicker as opposed to starting at the bottom.
For AIB, their association with the GAA is obviously mutually beneficial. Players such as Colm Cooper, James McCarthy, and James O'Donoghue are regularly associated with the bank, but Goggins says there needs to be a balance there in terms of their leeway at work.
Anybody who's employed in the bank has come through a fairly rigid process in terms of taking a position, so it's not a case if just employing guys or girls because they're playing inter-county sport. Anybody coming in is being placed into a position where there's career development for them.
But the key understanding is that locally, their line or area manager understands that they have this massive commitment outside of work that will sometimes need to be facilitated above maybe someone who maybe doesn't have that workload, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that they need to contribute to the organisation in terms of their daily work.
For employees of AIB, someone like Goggins in his role in the National Sports Ambassador Programme means players can have the best of both worlds - career advancement and giving everything they have to their GAA career. There are doubtless many organisations up and down the country who make similar allowances for their players. One hopes that more can follow, and that being an inter-county GAA player doesn't always mean giving up your formative years in the work force in the search for the Holy Grail.
AIB yesterday announced a five-year extension to their 27-year GAA sponsorship.
The extension covers the All-Ireland Club Championships of which, AIB have been title sponsor since the 1991/1992 campaign, the All-Ireland Football Championship, first sponsored in 2015, as well the AIB Camogie Club Championships, which AIB have been involved with for the last 5 years.
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