GAA Features

The Seanie Johnston transfer saga has potential to cause grave harm to the GAA if it goes ahead.

By David Sheehan

This has already been a testing year for the GAA, and we’re only six weeks in. As if the debate over the proposed legitimising of payment to managers wasn’t enough, Dromid Pearses and Derrytresk then weighed in with some handbags – well, one – and mass synchronised hurdling of a barrier, the quality of which athletes at the London Olympics will struggle to match.

The other major GAA controversy du jour is the Seánie Johnston transfer saga. For those who are unaware of the background to this, Seánie – Cavan’s marquee forward for several seasons now – has recently requested a transfer from his native county to Kildare having been omitted from Cavan’s panel by manager Val Andrews.

Johnston told The Irish Independent that he was informed of this decision by Andrews in a phone conversation that ‘lasted no more than ten seconds.’  Quite why Andrews wouldn’t want a player of Johnston’s talents on his panel has been speculated upon but is open to question.

It was in the aftermath of this that rumours began to circulate about Johnston seeking a move to Kildare. Transfers between counties are relatively rare, but there have been a scattering of examples over the years – Billy-Joe Padden moving from Mayo to Armagh being the best recent example.

The most common reason for a move is where a player is working in a location that is too far from his native county to warrant the commute home for training. Naturally, they will then join a club and set up residence in the new county. The rules stipulate that you if you want to declare for a county other than your native one, you must reside and play with a club in that county, unless you qualify for said county by way of parentage.

These rules are there to ensure that any player declaring for a ‘new’ county is doing so for legitimate and practical reasons. Fair enough, you’d say.

The Johnston case, however, flies in the face of the intention of above rule – and is one that could have serious implications for the GAA if his transfer request is granted. For a start, the player works in Cavan town as a teacher. He has expressed his desire to play for Kildare, while at the same time stating that he is loath to leave his club, Cavan Gaels. Clearly, Johnston and Andrews had a falling out and the player is keen to continue his inter-county career elsewhere.

Johnston had given an address in Straffan in his correspondence to Croke Park in order to lend weight to his application, but the Cavan County Board say they are reluctant to accept that this is Johnston’s de-facto place of residence. The glaring question to be asked is why Johnston would seek to make the 129km, two-hour commute from Straffan to Cavan town every day, then back home again every night. Four hours a day travelling? Something here isn’t right, and everyone knows it.

The attitude seems to be ‘he just wants to play football, sure let him at it.’ This is missing the point entirely in my opinion.

For some reason though, any national press coverage on this subject is either on the fence or, more commonly, lending a sympathetic ear to Johnston’s plight. The attitude seems to be ‘he just wants to play football, sure let him at it.’ This is missing the point entirely in my opinion.

The issue here is far bigger than Seánie Johnston, Kildare or Cavan. It’s about the moral fibre of the GAA and the values it holds dear, many of which are in danger of being eroded. Johnston works in Cavan and plays with a club in Cavan – who he had said he didn’t want to leave if possible. How did it come about that Kildare – a county not even sharing a border with Cavan – are the mooted recipient of Johnston’s talents?

I’m not suggesting for a minute that Kieran McGeeney or his county board ‘tapped up’ – to borrow from soccer parlance – Johnston, but it seems a strange coincidence that they are involved here given their need for added firepower up front. Nor does it do them any service whatsoever, that (now former) Dublin reserve keeper Shane Supple has just revealed that Kildare tried to acquire his services last year.

The hand-wringing in the media over this is slightly baffling. Anyone who expresses concern about the legitimacy of this transfer is shot down as a crackpot who thinks that it will ‘open the floodgates’ for a plethora of transfers in the coming years. Nobody really thinks this will happen, because most players want to represent their own county first and foremost, and only transfer if work or some other personal factor dictates. This is clearly not the case with Johnston, who has now sought to move to a Kildare club in order to have his inter-county transfer pushed through. It’s a last-gasp attempt, short of trying to get a teaching job in the midland county.

It’s cute-hoorism, plain and simple. Everyone knows it, but, as ever within GAA circles, nobody is mentioning the elephant in the room. I sympathise with Johnston to an extent, but the association can’t be seen to be bowing to an extremely suspicious and illogical (in geographical terms) transfer request just because one player – albeit a supremely talented one - has fallen out with his manager.