Burning issue: The Seanie Johnston transfer saga

One of the longest transfer sagas in GAA history was finally put to bed recently, but it hasn't stopped people talking about Seanie Johnston. Two of the JOE team have their say.

Sean Nolan says... So I get to write in favour of Seanie Johnston’s transfer from Cavan to Kildare? Well that’s easy. How could anyone, apart from a die-hard Cavan fan, be against it?

Transfers have happened in the GAA as long as the Association has existed. The list of players, just off the top of my head, who have played for more than two counties includes Billy Joe Padden, Billy Sheehan, Declan Darcy, Shea Fahey, Larry Tompkins, hell, Vinny Murphy played for both Dublin and Kerry – in two different codes to boot!

So the notion that the GAA is anti-transfers, or that Johnston was attempting something unique, is patently wrong. And just to remind everyone, Ireland is a free country so players can live wherever they choose, for whatever reason, and the GAA has no right to tell anyone where they can and can’t live.

So the opposition to Johnston’s move seemed to be based on the fact that there was an ‘invisible’ hand, some element of engineering about how he ended up in a county who could really do with another decent forward. The facts are that he was excluded from the Cavan panel and wanted to play inter-county football. If an opportunity to do that arose in Kildare, where is the harm?

The vast majority of players are not going to move house just because they have been dropped. Kieran Donaghy has not been looking for houses in Straffan on the back of his omission from Kerry’s starting XV on Sunday as far as I know.

The idea that Johnston sets a dangerous precedent is clearly nonsense based on how many transfers have happened in the past. The details of his case were very specific and while some may question how he came to wash up in Kildare, where a man lives is nobody’s business but his own. And his bank manager.

And, let’s face it, the Johnston saga has kept us amused for at least six months. In the long dark days of winter, a good row is the staple of the GAA fan. In the past we have been able to rely on a strike or two, and Banty made a bid to keep the embers burning this closed-season in Meath but Johnston’s protracted move was the story that kept on giving.

And here is another reason why this could be good for the Breffni. Cavan GAA hasn’t been in the spotlight like this since the mid-1950s and if anything can build an ‘everyone’s against us mentality’ in Terry Hyland’s squad this year this is it. Harness the power Terry, make Cavan relevant again on the back of this perceived slight. That’s a plotline for the summer we wouldn’t have had without Johnston’s switch.

Ultimately, the GAA is an amateur organisation. Whatever rules they wish to apply, they have to bend to the lifestyles of their players, now more than ever. From emigration to travelling for employment, players are on the move for numerous reasons these days. Hundreds of players have moved clubs in 2012, many of them abroad but many inside the 32 counties too. Johnston’s case should have been passed without fuss once he renounced his allegiance to Cavan Gaels. That it didn’t reflects poorly on the structures that are in place. Let’s hope no other players get dragged through a similar process.

The way it turned out, the former Breffni man may not be a Lilywhite this year in any event due to the latest rules brought in regarding transfers. That may well please some as he serves a form of unofficial ‘ban’ on the sidelines but it does the GAA, and the vast majority of those who love the games, a disservice that we are even still talking about a matter that should have been resolved months ago.

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Conor Heneghan says... It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Joe Brolly – as a Mayo man, I was fuming when he accused Donal Vaughan of diving in the National League Final earlier this year – and when I do, it’s grudgingly such is his often smug demeanour on The Sunday Game couch.

When addressing the extremely thorny Seanie Johnston transfer saga on Sunday night, however, I found myself subconsciously nodding in approval at the points he had to make when voicing his opposition to the transfer being allowed to go ahead.

Why? Well, for a few reasons. Although plenty of top-class GAA players have transferred to other counties in the past and plenty will do so in the future, there are few who have done so in the same circumstances as Johnston.

On the face of it, his switch to Kildare seems like a marriage of convenience for a county who might just be one clinical forward away from a serious tilt at an All-Ireland and a player who, with all due respect to Cavan, is unlikely to win anything with his native county in the few years of inter-county football he has left.

You can understand the ambition of both parties in that marriage. As a top player, Johnston wants to mix it with the best and be in contention for medals on a regular basis. And when the opportunity arose to snap Johnston up, there would have been very few managers who wouldn’t have done like Kieran McGeeney did and welcomed him aboard.

Johnston has rightly claimed that, having been dropped from the Cavan panel, he wasn’t going to be playing inter-county football anyway and was within his rights to fulfil his ambitions elsewhere.

But, without knowing the ins and outs of his exclusion from the Cavan panel under Val Andrews, surely his absence would only have been a temporary one.

After all, Johnston has been Cavan’s star performer for years and has been described by DCU colleagues such as Bernard Brogan as one of the best players they’ve ever played with. As it turns out, Andrews eventually got the bullet in Cavan, but even if Terry Hyland wanted to try and get him back earlier this year, there was far too much water under the bridge at that stage.

But would Johnston have even wanted to go back? Would any sense of loyalty to his county and to his club Cavan Gaels – who had nothing to do with his omission from the Cavan panel in the first place – have come into play?

And loyalty is one of the key issues at play here. As Colm O’Rourke pointed out on The Sunday Game, players shouldn’t necessarily be tied down to one club. But they shouldn’t be allowed to move willy-nilly either.

Johnston has provided all the documentation required but it’s pretty clear it’s not convenient for him to be commuting three hours a day to and from a town where he already lived and still works and racking up significant fuel expenses while he’s at it.

We’ll never know now whether Johnston would have gone back to Cavan in different circumstances but it seems doubtful and now that Johnston’s move has been sanctioned, where will it stop?

Will we see other strong players from weaker counties seeking similar moves and putting their own personal ambition ahead of the needs of their county? Obviously that might be stretching things a bit, but Johnston’s case still sets a dangerous precedent and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.