Páidí O'Se after leading Westmeath to a first Leinster title with a win over Mick O'Dwyer's Laois in 2004. O'Dwyer had led Laois to their first Leinster title in 57 years in 2003. Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho
These days, the expertise and appliance of science expected at club level have increased exponentially, but so have the costs. One estimate suggests they run at €10 million in the club game, on top of the acknowledged €44 million for intercounty budgets.
The starting point for GAA president Jarlath Burns’s Amateur Status Review Committee was the steepling costs of paying managers, and if that’s an overly narrow focus for the broad subject of amateurism, the issue itself is seriously challenging.
An old solution to this problem has been floated – a prohibition on coaches working outside their own units, club and county. It is a nuclear option and of course, doesn’t remove the possibility of large sums of money continuing to change
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