belfasttelegraph

Wednesday 19 June 2013

GAA machine is striving forward

Kerry celebrate their All-Ireland victory last year

The GAA season may still be in its infancy in some respects yet it is already clear that the country's biggest sporting body is set to chalk up a significant coup in one respect.

As the countdown begins in earnest to the Championship programme, the Association is guaranteed to enjoy its highest-ever media profile.

Yet the fact that gaelic games will jostle with the European Soccer Championships and the Olympic Games for that most valuable segment of support - television viewers - should ensure that complacency will be conspicuous by its absence on the PR front.

With multi-sponsors already signed up for the All Ireland football and hurling championships and lucrative television rights deals secured, core finance has already been copper-fastened.

Now the drive to entice fans through the turnstiles on a regular basis will be launched in earnest at a time when soaring costs of essentials are forcing a review of domestic budgets across the country.

Perhaps it's just as well, then, that the feel-good factor which the GAA tends to nurture and the vibrant optimism that pertains in most counties provide the dynamic for media coverage that borders on the obsessive.

From the lofty environs of RTE - the national broadcaster will televise no fewer than forty live championship matches spanning both codes - down to the most modest of local newspapers, GAA will be accorded a position of eminence.

Indeed, such is the desire within RTE to fuel what is a voracious appetite for our national games that a further gaelic games correspondent is to be appointed with responsibility for television news coverage.

Brian Carthy, long since established as the RTE radio voice of GAA, hails this development, viewing it as a significant step in the station's expanded coverage.

"Having been at the coal face of GAA coverage with RTE for over a quarter of a century, I would concur with the belief that gaelic games currently enjoy a huge profile throughout the country," maintains Roscommon man Carthy, "There would appear to be an ongoing thirst for knowledge of topical events and there is now an even bigger onus on those of us charged with capturing the essence of the Association to maintain and enhance our output."



The proliferation of tabloid 'red-tops' now flagging up GAA as their mainline sport, the saturation coverage in the quality Sunday publications, the ubiquitous local radio phone-ins and the insatiable appetite for post-match analysis from former players and other cogniscenti testify to a voracious demand.

Even up until a decade ago GAA coverage was largely confined to areas of the media where writers and broadcasters were preaching to the converted.

Today, in a pluralist society in which the GAA has given a lead on several fronts - the opening of Croke Park to other sports, a dynamic anti-drugs campaign, a concerted drive to provide the best facilities for members spanning all ages, creeds and classes - the Association, for all its human imperfections, enjoys a level of overall credibility that is the envy of many other organisations, sporting and otherwise.

And that's certainly something to write home about.