GAA must stem the trickle of top players to the AFL now before it becomes a flood

Finnbarr Roarty’s decision to sign a contract with AFL side Collingwood came out of the clear blue sky last week, one of those stories that genuinely caught you on the hop. He is a magnificent footballer, the 2025 Young Player of the Year and a fella who was going to be a cornerstone of the Donegal team for the next decade.

He may or may not be a better Gaelic footballer in a few years for his time spent as a professional athlete in Australia, but wondering how he might reintegrate to Gaelic football is the best-case scenario for Donegal right now. It is as likely as not that he has played his last game for the county.

Jim McGuinness’s greatest talent as a manager might well be getting his players to believe in him utterly and in his project. If the GAA could have chosen one person to try to plead the case with Roarty that his future would be better served in Ireland then McGuinness might have been the unanimous choice – and that’s before you consider that he and Roarty are clubmates.

That even McGuinness couldn’t convince him to stick around is a potent indication of the appeal of Aussie Rules to young Gaelic football players.

If Kobe McDonald wins Young Footballer of the Year next week, then the AFL will house four of the seven baubles given out in that category this decade after Oisín Mullin won it in 2020 and 2021.

Mullin’s progress in the AFL in the last couple of years, this season in particular, is one of the great Irish sports stories. He has shown an incredible facility as a tagger, a player sent out to try to nullify the opposing team’s best player.

And as James O’Donoghue astutely pointed out on the Football Pod this week, his success in that role is portentous.

Previously Aussie Rules teams would have gone for Irish players with ability in the air, more often than not the biggest specimens they could find. They are not all that common.

But if they see the benefit now in bringing over lads who are around 6ft with unbelievable aerobic ability and work rate, then they could have the pick of about 80 per cent of each intercounty squad and certainly anyone who plays in the “middle eight”.

We have had winters where the spectre of our best young players being spirited away from us has loomed large, but this might actually be the time to start panicking. Where this panic would lead us is another, rather more difficult question.

As usual when faced with these thorny GAA issues, I turn to my colleague Ken Early. His suggestion? “Excommunication. If you sign for an AFL team, then you and your entire family are to be excommunicated from the GAA, never to be allowed become a member again. You’re looking at me like I’m crazy ... you people used to love blanket bans.”

Early’s conviction is admirable, but I can’t help but feel it’s a little heavy-handed. Alternatives don’t exactly jump out at you, though. The GAA is pinning its hopes on recategorising Irish players, who are currently Category B rookies. If the AFL were to deem them Category A rookies then young Irish players would have to be included in the salary cap and take up a slot on the squad roster.

This would, in theory, make an Irish player less of a “shot to nothing” and might make AFL clubs think twice. But as the hit rate increases for Irish players, that may prove a small deterrent.

The GAA is apparently willing to bring back the International Rules as a means of stabilising the relationship, a return that would be regarded with, at best, a transcontinental shrug of the shoulders.

There’s a real hostility towards the AFL in many corners of the country. When Mayo played in Kerry in the league this year, there was a strangely worded banner, visible on the TV coverage, that read “AFL – Hands Off Kobe. Breed Your Own.”

I don’t really need my GAA banners to be quite so eugenics-coded, but they were preaching to the converted in Kerry as discontent over the poaching of their best young players is bubbling barely below the surface.

This is a specific GAA problem in one respect, and a societal fact of life in another. Young people will want to move to Australia, whether or not they have an AFL contract waiting for them on arrival.

There is no leverage the GAA can use to keep them here apart from the same ties that motivate us all: place, family, all that good “emotional blackmail” stuff. It’s not nothing, but it’s also not enough for more and more people.

If the GAA wanted an indication of what the All-Ireland senior football championship might look like in 10 years time then they need look no further than the Ladies Gaelic Football Association. There is no doubt the standard in the women’s game over the last two years has decreased as the number of players in the AFLW has grown.

No competition can bear the loss of nearly 50 of its best players. That’s not happening in the men’s game yet, but we’d be fools not to consider ways to slow the stream, starting today.