By Daragh O'Leary
Mayo Gaelic footballer, Kobe MacDonald, is about to change sport to Aussie rules when he starts his professional career with St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League. The eighteen-year-old will of course no longer be able to play for his local GAA club (Crossmolina Deel Rovers) or Mayo given that he will be moving to Melbourne, Australia. Naturally, many pundits within the Gaelic football space have begun speaking about the need for some kind of compensation to be given to his local club.
The motivation for this call for compensation is straightforward enough. Kobe MacDonald was developed as a footballer by his local GAA club and intercounty team, but now St Kilda is the club which will benefit from his development. Where the matter of compensation becomes less straightforward is the justification for it.
One of the amazing features about the GAA is that it is an amateur association driven by local community engagement. It is unfortunate then that when the GAA helps develop a player which will generate value for a separate professional club it won’t benefit from any of this value.
However, the amateur nature of the GAA means that its’ players are not paid by nor contracted to their clubs. Although some players may receive expenses and there are rules around switching club, GAA players are not employees of their club or county. Accordingly, it’s very hard to see a reason why an AFL team would have to compensate Crossmolina Deel Rovers for the services of Kobe MacDonald.
Robbie has previously written on the topic of transfers and contracts with reference to Alexander Isak’s transfer saga between Newcastle United and Liverpool F.C. In this post he argues that clubs could calculate compensation as the value of the remaining wages on a player’s contract which should be in line with the club’s valuation of the player’s services. For example, if a player was earning €1,000,000 a year and had three years left on their contract then a compensation fee of €3,000,000 could be paid to the club.
This is where the case for compensation becomes more difficult to justify in the case of GAA players.
They are not contracted to or compensated by their clubs so there are no obvious grounds for contractual compensation if the player decides to leave because there is no breach of contract occurring. Clubs may argue that they invest time into their players through coaching and facilities, but GAA players can point out that they, or more likely their parents, pay membership fees, contribute towards fundraising events, and in some cases volunteer their own time to help the club provide such services.
If Kobe MacDonald moved to Melbourne to work as an accountant, engineer, or teacher, there would be no expectation that his new employer should compensate Crossmolina Deel Rovers. The argument for compensation therefore appears to hinge not on the player's departure from the club, but on the fact that another sporting organisation stands to benefit from his footballing ability.
The non-professional nature of the GAA is something which facilitates this continued lack of compensation which its’ clubs receive for their high-quality players when they transition to the AFL. The lack of any contractual agreement between players and their GAA club makes it unclear as to why these clubs should be compensated when their players decide to leave and play for a professional team who can afford to pay them for
Mayo Gaelic footballer, Kobe MacDonald, is about to change sport to Aussie rules when he starts his professional career with St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League. The eighteen-year-old will of course no longer be able to play for his local GAA club (Crossmolina Deel Rovers) or Mayo given that he will be moving to Melbourne, Australia. Naturally, many pundits within the Gaelic football space have begun speaking about the need for some kind of compensation to be given to his local club.
The motivation for this call for compensation is straightforward enough. Kobe MacDonald was developed as a footballer by his local GAA club and intercounty team, but now St Kilda is the club which will benefit from his development. Where the matter of compensation becomes less straightforward is the justification for it.
One of the amazing features about the GAA is that it is an amateur association driven by local community engagement. It is unfortunate then that when the GAA helps develop a player which will generate value for a separate professional club it won’t benefit from any of this value.
However, the amateur nature of the GAA means that its’ players are not paid by nor contracted to their clubs. Although some players may receive expenses and there are rules around switching club, GAA players are not employees of their club or county. Accordingly, it’s very hard to see a reason why an AFL team would have to compensate Crossmolina Deel Rovers for the services of Kobe MacDonald.
Robbie has previously written on the topic of transfers and contracts with reference to Alexander Isak’s transfer saga between Newcastle United and Liverpool F.C. In this post he argues that clubs could calculate compensation as the value of the remaining wages on a player’s contract which should be in line with the club’s valuation of the player’s services. For example, if a player was earning €1,000,000 a year and had three years left on their contract then a compensation fee of €3,000,000 could be paid to the club.
This is where the case for compensation becomes more difficult to justify in the case of GAA players.
They are not contracted to or compensated by their clubs so there are no obvious grounds for contractual compensation if the player decides to leave because there is no breach of contract occurring. Clubs may argue that they invest time into their players through coaching and facilities, but GAA players can point out that they, or more likely their parents, pay membership fees, contribute towards fundraising events, and in some cases volunteer their own time to help the club provide such services.
If Kobe MacDonald moved to Melbourne to work as an accountant, engineer, or teacher, there would be no expectation that his new employer should compensate Crossmolina Deel Rovers. The argument for compensation therefore appears to hinge not on the player's departure from the club, but on the fact that another sporting organisation stands to benefit from his footballing ability.
The non-professional nature of the GAA is something which facilitates this continued lack of compensation which its’ clubs receive for their high-quality players when they transition to the AFL. The lack of any contractual agreement between players and their GAA club makes it unclear as to why these clubs should be compensated when their players decide to leave and play for a professional team who can afford to pay them for
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