Aren’t they well looked after in Kildare, getting to play their club championship games for free!
It seemed to take the GAA community by surprise on Saturday, when a tweet from former Mayo footballer Conor Mortimer led us to the conclusion that Kildare GAA charge players on their way into play League games. Coming from Mayo, where players have the privilege of getting to play League games free of charge, it was obviously a shock to the system for Mortimer, who has recently took over Monasterevan Gaelic football team in Kildare.
If somebody from each county can reply to this question that would be great .. are players charged going in the gate to PLAY games in your county ?
— Conor.mortimer ⚽️ (@Conmort) June 19, 2021
It was in the reply section where you’d have found a whole host of shocked onlookers, the usual yes-people but most entertainingly of all, you’d have also found some institutionalised Kildare people with war stories to tell.
SportsJOE caught up with a Kildare club player who told a war story of their own, before confirming that their League commitments will cost them around €80 in gate receipts this year.
“I remember the first time I went to a gate to play a game, and the man at the gate goes ‘a fiver.’ I went ‘sorry man I’m playing.’ He goes ‘a fiver.’ There was another time I pulled up to a gate with no cash on me, and your man sent me back to the garage down the road and told me there’s a cash machine there. I thought it was a piss-take at the time,” the player said.
“I’m playing first and second team at the minute, and it’s a fiver at the gate to play in every game. We’ve eight League games now, it’s a fiver home and away on the gate. The second team have something similar and that’s a fiver every time as well.”
“This is going back many years. It’s not a thing that’s come in just because of Covid. That’s just become the norm here.”
SportsJOE made contact with the Kildare county board but hasn’t yet received a reply on the subject. It does, however, seem that Kildare are the only county in Ireland who operate this pay-to-play model.
