The differences between Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football are quite well known in terms of skill set and the on field play itself as we have seen in the compromised rules or International Rules Series between Ireland and Australia down through the years.
We obviously know that the Aussies use an oval ball and ours is round and that you can take a good few more steps without a bounce or solo in Australian Rules, but what about the differences behind the scenes?
Adam Prescott and his partner Sarah Abdullah from Melbourne are in Ireland this summer and Adam plays what he calls “footie” at what we would call and Amateur level in Australia, the equivalent of a club team in Carlow or Kilkenny in simple terms.
I was baffled to hear that his coach earns up to $40,000 Australian Dollars a year for roughly the same amount of training and games as a standard club Manager in our two local counties. And the coach also has a full time job!
We are well aware at this stage that the ordinary club Manager does get paid, even if it’s labelled “expenses” and that’s no real shock.
Now here’s the peculiar part!
Some players who play at Adam’s level are paid anything up to $1,500 PER GAME!
This varies according to how good you are and how you are performing, but in some cases players might not get any money even though they are playing for the same team at the same level.
Which begs the question..
Is this happening in GAA circles?
It has been speculated that this may in fact be the case in certain clubs in this country which would go against everything that the GAA should stand for, but in Australia it’s all fair game.
I found this to be very interesting and you can listen to the intriguing interview in full in the link below.
