VALUABLE GAASSET

What are roadblocks stopping David Clifford pocketing a potential six-figure sum per year?

- BY GARRY DOYLE

THERE is an old paradox at the heart of Gaelic games. The players are amateurs. The spectacle is not.

The stadiums are full.

The television deals are rich.

The sponsors are global. The appetite among the Irish diaspora, from Boston to Brisbane to Dubai, is insatiable.

And yet the central figures in this theatre - the elite inter-county footballers and hurlers - remain bound by a creed that was forged in a different century.

The GPAs forthcoming document, The Playbook 2026-28, appears to recognise that tension.

It talks of unlocking commercial value and reconnecting players with supporters. It suggests that Gaelic games must begin to present its stars as people, not merely performers. In truth, it is long overdue.

Consider David Clifford.

An industry source believes Clifford could generate in excess of €100,000 a year commercially. Not through gimmickry or vulgar self-promotion, but through something far more modern: positioning, Mentorship. Access to global corporate networks.

The sort of white-collar events that take place in glass towers in San Francisco or among venture capitalists in Sydney or Dubai.

A Clifford roadshow, we are told, could include corporate dinners, leadership keynote speeches, exclusive coaching clinics for the children of wealthy executives, golf days with business leaders eager to hear how excellence is forged in Killarney rather than California.

It sounds fanciful. It is not.

There are pockets of Irish wealth around the world where Gaelic games are not a curiosity but a currency of identity.

Silicon Valley has millionaires who would pay handsomely for proximity to a generational talent.