Rural clubs depending on GAA for solutions

All things going well, I’ll hop into the car on Tuesday and drive down from where I live in Lucan in West Dublin to home, which is Enniscrone in West Sligo.

I’ll aim to be back in time for training, as we get back into the swing of things ahead of the start of the new GAA club season.

The journey from east to west has become a familiar one for me in the last few years and is one you’d often curse, but at the same time I wouldn’t change it. To have the freedom to be able to continue playing with my home club is something I have become even more appreciative of in recent times, even if the journey back to the capital can feel never-ending after losing a game!

It’s a trek that many hundreds, even thousands, of club players will make dozens of times over the coming months.

For many others, though, circumstances don’t allow that.

Time is eaten up by other things – work, family commitments and whatever else – meaning that travelling up to 12 hours a week on the road to play football or hurling just isn’t possible. A transfer to a club in the capital is inevitable for many people as they want to continue to play the game that they love but just can’t do it anymore with the club they’ve grown up with.

The issue feels particularly pertinent this week as we reflect on the GAA’s Congress which took place on Friday and Saturday last in Donegal. Happening amidst a busy sporting weekend, it went under the radar slightly, but one section in particular stood out like a sore thumb.

Put simply, the very fabric of the GAA – the club game – is facing a crisis. In many cases, it is existential.

Speaking to GAA.ie, Benny Hurl, the chairperson of the GAA’s National Committee on Demographics, said that the association is ‘sleepwalking into something that’s going to be catastrophic’. The figures released to accompany Saturday’s discussion on the topic were stark.

44 per cent of the island’s population, along the east coast, is serviced by just 19 per cent of clubs in the country. This area, geographically, is a relatively thin sliver hugging the Irish Sea, stretching from Wexford all the way up to Belfast.

Contrast that to the province of Connacht, which has 13 per cent of the island’s clubs (213) yet has only 8.4 per cent of the population. Those two sets of data sum up the GAA’s problem – and there are no signs of it getting better any time soon.

It is ironic that this situation has become so pronounced given that, way back in 1971, the GAA had already identified an issue in the area of demographics.

54 years ago, the MacNamee report noted that “the association is weakest where the population is increasing; it is strongest where the population is declining.” In many ways, areas where the population is increasing now have a new problem: places to play. In Dublin in particular there are many examples of clubs struggling to find grass areas to hold training sessions and play matches. It's a good problem to have but, at the same time, it's not an easy one to solve given the premium on space.

On the flip side, the clubs in the areas where the population is declining are now fighting a losing battle against the changing demographic tides across the island.

There have been suggestions that the GAA can become more creative in terms of the rules of engagement. In more sparsely populated regions, games of nine or 11-aside between clubs with lower numbers has been mooted; so too has cross-border tournaments similar to the Táin League in hurling, which facilitates competitions that cross county boundaries so clubs of similar strength can play one another.

One wonders, however, whether before we get to that stage, can the GAA help beyond the realms of sport and become more creative in helping address imbalanced regional development?

The GAA is always referenced as one of the great cultural pillars of Irish society; a unique and powerful organisation that has roots in every corner of the country. That strength and depth of feeling does not mean that the association is immune from being negatively impacted by wider societal issues, but it does mean its influence carries weight.

The pull of people – young people in particular – to our cities is in some cases unstoppable and has always been a way of life for many. But nowadays the decline in population in our more rural areas means people aren’t just going to our cities to study, or to live for a few years before coming back to their home areas. They are staying for good because of a number of factors, not least economic.

It’s a tricky balancing act for the GAA. Has it the wherewithal to get involved in economic issues, or is that overstepping the mark?

I am not sure how the GAA can make its presence felt in that regard and perhaps the growth of urban areas at the expense of more rural parts of the country is just a fact of life. Liam Heffron’s article in these pages over the Christmas period on the decline of a rural village in North Mayo poignantly underlined the point.

Of course, the economy and its health is part of the government’s remit but surely in the area of rural development the GAA can play its part in helping create an environment where its clubs in more rural areas can become more sustainable. This will happen by having more employment, more facilities and a greater sense of opportunity in parts of the country that currently feel a deficit in those areas.

The association has a lot on its plate already but if it feels it can play a greater role and make a positive impact in contributing to a revival of sorts in rural Ireland, then it should roll up its sleeves and get stuck in.