Why send our stars abroad when games must be grown here?
THIS time last year, Aidan O’Shea needed something to keep his body ticking over for the winter and stop his mind from dwelling on another heart-breaking All-Ireland final defeat. So he signed up for Sligo All-Stars, a Division 1 basketball outfit, and spent the winter treading the boards until fate conspired to see him roll an ankle.
The extended break from Gaelic football ultimately worked in his favour, returning to play the role of talisman on a Mayo football team still chasing the Holy Grail of All-Ireland success, his efforts enough to earn an All-Star.
At the moment, O’Shea is out in Australia, captain of an Ireland team playing an International Rules game that involves a set of modified rules. Throwing himself again into a different code.
On Sunday, the AIG Fenway Hurling Classic takes place in the iconic surrounds of Fenway Park in Boston, the famous baseball venue. All-Ireland champions Galway take on Dublin while 2016 champions Tipperary face that year’s National League winners Clare with the inaugural Players Champions Cup on offer.
Just like the International Rules, the players will operate under a set of modified rules.
It’s hurling, but not as we know it with soccer-style goalposts in a goals-only game. The 11-a-side format has short corners, the option of tap-and-go frees and a sin bin. It has a Television Match Official that a referee can call upon when required. All interesting innovations in their own right to fit the reduced pitch size abroad.
Now the bold claims of growing the game abroad may sound hollow when, in reality, the venture is tied up in a financial shakedown of an American market that is a profitable source of revenue for the Gaelic Players Association, but the packaging and marketing of a modified game is exactly where attention should be focused.
Except not in Australia for a game that only exists once or twice every year, or couple of years. Not in Boston. Here. Right across the country.
The astro surfaces of Ireland are thronged with GAA players of all ages, shapes and sizes playing soccer for the winter, because there is no social outlet to keep them involved in their clubs. When official competition ends, that’s pretty much it.
It’s crying out for the GAA to design a social game for Gaelic football and hurling to rival fivea-side soccer and tag rugby.
Yet here we are, jetting O’Shea to the other side of the world to play a game that doesn’t exist and Joe Canning to showcase hurling in Boston when he would be the perfect poster boy for a game custom-built for the vast majority here.
Back in 2011, then Sligo football captain Charlie Harrison was the driving force behind a ‘Tag Gaelic Football Festival’ which took place in Sligo IT. Devised along similar lines to tag rugby, the ball was turned over after one tag, there had to be two girls in a team of seven. Clubs were invited to bring a panel of 14 following a league that ran for nine weeks. Harrison is now the GAA’s National Cúl Camps Co-ordinator.
Behind the scenes, work is ongoing by the association in the whole area of recreational games with ‘Fun & Run’ being a new initiative.
Camán Abú and Peil Abú have been road-tested by the GAA’s games department and ‘Super Games Centres’ are another initiative where underage players from any club can rock up at a designated venue and just play.
The GAA’s dropout rate has been well documented, in part, because there is still no organised or codified version of recreational Gaelic football or hurling readily available.
Between Masters football, over-40s leagues, charity matches and the like – various initiatives have sprung up to fill the gap and have proven to be popular.
There is a market there, just ready and waiting to be tapped.
Except it’s not just in Boston or Perth. It’s right here. Anyone for five-a-side?
‘Astro pitches are thronged with GAA members playing soccer for the winter’