IF THIS MAN IS WILLING TO HELP, WHY NOT THE GAA?

GARY NEVILLE has impressed us all since hanging up his boots. In an instant, a ratty, aggressive right back, who did more than anyone else to fuel hordes of football fans in their fundamental belief that United should be hated, was a new man.

On Sky Sports, Neville, from day one, has been fair, honest and fearless in his views on every football team, including the team still holed up in Old Trafford. He has been a brilliant educator. In retirement, too, Neville has become a successful businessman. And included amongst his interests has been a non-league team, Salford City.

He and some of his closest teammates from United’s glory days have poured good money into the little-seen team. They’re trying to do more right now and, in the process of improving the lot of Salford City, Neville and Co were extending a generous hand to locals.

They wished to turn an area of green belt in Stretford into a training base for their own team.

On paper was a new 3G pitch available for locals and sports organisations to use. There were also changing facilities, a car park, and a children’s play area. Even a cafe was being talked about.

But all of these items that are badly needed in the Turn Moss area of Manchester have been whipped off the table by the local council with a deft flick of the back of its hand.

As a result, St Lawrence’s GAA club has watched a small-win lottery ticket blow out of its grasp.

Gary Neville was happy to be of help to the adults and youngsters wanting to play Gaelic football, and hurling and camogie, in the community. ‘Sports playing fields all across the country are being decimated,’ Neville told the BBC. ‘Closed down, ruined, run down because they haven’t got the long term income to sustain them to the correct standard.’

In this day and age, such standards should include not asking young kids to find large bushes to hide behind when they change into their playing gear.

Or telling those same kids to find a room in a nearby retail store to use in order to keep out of the rain.

‘Turn Moss can’t go on as it is,’ St Lawrence’s spokesman, Jimmy Wray told the local Irish World newspaper this week.

‘There are no safe facilities,’ he added, at the same time facing up to the fact that the club’s talks with Neville were possibly over, as Salford City are now looking elsewhere for their training hub.

St Lawrence’s GAA club is 38 years old. In its lifetime it has achieved great success, in the main due to determined efforts to build youth programmes and field underage teams from Under 10s upwards, in a busy and highly competitive sporting environment in Lancashire. St Lawrence’s is one of just under 100 GAA clubs in Britain that fight the good fight, and take on odds every single year that might look simply insurmountable to GAA folk here at home.

The GAA, as an immensely wealthy body, and a foolishly wealthy organisation in many ways (misspending, for starters, millions and millions on county grounds which will never, ever be filled) — has never done enough for them.

Equally, of course, the GAA stands indicted of largely ignoring well over 100 clubs in the United States. Annually insulting its members and tens and thousands of supporters in vital outposts like New York and Boston by sending its All-Star football and hurling teams to South America and the Far East for suntanning jollies, rather than judiciously marketing its games in large cities that are just waiting to soak up love and affection from home.

Those living in the United States and supporting our games have always deserved more from the GAA. But they are well used to being left to their own devices.

Why have GAA bosses repeateadly shied away from making New York, most especially, a bright, glowing example on the world stage of our magnificent native games?

Catering to our own and, at the same time, marketing in the face of perfect strangers with a more than decent, state-of-the-art 20,000 seater stadium?

Making a big statement in New York is one thing which should be done. But also, so much closer to home, in our next biggest market, smaller statements the length and breath of Britain should be the easiest thing for one big committee in Croke Park to agree upon.

Ireland is fine. There’s enough money being thrown around and planted in parishes. The grass roots have never been healthier here.

The days of changing behind bushes and hedges are long over.

THIS month, London lost to Sligo in the first round of the Connacht Championship and almost half of the team were born-and-bred Londoners.

The team was captained for the second year in succession by 26year-old Liam Gavaghan, the son of a proud Sligoman, but a young man who rightly considers himself English having being born and reared in Greenford in West London.

His story and that of others in the city hints at what the GAA could become in London in the future.

Back in March, with Ireland and England braving the ‘Beast from the East’, the team manager Ciaran Deely had his team training in a domed training pitch owned by his friends in Queens Park Rangers football club. Deely, on his Twitter account, posted photos of his lads working out and asked if there was a team in Ireland enjoying better facilities during the treacherous spell of weather?

The answer was ‘NO’, but rather than turning green with envy at a space-age looking dome in London, our GAA bosses need to remind themselves of our young members still stripping off behind bushes in Lancashire. It’s not good enough. And neither is it good enough waiting on handouts from a kindhearted Gary Neville.