Rural GAA clubs are at a crossroads with many continuing to struggle
IN MAKING the case that the conference he helped organise on rural GAA the previous weekend was not a whingefest, Mark Conway tells the story of Loughmacrory.
It is not a town or a village, more like a glorified crossroads in the Tyrone countryside and up until 1972 it had no true sense of itself as an organised identifiable community.
That was the year they founded the GAA club and 47 years on that decision has transformed the landscape, physically, economically and socially.
They were initially given a GAA pitch by Omagh Council, bought their own grounds at the turn of the Millennium, built a state of the art clubhouse, including a bar which is the only one in the community.
They also leased the three-acre lake from which they take their name and have turned that expanse of water into a hive of social and economic activity, facilitating, fishing, triathlons and other water sport leisure activities.
On their grounds, the local community association developed a building – one which has been extended – which incorporates a gym, a childcare facility and other community based activities.
‘One of the measures of depravation is access to services and in a study in the Six Counties Loughmacrory was deemed to the most impoverished in a government study a number of years ago. From a standing start a GAA club has helped to change that,’ explains Conway, who came to national prominence as the face of ‘One Belief’, who unsuccessfully campaigned against the introduction of state grants to inter-county players 10 years ago.
‘This was actually the worst place in the Six Counties to suffer a heart attack because of access to hospitals and A&E, but now at least there is a defibrillator in the local GAA club – one of the legacies of the Cormac McAnallen trust but if we did not have the GAA we would not have that.’
It may be an oversell to regard the local GAA club as important as life and death, but in communities like this it is the most vibrant link between life and living.
Loughmacrory was one of the clubs that contributed to a presentation at Tyrone’s centre of excellence in Garvaghy last Saturday week, convened to discuss the continuing development, relevance and challenges facing rural GAA clubs.
It was the first of its kind; suggesting the GAA family fracture lines may extend beyond the club/county debate to one between rural and urban.
That was not its intended vibe, but the differences play for real.
City GAA folk will argue differently, but the importance of the rural club is magnified far beyond what happens on the playing pitches.
‘The GAA end up in rural areas doing a lot of the work that the state would do in urban areas.
‘For example, we had that disaster in Cookstown a couple of weeks ago but It was the local GAA clubs who were on board straight away on the Monday morning, getting young people talking, organising the stewarding for the funerals and not waiting for the health and social services,’ suggests Conway.
But while the relevance of rural GAA clubs to their communities hardly needs stating, the challenges they face are not uniform.
If there is a constant thread, though, it is a lack of state investment in vast swathes of the Irish rural hinterland on both sides of the border.
Rural depopulation, particularly along the western coast is an issue which in extreme situations is threatening the very existence of clubs, but even where population is not an issues, employment and housing opportunities continue to hinder.
‘Planning policy is very important and that is something that keeps coming up,’ adds Conway. ‘The ability of people to build houses in rural areas is constrained and that has a huge effect on GAA clubs. ’
In truth, the answer to the sustainability of rural clubs lies within rather than in the hope of a change of approach in government.
Whether that is in becoming drivers in local development issues or having the vision to pool resources, as in amalgamating at underage level where depopulation is an issue, they will have to find a way to stay alive.
The Kerry chairman Tim Murphy was among those speaking at last weekend’s event and the figures he presented were bleak.
One in every five clubs in Kerry can no longer field a club at minor level and that number climbs to three in 10 at Under 16 level.
The decision by GAA congress in February to reject a motion brought by Valentia Island which sought to tweak a rule to allow Under 17s to play non championship with junior clubs with a single adult team, suggested that there is no appetite to legislate for those in the survival business.
‘There is a thing in life called the law of unintended consequences which basically states that what can seem like a good and worthy idea on paper can actually end up delivering a negative result. What happened with regards to that Valentia motion at Congress is a classic example of that because the rule they were seeking to amend is doing more harm than good. There seems to be a wee tradition in the GAA now of doing those things,’ suggests Conway.
That ‘wee tradition’ could be argued to be evident on the focus providing supports to the GAA in urban areas.
‘We estimate that 2.6M people on this island live in places of less than 5,000 people and that is more than all the cities put together,’ Conway states. ‘Our view of the world is that the GAA is not about the games but is about who you are and where you are from.
‘When we talk about urban regeneration, what basically governments are asking is those two basic questions, who are you and where are you from? The beauty of the GAA is that it does just that.’
Keeping it beautiful is the