Funding has to be sorted for our elite performers
Ray Flynn is angry that a number of Ireland’s international-standard competitors do not get adequate government funding but there are grants going to inter-county players in Gaelic football, hurling, Ladies Football and camogie
IRECENTLY returned from Spain after spending almost a month there. My remit in Spain was to help coach and mentor some high performance athletes who were training for the European Race Walking Cup in the Czech Republic and the forthcoming Olympic Games in Japan.
Some were coming back from injury and illness and have only a very outside chance of Olympic qualification. A couple more definitely won’t make it this year but, nevertheless, have put their lives on hold and are training full-time with a view of one day making Olympics or wearing the Irish vest in international competition.
One such athlete is a young man from Westport, Cian McManamon, who has based himself in the Spanish town of Guadix (high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains) since January. Race walker Cian, pictured, holds a slim enough chance of being on the plane to Tokyo but has put himself in the best possible position to do so. Another athlete there was Kate Veale, a gold medal winner at the World Youth Championships in 2011, who, since being crowned race walking champion of the world as a 17-year-old, has hit on hard times due to injury and illness. Like Cian, she is doing everything possible to recover and compete at a high level internationally. Those two athletes receive no government grants from
Sport Ireland and are selffunded. Other athletes in our group were in similar positions while others were on very minimal support. As I travelled home alone my mood wasn’t great after a difficult camp due to Covid-19 regulations, with PCR testing and segregation the order of the day.
However, this was compensated a great deal by the fact that life was pretty much normal in Spain, with bars, restaurants and coffee shops all open. Access to athletics tracks and gyms were as normal, too. The 11pm curfew didn’t affect us. My mood deepened a great deal on the bus journey to Sligo as I read on social media that Jack Chambers, our great Minister of State for Sport and the Gaeltacht, had granted intercounty Ladies Footballers and camogie players additional government funding.
Every Ladies Footballer and camogie player in the country – at inter-county level – will receive a minimum of €1,200 euro whether they win, lose or draw a match in a totally domestic sport.
This money, as well as the funds allocated to their male inter-county
counterparts, amounts to 67% of all government funding for Irish athletes. Yes, 67% to a domestic game not even played at international level. Of course, on reading this my first thoughts were with Cian, Kate and the other athletes I had bid farewell to a short time earlier but I also thought of all our other athletes, our cyclists, our rowers and all the other international sports people who represent Ireland but live on crumbs.
I also thought of the best sportsperson ever to come from Sligo, namely Mary Cullen, and remembered the paltry funding she received and the fights she had to get it.
Something is definitely wrong with sport in Ireland when our government and Sport Ireland have allowed a farcical situation like this to happen. Good luck to the GAA, LGFA and the Camogie Association and their county players, but this situation in any language is totally wrong.
Imagine telling this to someone, say in Spain, that a game of marbles was going to get 67% of state funding and all other sports would receive the remaining 33%.
Of course, all other sports will continue to do our country credit on the international stage. No doubt, if one of our international athletes manages to defy all the odds and bring home a medal from Tokyo, our Minister of State for Sport will be the first to meet them at Dublin Airport, something he would not be able to do for the sport that gets 67% of his sporting budget.
“Something is definitely wrong with sport in Ireland when our government and Sport Ireland have allowed a farcical situation like this to happen.”