‘I see a huge gap in children’s lives’
Absence of sport has serious mental and physical consequences for our youth - McKernan
WHEN Kevin McKernan joined the Down football panel in 2007, while he was still in his late teens, he grabbed a ride with a team on such a rapid upwards gradient that they went from Division 3 to an All-Ireland final appearance inside three years.
At 33, just as his career is about to run out of road, he senses the end of his journey being full of possibilities with the county upwardly mobile again after spending the bones of a decade in the doldrums.
Mind you, their prospects were not helped by controversy early in the year when manager Paddy Tally was hit with an eight-week ban as Down were found to have breached the GAA’s collective training regulations.
It is a place McKernan has no interest in visiting, arguing that the real issue for the GAA and leading politicians during this pandemic are the children whose physical and mental lives could suffer a toll by a regime of almost continuous lockdowns.
It is a cause close to his heart. A relative latecomer to formal education, it has now become an all-consuming passion. McKernan was 25 when he swapped his trade
‘IT WON’T BE HARD FOR THEM TO GET DETACHED FROM SPORT’
as an electrician to enrol in St Mary’s University in Belfast, studying as a teacher which set him on the path to St Ronan’s Primary School in Newry.
Between family, football and his career he already had a lot on his plate before the ‘PE and Wellbeing in Schools’ course caught his eye at the start of 2020.
What might have been viewed as an abstract course back then is now seen as cutting edge, with fears that the lockdowns brought on by Covid is leaving the type of scars that statistics will never show.
‘I started that last January before the pandemic hit and now that course has taken on a whole new meaning to me with the way everything has unfolded,’ he admits.
It has opened up all kinds of doors, including a commercial one. McKernan is on board as a programme designer for start-up company Primal Fitness, who detail fitness and wellbeing programmes for individuals, clubs and schools (details at schools@primalfitness.online or clubs@primalfitness.online).
More than anything, it is informing the educator in him although the value of sport and exercise to children isn’t something that needed to be pointed out to him.
‘I have always been aware that there is a correlation between wellbeing, fitness and academic achievement,’ says McKernan. ‘The reality is that the fitter you are, the healthier you are, the more chances you will get to succeed in academia as well. When you see the challenges that are in all schools it is important that we reach out to our children and ensure they get the recommended two hours of PE per week.
‘Before this pandemic arrived, there was another one that preceded it because of the times we are in and so many people were living such unhealthy lifestyles.
‘So how do we balance letting children back into school, ensure their literacy and numeracy has not fallen behind but, more importantly, what are we going to do about their wellbeing and their fitness as part of that? I do think there has to be a huge focus on how we boost children’s physical activity levels in schools in the aftermath of this,’ he insists.
He concurs entirely with the sentiment of Donegal All-Ireland winner Éamon McGee, who issued a warning recently that the GAA was in danger of losing a generation of players to PlayStation, so badly has the lockdown scrambled the lives of children.
‘I see a huge gap in their lives when they can’t have access to their sport. Even back in September, October and November they were still not getting their sport and I remember we had a big GAA day in the school on the week we played Cavan in the Ulster semifinal and one child turned to me and said: “Mr McKernan, when will we actually get to see you playing in a match?”.
‘And he did not mean on television and it struck a chord with me because if children can’t play their game or can’t even go and watch the game being played, it is not hard for them to become detached from it.
‘If you look at the disruption of one year through an adult’s life it is unpleasant, but if you are looking at it through a child’s eye it has a far bigger impact and potentially longer lasting.
‘When I was a kid I went out into the back garden kicking a ball and pretending to be Conor Deegan, Mickey Linden. I was lucky that my father, Brendan, had played for Down and won an All-Ireland (in 1991) so I wanted to emulate that so I kicked the ball off a roof and when it landed, in my head I was catching it in Croke Park.
‘That love, a pure raw desire to go out and play is still there in kids but for vast periods of the last nine months there has been no sport.
‘No generation has ever gone through that before and I really do think we have to job in the GAA to reignite that love in some kids again and feed their imagination.
‘If you go back to what Eamon said, it is very easy to lose a generation of footballers. When they don’t have that physical outlet of going down to their club three of four times a week and I can see that in the kids in our school and in our club how they are lost in the absence of that social connection, outside the physical benefits of it.
‘Clubs really have to understand how can they knuckle down and get these children reinvigorated and ensure that enthusiasm and love is there for the sport when it does return,’ he continues.
‘I do believe that the work I have got involved in with Primal can in some small way bring routine to children but as a whole the GAA, clubs, schools and families have to put in a huge effort in to ensure they re-engage when hopefully things reopen in the summer.
‘I have no doubt we will do that because the GAA thinks differently. There is no organisation in the world that has that pure grassroots support, a huge volunteer ethos to get the work done again, but I just hope that it is sooner rather than later.
‘It took the pandemic for the GAA and everybody to reassess as to what is a realistic and better way forward, and that started by recognising that the club is more important than the county.
‘Having a defined season is what club players want but it is also very good for county players.’
Although Down have had a difficult start to the year, he also believes there is a realistic and better way forward for the Mourne men, who have not won the AngloCelt Cup since 1994.
Seeing another 30-something in Raymond Galligan lift the provincial silverware last winter got McKernan thinking and hoping.
‘I am 33 now so hopefully I will give it one more year and, you never know, what happened for Raymond Galligan and Cavan could happen for me and Down.
‘You are always hanging on for that one big victory, that one big moment you can always look back on after.’
‘WE HAVE NEVER HAD A GENERATION GO THROUGH THIS BEFORE’