Football

Kicking Out: In a time of crisis, ask not what your club can do...

The tunnel that takes players out onto the pitch in lock-down. Saturday night at the Sean MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey where Donegal had been due to play Tyrone in their National Football League clash. All matches have been called off by the GAA due to Coronavirus. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin
The tunnel that takes players out onto the pitch in lock-down. Saturday night at the Sean MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey where Donegal had been due to play Tyrone in their National Football League clash. All matches have been called off by the GAA due to The tunnel that takes players out onto the pitch in lock-down. Saturday night at the Sean MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey where Donegal had been due to play Tyrone in their National Football League clash. All matches have been called off by the GAA due to Coronavirus. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin

TWO weeks ago today, I got into the car, turned right out the gate and headed for Dromore to meet Oran Sludden.

For those of you that missed his interview in yesterday’s Irish News, Oran is the younger brother of Tyrone star Niall.

He could have been a star in his own right, but between the ages of 16 and 19, he suffered three cruciate knee ligament tears.

Captaining Dromore U16s to a county title gave him an incredible sense of pride because it meant that the club was represented in the Paul McGirr tournament for the first time ever.

A county minor for two years, both of which were disrupted by injury and left him only able to come off the bench in successive championship defeats by Derry, he was a star in Dromore’s U21 success in Tyrone two years ago.

Everything in his young life revolved around football.

A young man from a rural area, coming from a big family with a strong history of Gaelic games on both sides, all he ever wanted to do was play football for Dromore and Tyrone.

And when injury took that away from him, he had no idea how to cope. It resulted in a spiral into drinking, gambling, depression and ultimately two suicide attempts before he got the help he needed.

His story is scarily more common than we might realise.

Some of the cultures built within the GAA over the last 15 years have been for the betterment of youth.

Children don’t play football in the street the way past generations did. They don’t gather up in gangs after school and go to the pitch to kick about for hours.

The culture of young men keeping themselves fit and healthy through Gaelic games, whether that’s in the gym or on the field, has become an incredibly important part of Irish society.

But it’s also led to an even greater degree of the physical and mental wellbeing of young people being wrapped up almost exclusively in sport.

Their social circle, their physical exercise, the sense of friendship and togetherness and community. For young Gaelic footballers, all of that is supplied by the GAA.

That is particularly true for inter-county players, whose sense of duty and commitment to the jersey is unparalleled in any sport the world over.

Over the coming months and weeks, every player in the country will find themselves without games to play. Managers have nothing to manage. Fans have none to support. The water-cooler brigade has no square ball or black card or VAR decision to kill Monday mornings with.

We’re in for a rude awakening the next while. All of us.

It’s likely that the National Leagues will be cancelled later this week. Club games will be postponed indefinitely. When the world restarts, it may be too late to have a full inter-county championship, if there’s one at all.

Sport is a pillar of Irish society that feels more shoulders leaning against it than any other.

In the face of absolute abandonment by the government, it keeps rural Ireland’s heart beating pretty much all on its own.

It is an intoxicant that’s been so constant in our lives that you don’t even realise how addictive it is, and that without its presence, what else is there?

As money drives deeper into its heart and creates more, more, more, a stock-take has been overdue.

The world of sport moves at such a frantic, unending, 12-month pace that months just disappear and years blend seamlessly into each other.

Times you might only know what year it is because there’s a World Cup happening.

Weekend plans are built around early kick-offs and late throw-ins. Pre-season training sessions test the loyalty when they collide with Champions League fixtures.

A summer Wednesday evening with nothing else to do, you take in a club game down the road.

Quiet times are filled by the Six Nations or the NFL. If you’re absolutely and completely stuck, there’s Scottish football.

For many millions around the world, sport is not just woven through the very fabric of life, it is the fabric of life.

And so we find ourselves in a tumbleweed situation. WhatsApp groups have self-muted. Pitches are bare, stands are empty. There’s no-one in the bar. The children have taken protective custody of the TV remote, and you’ve no idea when you’ll want it back.

We’re lost. And some, like Oran Sludden, will realise that their lives are so completely wrapped up in sport that they will genuinely struggle to cope.

We’re already seeing evidence that some sense of perspective does still exist.

Sporting clubs the country over have been shut down in terms of their day-to-day activity, yet there are thousands who quickly offered the help of their fit-and-healthy to assist the vulnerable in their communities.

The GAA has always prided itself on being the ultimate community organisation. In the measures being taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus, nothing has had a greater impact on society since WWII.

In the knowledge that there will be no football, hurling, camogie, handball, anything for a while, there is an opportunity to really showcase the true value of what we are and what we have.

That match that seemed so important a month ago has to now be measured against the potential loss of life, and the inevitable loss of livelihood that has already begun.

Clubs have been capable of raising hundreds of thousands to finance capital projects.

Maybe instead of fundraising for the new clubhouse or a second field, these times call for the GAA community to safeguard those who have done so much to build and protect it.

Wouldn’t it be something special to see a club create a fund to help those who might lose their jobs in the coming months, so that they don’t lose their homes as well?

It’s not the GAA’s responsibility, of course, but a crisis only seems like a crisis when it comes to your own door. Unavoidably, this looks set to make an unwelcome entry through a lot of doors in Ireland.

Sport plays such a vivid part in our lives, and it will again.

But this is a chance to re-evaluate the true meaning of community.

As the old saying goes, ask not what your club can do for you, but what you can do for your club.