Change to club transfers prime issue as Cork GAA tackle demographic challenges

Demographics. An issue that came up at convention. The divide between urban and rural clubs.

That’s one area that not only Cork GAA is concerned with – but the entire organisation.

That leads you to the issue of player transfers. Something both positive and negative.

Positive in that it aids small rural clubs who acquire players from large urban clubs, but negative in that the reverse is also true.

This topic was brought in during the convention. It’s also outlined in the Cork GAA strategic plan for 2025-30, with three specific actions.

Under the clubs and community section, objective 2.4 is concerned with support for small clubs.

Action 2.4.2 says that the Cork GAA board will “consider amendment to transfer byelaws to support small clubs.” 

Not only was that considered, but one of the motions raised at the convention proposed that byelaw 8 be amended. That amendment was passed, but only partially.

The byelaw in question states the following, “A change of address is not required in the case of a player whose permanent residence is already in the area of the club to which he wishes to be transferred, and who is presently a member of a club which is outside the club area of his residence.” 

There were exceptions to this rule. The county board wanted to eliminate transfers based on several of these exceptions – where a member of An Garda Síochána was stationed, a priest in a parish, and a farm apprentice in a certain area.

Your location of employment was deemed no longer valid grounds for a transfer from your home club. The removal of all three of these exceptions passed with ease.

However, the motion also proposed the removal of one other excpetion – (g) where “A player who is applying for a transfer to the ‘first club’ of his father.” 

This was where opposition was met.

After several minutes of deliberation, it was decided the motion would be split into two separate votes – with the first vote covering the employment exceptions, while the second was solely concerned with the first club of a player’s father.

The removal of that second provision failed, with 76 for its removal and 96 against.

While the only “failure” of the motions brought by the county board – chairperson Pat Horgan acknowledges that the feeling of the clubs on the matter was fair, and that the county board need to find an alternate solution in 2025.

“We brought a total of seven motions to convention, six and a half of them were passed,” he begins. “There was one half of a motion that was rejected.

But in rejecting it, we all agreed that what we were trying to achieve had the same principle.

“Even though that part of the motion was defeated, we still agreed in what we were trying to achieve, but the clubs felt that the father’s first club needed to be there. We said, ‘that's fine, but it [first club of father] is working in reverse’.

“We'll have another look at that in the new year.” 

That directly feeds into the issue of demographics and player retention. Some clubs enjoy an overwhelming number of members and players, while others are struggling to field teams.

The county board have made it clear their intention is to allow transfers from big clubs to smaller clubs, but without the inverse as a way of tackling the demographics shift in society.

DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT

At the moment, transfers from junior rural clubs to senior urban clubs are far more common. That’s an issue the board want to tackle.

“Last year, there was a motion passed at Congress that all counties would have a demographic officer,” Horgan states. “We appointed a demographic officer, Eoghan O'Connor.

“We also appointed a demographics committee, with Dr Janice Harrington, Michael Lynch, John Considine, Padraig Dalton and Brian McSweeney. Just before convention, they presented us with a report.

“What we intend to do there is have a full meeting of the management committee to sit down and go through that report page by page. We also intend to have that report dealt with and discussed and analysed at a county committee meeting early in the new year.

So, there is plans to try and get this report out there to people, hopefully we can make progress on it.

“We need to sit down and see how we can maximize player retention and participation.

“We also need to address the cause for our games not being popular in populated areas. In urban areas it makes perfect sense to adopt a practice of giving priority to playing players on the age to help player retention.

“Rural areas face huge demographic challenges, particularly in the decline of population.”