New three-year project aims to rebuild GAA participation on Cork’s northside

Cork GAA officially launched the Cork Northside Project Action Plan at Na Piarsaigh GAA last Thursday, which is aimed at reversing the decline in GAA playing numbers on the northside of the city.

Backed by €150,000 from Munster GAA Council and rolled out across 10 clubs, 21 primary schools and eight post-primary schools, the Northside Urban Project will aim to increase participation and retention among children who are currently slipping through the cracks.

The clubs included are St Vincent’s, Na Piarsaigh, Delanys, Brian Dillons, Mayfield, Glen Rovers/St Nick’s, White’s Cross, Carraig na bhFear, Whitechurch and Gleann na Laoi.

Historically one of the traditional powerhouses of Cork GAA, the northside is now classed as the third most socio-economically disadvantaged area in Ireland, and just 20.2% of primary pupils and 28.1% of secondary students are playing GAA with their local club.

The new initiative is designed to confront that by building nursery programmes in every club by 2027, strengthening school links, expanding coaching numbers, and bringing the games directly into estates, greens and community hubs.

Cork GAA are aiming to grow underage playing numbers from 1,243 to 2,000 by 2027, recruit and train 135 new coaches, as well as increase the percentage of primary school children engaged in club activity by 64%, and post-primary by 58%.

It is a full-scale rebuilding project, rooted in participation, inclusion and re-establishing Gaelic Games as a central part of life on the northside.

“This project has been going on for nearly two years,” said Mick Hennessy, Cork GAA Games Development Co-ordinator for Cork City’s northside at the launch.

“It's 10 clubs, so you divide that €150k between 10 clubs and you're getting equipment. But are you going to get people who are going to commit?” he said. “So the biggest thing here is the retention of players within the clubs.

“What we find in the city is a lot of them drop off at 14, 15, 16. A lot of the kids at that age, in the environment that they're in, they tend to just drift away from GAA. And we're trying to work on that at a younger age to make it that they love it so much so that they never want to do that.

SUPPORT

“It’s happening in every county. We looked at it from three different strands, we said, ‘how can we support the clubs? how can we support the post-primary schools, and how can we support the primary schools?’ “So primary schools, the majority of schools in the northside have GAA, so we said let's give the clubs equipment that they could give to their school coaches to go and train those kids.

“The second thing then was post-primary, a lot of those lads didn't have the equipment, schools were ringing me, asking me can we get equipment down below, can we borrow stuff, and I didn't have it,” Hennessy explained. “So to us, let's give them to the schools. There's 20 helmets, there's 30 hurleys. So we did that for the schools, all the schools wanted goalposts as well, so we gave them goalposts. And they’re delighted with it.

“The third strand obviously was schools coaching. There's a huge amount of schools coaching, and it costs a pretty penny for each one of those clubs.

“I'll give you an example, the GPO model in Na Piarsaigh is €20,000 a year, so they now have 75% of that paid for between Cork GAA and Munster Council. So when you put it like that, that's a significant investment, and they can then put that money back into their club and other strands. So that's where we got the idea.

“Take Whitechurch. They have one national school outside. They now can say, instead of doing one day's GAA, you might do two days. They can increase it then and have the support of the county board and Munster GAA, which I think is a fabulous initiative.” 

“The Munster GAA Council would have identified our urban areas in each and every county, so this this was the area identified for Cork,” said Niall Twomey, Head of Coaching and Games Development. “It's to put in those extra supports around the coaching, sports kit and equipment for the primary schools that are there as well.

The focus there is to provide an environment where we can get more children exposed to GAA coaching and games, and by doing that is to keep them involved and keep them active as often as possible. 

I think that'll transfer directly, if we create an enjoyable games environment for those kids at primary level and post-primary school level,” he said. “They'll stay with the game and they'll stay with their clubs that's a win-win for everybody.

“I think for clubs, it's to ask the question what is a GAA club about?” Twomey remarked. “It should be about that young kid coming in at seven years of age, coming into a really good environment, still being involved at 17, still being involved at 27, at 37, 47!

“Contributing to the club, rather than focussing on a winner takes all attitude at U10 or U12. Because we have brilliant GAA clubs as environments and as community hubs and it's to keep people involved with the clubs keep them in here as long as possible.”