GAA is losing 'to a double-edged sword' of superclubs and rural population decline

Eva Osborne

As the population shifts from rural to urban areas, the GAA is "losing blood to a double-edged sword", according to John Harrington, chief correspondent of the GAA's official website.

In an article published on the sport's body's website, Harrington references a map that illustrates how almost half of the island's population lives in a sliver down the east coast of Ireland. Yet just 18.6 per cent of GAA clubs exist in this region.

He said this demonstrates the rapidly changing demographics of this country and how it is the biggest challenge faced by the GAA.

img Photo: GAA

"Rural GAA clubs are struggling to field teams because they just don’t have the numbers, while urban GAA clubs have major issues catering for the surging populations in their catchment areas," Harrington writes.

"Ireland’s increasing urbanisation is a challenge of which the GAA has been aware for a very long time.

"Back in 1971, the report of the McNamee Commission noted that “the Association is weakest where the population is increasing; it is strongest where the population is declining.

"In the intervening 54 years the situation has gone from bad to much worse, to the point that the Association is now faced by a “catastrophic” vista."

Harrington referenced the chair of the GAA’s National Committee on Demographics, Benny Hurl, who said successive governments have "allowed rural depopulation to occur".

“More and more and more people are gravitating towards the towns and the cities. We are where we are now and we're sleepwalking into something that’s going to be catastrophic," Hurl said.

"We are at a crossroads. There are so many clubs out there that are under huge pressure and it’s not just a rural issue, it’s an urban one too."

Hurl equated the loss of a local GAA club with the loss of a sense of community.

img Photo: GAA

“The GAA club is the glue that holds everything together so the local impact of losing a GAA club would be monumental, it would be unimaginable," he said.

One obvious solution in the short-term is to revitalise the already existing urban clubs that are struggling.

Harrington said 'super clubs’ with huge memberships have not just grown in Dublin and other urban sprawls because they are the only club in their area, they have also drained talent from less successful clubs around them.

The article follows a report last year by Sheffield Hallam University’s Sport Industry Research Group, which examined the broader economic and social contributions of Gaelic games across Ireland.

"The Economic and Social Value of Gaelic Games on the Island of Ireland" examined the broader economic and social contributions of Gaelic games across Ireland and provided valuable insights into the challenges faced by rural GAA clubs, including issues related to rural depopulation and demographic changes.

More recently, Mayo football commentator and columnist for the Western People Edwin McGreal compared the scale of the clubs which won the All-Ireland football and hurling club finals.

Cuala won the football and another big Dublin club, Na Fianna, won the hurling. "It is possible to laud their achievements while also expressing concerns about numbers. Both clubs are what are known as ‘superclubs’, clubs with 3,000 members or more," he wrote in the Western People.

"By way of comparison, no club in Mayo has close to that number of members. Indeed, the vast, vast majority of clubs in our county would draw from a population of less than 3,000, never mind a membership of 3,000."