Rugby's expansion won't harm GAA

On Gaelic Games: What's the latest biggest issue facing the GAA? Weekly columns sometimes labour under the misapprehension that there's sufficient crisis to keep us going on a continual basis. Sadly this is not always the case. Optional approaches include a bit of humour but that's dangerous.

Humour is one of those things that if done badly, even with the best of intentions and the most buoyant self confidence in the ability to amuse, achieve the opposite effect of that intended. Instead of chuckling, the reader grows by degrees contemptuous, angry and finally bored.

Such are the frequently insecure thoughts of the columnist emerging from slumber on the morning of another instalment. So imagine the relief when a topic floats unbidden through the ether and plays upon the ears before the head has even left the pillow.

This serendipitous awakening related to the impact that rugby was having in Tipperary. The concern itself isn't new but here it was placed in a specific context. According to a report yesterday on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland, Abbey CBS in Tipperary town, traditionally a Gaelic games school, was now being love bombed by the IRFU and beguiling increasing numbers of young players.

It was an interesting item with the underlying message that the GAA was now under threat in its heartland. There were elements of the report that raised issues the GAA would do well to address but there were also topics that would have been very familiar to members of the association.

A couple of pupils expressed their own comparative views on the games: "There's a better sense of a team effort in rugby. People play for each other," said one. "There are a lot more places for people who aren't so fit," was another comment.

That of course is how the games are. There is more mass movement in rugby and soccer because of the offside rule but one of the great appeals of football and hurling is the way they set 14 individual contests into an overall competitive structure. Maybe it highlights individuality but it doesn't diminish the importance of playing within the team.

The second matter of providing enhanced numbers of recreational outlets was also echoed by Johnny Lacey, the IRFU Development Officer for Munster when talking about mini-rugby: "The IRFU have taken the winning out of it; it's all about participation and it's all about fun, getting them to enjoy the experience because if they enjoy the experience they'll stay with us."

This is now accepted practice in relation to children's sport in all games and forms the basis for the GAA's successful Go Games initiative. It recognises that in an open market, as it were, young people have to enjoy what they're doing if they're going to stick with it and enhance their skills.

Lacey added: "They're traditional GAA schools we're going into now and we're recruiting huge numbers." Figures supporting this indicate that the number of young players taking up rugby in Munster has increased in the past five years from 9,000 to 21,000.

So far so bleak for the GAA in its heartland. It reminded me of a friend who used to like entertaining the company by reprising a great old number from the early 1990s: "The GAA's f***ed, lads. Just one more world cup will do it - anything, even a hockey world cup." This is part of a syndrome in its own way encouraged by the GAA over the years: that exposure to any other sports might well prove fatal to the well being of football and hurling. It underpinned the rationale behind the various bans.

It's all of 40 years since the first soccer World Cup to make a major impact on the GAA, the one hosted and won by England and the first to be widely available on television. It's fair to say that the GAA has got over that and were its concerned members and officials to have been granted a glimpse of the future back in 1966, they would have been gratified to see how robustly it competes on television and in terms of match attendance.

Neither has the GAA been left behind by the growth of sporting choice, as evidenced by the number of talented, emerging hurlers in Dublin who are attending traditionally rugby playing schools and the deepening penetration into middle-class areas of Dublin traditionally more associated with rugby.

There's nothing wrong with a wide range of sporting choice for children, who are allowed find what suits them best and the GAA won't lose out because of it. In fact the Abbey CBS in Tipperary has a strong sports orientation and is still a vibrant GAA school.

Within the past 15 years it has won three All-Ireland B titles between football and hurling and was in the football final as recently as last year. It has also won trophies in soccer and tennis.

Rugby has always had an established presence in the area with three clubs, Clanwilliam, Kilfeacle and Galbally, in close proximity to Tipperary town and so when Abbey took up the game, there was an obvious catchment among the young people of the area.

The 12,000 rise in the numbers of young people playing rugby in Munster over the past five years is presumably partly attributable to increased opportunities to play the game, as schools open up their sports curricula.

It is also a reflection of the great success of the Munster rugby team over that period and naturally the radio item yesterday morning was part of the build-up to this weekend's European Cup final between the province and Biarritz.

That sort of exposure is invaluable to any sport but the GAA can take heart from two factors. Gaelic games remain the strongest sporting television presence and accounted for the most watched, the third and fourth most watched of the top 10 most watched sports events on RTÉ during 2005. Secondly, there will be no Munster - or anyone else - on terrestrial television next year, as the European Cup has been sold to Sky.

Munster and Ireland flanker Alan Quinlan, an Abbey alumnus, was interviewed yesterday and after a slightly tendentious, but not invalid, attempt to link rugby's success with professionalism, commented: "I've noticed a huge change over the years in the number of kids in my area where I was brought up myself, who are enthralled and excited to have a Munster jersey on. I suppose in years gone by it would have been a Tipperary jersey."

Nonetheless in three weeks' time with the rugby season over and Tipp a match away from the Munster final, there'll be no shortage of blue and gold jerseys.