When sporting organisations reach out to potential participants, overtures are rarely extended in any meaningful way to one particularly under-represented demographic on our playing fields – mammies.
But in the GAA at least, things are changing. As part of the Women in Sport initiative – which was rolled out to clubs in 2008 in an attempt to encourage more diverse involvement in games – the Gaelic4Mothers movement began in earnest.
From what started out as a small number of enthusiastic clubs fielding teams during its formative years, the annual Gaelic4Mothers blitz in Dublin attracts more than 1,200 members from across the country for what is now one of the association’s largest tournaments.
As rain begins to pelt against the windows of Athlone GAA club on a tempestuous Tuesday evening, you couldn’t blame even the best of trainers for cursing the squalid conditions. As Trisha Jordan and her local Gaelic4Mothers colleagues prepare to face the elements, a certain word beginning with F does appear to be on everyone’s lips – fun.
“We do focus mainly on fun. We have lots of fun, but we do put in a good training session as well,” says Jordan (35), a civil servant and mother of three, who got the team up and running in 2013.
“I can come down here, get my fitness, get my hour of training, my kids can be on the sideline beside me. My son at the minute is playing an under-10s match, my husband coaches, so it includes everybody.”
At the heart of Gaelic4Mothers is the non-competitive ethos. Scores are not kept in matches, and people of all abilities and backgrounds are welcomed.
Jordan tells me that participants range in age from 20 to 50, some are working mothers, some are homemakers and others aren’t mothers at all (anyone over the age of 18 who isn’t involved with a competitive team is eligible to play).
It may be fun and games to an extent, but a cursory glance around a pitch intricately laden with bollards and cones belies a team that’s serious about their training.
“They say it’s non-competitive and we go out to non-competitive games, but sometimes when we go out, we murder one another for the game ball,” says Mairéad McKnight (40), a teacher who played camogie a number of years ago before her two children arrived. “If you have played sports all your life, you can’t go onto a pitch and say ‘this is non-competitive’.
“It’s not just fitness of body, it’s fitness of mind and, when you work full-time and you’re rearing children as well, it’s two full- time jobs. It’s a great way to release energy.”
The social aspect is an integral component of Gaelic4Mothers, as is community. Jordan’s husband, Séamus Mitchell, coaches the team, as does Denis O’Sullivan, whose three daughters also take part.
From China, Michelle Surlis moved to Ireland recently after she and her Sligo husband decided that the family should “put down roots” here with their 10-year-old daughter Orla.
“The GAA community here are really very welcoming, very friendly, so that’s why we continue to come,” says Surlis, who played Gaelic for more than a decade in China and was chairwoman of Shanghai GAA in 2012. “It feels nice to be doing something, because we would always have been busy helping with the business [in China]. It’s a big move and I’ve never been a stay-at-home mum before. It’s nice to do something, just try to apply my mind to something.”
Like many others on the team, Surlis’s daughter lines out with an underage women’s football side.
Family component
Trisha Jordan’s three children also play for Athlone at different age grades. They are often all up at the club’s sprawling pitch complex at the same time. She sees the family component as being an important part of it all.
“I love the fact that we can have the kids beside us, it puts it into the routine to go out and exercise . . . it’s just a natural progression for them to join teams.
“That’s one of the huge bonuses for me, not seeing mothers just turning the car in the car park and dropping husbands and kids off, that they’re actually coming out and getting on to the pitch and wearing the jersey the same as our male counterparts,” she says.
As we speak, October’s national blitz in Portmarnock is just around the corner and the clubhouse is a hive of activity with women signing up for the bus ride and hotel ahead of that “day of days” in the Gaelic4Mothers calendar.
“The fun is absolutely unbelievable, it’s just fantastic. We were there last year and there were women playing in tutus, there were women with warpaint on their faces and some with wigs. It was just absolutely fantastic.”
Whatever the result, the women of Athlone can be thankful that their town plays a key role in promoting one of the association’s most progressive and inclusive programmes.
Gaelic4Mothers was featured during The Irish Times/Pfizer Healthy Town project 2015. For further information and tips for a healthy lifestyle, see irishtimes.com/healthytown
