“If you take a small club in Kerry, five families could be the difference between a club surviving or not,” according to Kerry chairman Tim Murphy.
Shifting demographics within the GAA have been a growing issue in recent years but the last 12 months of pandemic lockdown have lit a candle of hope that the great migration eastwards might slow a little in the years ahead.
Growing numbers of people working remotely have been able to relocate in the past year, a process that Kerry GAA have been trying to promote even before coronavirus hit.
“Kerry GAA has been working with every stakeholder imaginable to try to promote rural Ireland and get people back,” says Murphy. “We have things like the digital hub in Sneem where jobs, and highly-paid jobs, are sustainable. That’s the sort of model we’d like to see replicated.
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“I would expect that it will start happening. The single biggest impediment to that is the quality of broadband. That’s starting to improve and the hope is that with the National Broadband Plan being rolled out things will get better.
“If there’s one thing we learned from Covid, many people can work from home even if they have to go to Dublin once a week or so. We’ve two flights daily from Farranfore just as an example.”
In the west of Ireland, it’s a similar story. Only last week, former Mayo footballer Enda Varley, who as a teacher in Dublin played for St Vincents for five years, announced that he was transferring back to his home club, Garrymore.
He says that in the new climate he and his wife are actively considering moving across the Shannon.
“We’d be exploring going off across the west again over the next 24 months. In my age bracket now, I wanted to finish with club at home and I had it in my mind years ago.
“When this is over, hopefully employers will continue to see the benefits. My wife’s company is offering the two or three days at home and the others in the office and vice versa. When that’s on the table there’s a huge range of options for people who want to live in the country.
“I know for a fact in clubs around my area at home there were 35 to 40 players training during the summer of last year, which was unheard of – things have moved in the last year.”
He says that the current enforced migrations have opened people’s eyes and he sees Connacht as being the province with most to gain.
“In the south you’ve big cities like Cork and Limerick and big towns. Galway is not a huge city and job opportunities across in the west wouldn’t be as strong and I think it would benefit most from people moving back home.
“One of the positives coming out of the pandemic is the decentralising of Dublin, which needs to happen. The benefits of being in Dublin are the social aspects of living in a big city but with everything shut down, you’re still paying city rents and weighing up the pros and cons, thinking, ‘why am I living in Dublin now?’
“The quality of life for a lot of people is brilliant when they leave Dublin or go home. Cost of living drops and you’ve more space and fewer people.”
Tim Murphy is also a member of Croke Park’s outgoing ‘Community Development – Urban and Rural – Committee’ which conducted a pilot study of four counties – Kerry, Tyrone, Westmeath and Roscommon – with a view to assisting clubs to model their economic and demographic trajectories and producing a toolkit for clubs planning their future.
There is a motion that wasn’t taken at February’s annual congress but which has been postponed, to establish a planning and training officer, part of whose sub-committee remit would be “to monitor demographic changes within the county”.
“It was one of the proposals for congress that has been deferred to special congress,” says Murphy. “Demographics for me as a county chairperson is going to define the GAA in years to come and that goes for urban clubs as much as rural.
“Peripheral areas may be declining but town populations are exploding, as we’re finding in Kerry and many clubs haven’t the physical facilities to cope with increased numbers.”
