Team and club games carry benefits that cannot be replicated by individual sports or private recreational activities, writes SEÁN MORAN.

IN THE sunny years of my youth, before the fall of reality's dark shadow, there was a fellow student whose response in moments of confusion was to twitch agitatedly and mutter: "Me head's full of figures, me head's full of figures."

He sprang to mind last week in the swirl of publicity that followed the release of the latest ESRI report on sport, the fifth study in conjunction with the Irish Sports Council, Sporting Lives: An analysis of a lifetime of Irish sport.

From the high of three years ago when a report in the same series had drawn attention to the size of the organisation and its exceptional volunteer base, the GAA had to adapt to more sobering analysis, pointing out how its games were among the slowest-growing in the country.

It hasn't been immediately apparent to the average onlooker, whose head has presumably been filling up with figures, that the data on which the reports base their conclusions is exactly the same, the 2003 Survey of Sport and Physical Exercise.

So the data that on the one hand paints a vibrant sporting organisation with a strong community base, whose participation rate runs soccer a fairly close second at the top of the team sports, is also the data that points to games that are atrophying or, in the words of the authors, "in relative decline".

Naturally, the reaction within the GAA has been a bit testy. The association will take a little time to analyse the findings before issuing a considered response but there's plenty of interesting detail for that consideration.

The fact is that both reports are right. Allowing for the increased popularity of the personal recreations of jogging, gym exercise and the individual sports of golf and swimming, soccer and Gaelic games are by far the most popular team sports - still well ahead of other team sports whose popularity has grown.

One of the GAA's problems is its emphasis on formal competition. The lack of casual, recreational outlets places football and hurling at a disadvantage to soccer, which has a substantial participation rate (five per cent of its global figure) for the popular activity of its five-a-side game.

But according to the data on which the ESRI have based their findings, soccer - male and female adults plus five-a-side - is played by 17 per cent of the population whereas football and hurling/camogie come in at 13 per cent. At present the GAA is working to develop a less formal outlet for participation and it will be interesting to see if whatever emerges can be even remotely as successful as five-a-side soccer in providing that purely recreational activity.

One of the complaints about the report has been that the GAA figures show participation going up. Therefore how could they be in decline? That, however, overlooks the critical qualification - emphasised by the report's authors - that the decline has been relative. It also overlooks the fact the ESRI were surveying everyone, not just GAA members, so it reflects the playing history of the general population, not just those signed up to the GAA. Nonetheless, the association can point to a four per cent increase in adult teams since the ESRI data was compiled, which isn't bad for an organisation already with a high base and requiring a registration fee of €1,000 per team.

By its own allowance, the report isn't concerned with the social aspects of sport, as was its 2005 predecessor, but - and this is perhaps the major quibble, not with the current report's findings but with its recommendations on funding - the social context is critical.

The reason the US writer and sociologist Robert Puttnam called his major work on social capital Bowling Alonewas in recognition of the demographic shift in tenpin bowling from team leagues to solitary recreation.

Essentially the latest ESRI report is evidence of the same thing: a switch from participation in organised team sports to individual recreation such as jogging, swimming and visits to the gym.

In terms of the health and lifestyle benefits of exercise, jogging and swimming are as good as team sports and of course children should be free to choose what sports they want to play. But recreational sport is defined in the legislation establishing the Irish Sports Council as having social as well as physical dimensions, as noted by the 2005 report.

Even last week's report observed: "In order to tackle the impact of social disadvantage on participation in sport, policy-makers need to consider the problem for children as young as 5-10 years of age. There is, therefore, a strong case for redirecting greater resources to schools and sports clubs that welcome and attract young children from less well-off backgrounds."

The individual pursuits that have shown such increased participation are by their nature more solitary and accessible to the well off. GAA clubs by virtue of their location in the community, the number of volunteers and the work already being done have great potential if properly resourced to be instruments of such policy.

I was talking to a coach in a Dublin GAA club just last week. He was talking about the difficulties associated with organising schools in deprived areas. For some children, home life is non-existent because of parental alcohol and substance abuse. Not alone is there no getting lifts to and from training in the established manner of parental shuttles but on one occasion kids had to be left behind when a school went off to participate in a blitz. This was because the parents hadn't bothered to send them in, regarding the day out as a day off. When the minibus started dashing around to rescue the situation they found parents weren't there or were unwilling to sign release forms.

There's presumably nothing exceptional about this in many urban areas but running teams in any sport is arduous enough without having to practise additionally the interventions of a social worker.

Clubs, according to this coach, enable disadvantaged children to socialise with more fortunate peers and get glimpses of normality. There is also the back-up of "scholarships" to summer camps and at times the provision of decent food. In other words, there's a world of work to be done before some young people even get to take part.