Sympathy towards Dublin super-clubs might be in short supply, but first-world problems don’t go away just because you call them that
Malachy Clerkin: Na Fianna have just short of 4,000 members. We have about 1,000 kids playing every week and close to 400 adult players. Photograph: Eabhnat Ní FhloinnBoth rural and urban GAA clubs face increasing challenges as demographics in Ireland change. This isOn the Saturday before Christmas, we were in the hall of Sean McDermotts GAA club in Monaghan to see Santa.
It was a mighty afternoon. The whole club turned out and took tea and danced to Christmas tunes and everyone got their go in Santa’s grotto. In a club that size, everyone knows everyone’s name and it’s no hardship to pass the few hours. There wasn’t a ball kicked at any point but instinctively, you knew that this is what a GAA club is. A community gathering point, a natural hub.
Back in Dublin, our club is Na Fianna. The 2015 girls graduated from the nursery last month and next week they’ll start playing Go Games around the place. Every Saturday morning for the past three-ish years , we’ve been down to Mobhi Road in Glasnevin – the child playing, me “coaching”.The numbers turning up vary due to the weather, proximity to holidays and, most of all, the Toy Show. But given normal conditions, we have about 90 girls every week.
The funny thing is, if you were to draw a red line around the catchment areas for Sean McDermotts in Monaghan and Na Fianna in Dublin, you’d probably capture more or less the same square acreage of Irish soil. The Seans are serviced by the villages of Threemilehouse and Corcaghan and the five kilometres or so of hairy drumlins that lie between them. Na Fianna’s hinterland is most of what sits between Phibsboro and Collins Avenue, a broadly similar distance.
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