A MAYO MAN IN NEW YORK Kevin ‘The Yank’ Walsh from Shrule is pictured tackling Roscommon’s Karol Mannion during last Sunday’s Connacht SFC quarter-final at Gaelic Park, New York.?Pic: Sportsfile
Achill call for help as players emigrate
One Mayo club has lost half their team
Feature
Mike FinnertyACHILL football manager Paul McNamara claims that the GAA is “in crisis in rural Ireland” and has called on Croke Park to “do something” to stem the tide of young players leaving the country.
McNamara’s comments come in the wake of the departure of ten Achill footballers in the last four months as the economic downturn hits the West Mayo community hard.
Speaking to The Mayo News last week, the 38 years-old explained that Achill GAA club has been decimated by the departure of so many of their first-team squad to England, America, Australia and mainland Europe in recent times.
“There has been a real domino-effect since the start of the year,” said McNamara. “Lads started to tell us they were leaving in January and it’s continued since, one after another.
“The backbone of the team has emigrated. It’s a very hard blow to take for a rural club where numbers are always tight. We’re trying to stay Intermediate but it’s going to be a real battle.
“There’s no training in midweek, we just don’t have the numbers,” he added. “We train on Friday evenings and play the matches on the weekends.”
The players who have left Achill this year are a mixture of students, graduates and recently unemployed professionals and tradesmen. Some have left because they can’t find summer-work, others because they are unable to earn a living. All will be badly missed.
“In the past, all these lads would have got work in construction, quantity surveying, engineering, health and safety,“ said Paul McNamara. “But not any more.
“Other lads might only have been labouring on a building-site but they would have been getting experience, and earning money. Those jobs are gone too.
“Students would always have picked up jobs in the tourism and hospitality industries as well but that work is in very short supply now.
“We were in a similar position when I was a teenager in the early 90s, but not this bad,” he continued. “Guys between 18 and 23 would get summer work back then.
“Now we seem to have gone back to the rural Ireland of the 1970s and 80s. All the old emigration channels have opened up again. Guys are heading off to Manchester, London, Cleveland, Chicago. . . and, of course, Australia.
“The old ‘American wakes’ for lads leaving have started up again at weekends. It’s very sad.”
The twin topics of unemployment and emigration within the GAA community featured prominently in the run-up to the recent GAA Congress, but Paul McNamara feels that action needs to be taken quickly or the GAA will feel the consequences for years to come.
“It’s the GAA in the rural communities, the grassroots, that will keep the GAA alive,” he said.
“Something could be agreed at Croke Park level, and passed down to the provinces and the counties, to try and keep students at home. The guys that are aged between 18 and 23.
“Three or four months of employment every summer, in coaching courses or summer camps, would make a huge difference. The GAA is not doing enough for those people.
“The bigger issue of unemployment is too big for the GAA to deal with on their own.
“But if something isn’t done to keep those people between 18 and 23 in Ireland until they get their qualifications, at least, then rural communities could lose their senior teams altogether.
“The GAA is in crisis in rural Ireland. And when things turn, and get better, there will be a whole section of the community, a generation of people, just not there anymore.”
And while the future may look bleak, the present doesn’t make pleasant reading either.
Achill have lost three of their first four league games in Division 1C, going down to Aghamore, Ballyhaunis and Louisburgh by a combined total of 38 points. A draw with Swinford has been their only consolation.
“It’s been very frustrating,” conceded Paul McNamara. “We’ve ended playing young lads, 15 years-old and 17 years-olds, and guys in their 30s to take the places of the lads who have left.
“If there was work in the country, these Achill lads are 100 per cent committed to playing for the club. They would travel from all across the country for training and matches. But there is no work.”
Leaving it all behindColm Gallagher, Colm English, Darragh Gallagher, Martin Keane, David Cattigan, Ciaran Needham, Sean Cafferkey and Michael Gallagher are some of the Achill footballers who have been forced to leave Ireland in search of work this year.
Mitchels students fly to US
Mike FinnertyLAST year’s Mayo SFC finalists Castlebar Mitchels have been rocked by the news that four of their squad will be leaving for the USA later this month.
New Castlebar manager Pat Holmes confirmed to The Mayo News last week that Donal Newcombe, Danny Kirby, Ger McDonagh and Aidan Walsh were all set to leave the country in the coming weeks.
The quartet, all of whom are students, are believed to be travelling on J1 working holiday visas to Chicago and Boston, and are expected to return at the end of their four month stay.
However, they will be unavailable for Castlebar’s senior championship games against Aghamore, Charlestown and Ballaghaderreen.
Newcombe, Kirby and Walsh all started last year’s county final defeat to Ballintubber while McDonagh, a member of the Mayo senior panel at one stage last season, came off the bench.
Castlebar will also be without former Mayo panellist Barry Moran for the coming weeks after the 24 years-old tore his hamstring in a recent league match against Ballaghaderreen.
Meanwhile, new Westport manager TomΡs Tierney is also planning without two of his young stars for the group stages of the upcoming Mayo club championship.
Former Mayo minor and U-21 full-back Kevin Keane and talented corner-forward Lewis Cawley are both planning to spend some time in America this summer.
The duo will definitely miss their club’s group matches against Ballintubber, Crossmolina and Garrymore but should be back in time for the knock-out stages if Westport qualify.
Elsewhere, Shrule/Glencorrib’s Kevin Walsh, who departed for the US last month, was a member of the New York senior football squad which lost to Roscommon in the Connacht SFC last Sunday.
