GAA bids to stem player emigration tide

THE GAA in Limerick is working on a major strategy to try and prevent losing players to emigration due to the economic crisis.

A directory is being drawn up of players and other GAA members specifying jobs skills and services they can provide so they can be linked up with GAA-orientated employers who may be able to offer job or work opportunities.

When completed, the directory will be circulated to all 69 Limerick GAA clubs so that members who have work to offer on a full-time or temporary basis will be able to offer it to a GAA member.

Helen Cross, spokeswoman for the Limerick GAA, said: “We will be able to assist GAA members seeking work and connect them with members who may have a position to offer. Contact will now be possible through this book we are working on. You may have a person in a club who is out of work while fellow club members, who may have something on offer, may not know. We are just trying to get jobs through this form of communication.

“There must be over 7,000 adult GAA members in Limerick city and county and that is a very wide network, drawn from all walks of life. And if it helps keep players and members at home, so much the better.”

The project is being co-ordinated by former Limerick county board GAA chairman, Donal Fitzgibbon, who heads the jobs creation centre based at the Gaelic Grounds.

Job qualifications and other work details are now being collated for the jobs directory booklet.

Long-serving Limerick GAA official, Sean Heffernan, who originally came up with the idea, is compiling job details of players and members in the Adare club, the reigning county senior hurling champions.

Mr Heffernan said: “At present, we have about seven adult players who are out of work and one of our senior side has left for Australia while another is in Dubai. We now hope to try and help players get work from GAA-orientated employers or anybody else who wants to see that players are not forced to leave.”