Sarah Harte: Play spaces for children in Ireland should not be a postcode lottery

Recreational space is not a lot to ask for

The Ireland team dejected after losing to the penalty shootout against Czechia. Picture: Inpho

Last week felt like a mega sporting week. We suffered the torture of Ireland losing to Czechia. As matches go, it was particularly nail-biting. I often watch matches with the men in my family to support my country, county, and province. I also do it to bond with them, even when they ask me to keep my incisive comments about players’ gear or hair to myself. You can’t keep a good woman down.

Anyway, we went to bed deflated, but proud of Troy Parrott and his team-mates.

The other big sporting occasion last week, less international in nature, was St Mary’s winning the Senior Cup in a thrilling replay against Blackrock.

It was their first time winning the Senior Cup since 2002. I’m reliably told (I’ve been told about 100 times) that it was their first time ever beating Blackrock (also a Holy Ghost rugby stronghold) in a Senior Cup.

Reader, I had skin in the game with family and friends who formerly played on the St Mary’s Senior Cup team. In our house, it was a big deal. A local derby and tears of joy, and in the Dublin 6 neighbourhood where I used to live, it was gangbusters.

People beeped their horns. Crowds of people who were involved for decades turned up at the school. I was sent all the joyous videos and images.

Men, young and old and those in between, let their emotions fly. They were ringing home from all around the world. The school song, We are Mary’s Boys, set to the tune of a German marching song, was surely belted out in London, Sydney, Hong Kong, and God knows where else.

They’ll be singing that song until the day they die, but so what, it bridges generations and represents traditions that matter to them.

There were mothers like me who didn’t “put their bodies on the line” but who washed gear; drove to the hospital with broken legs, noses, thumbs; bought sacks of food, groaning up the road like a donkey, which were devoured in zip time.

Soccer, rugby, round-shaped ball, oval-shaped ball, there’s no difference between them in terms of raw talent. They are boys with good hand-eye co-ordination. What some of them have in common is outsized talent that has given us all such pleasure.

Thursday's showdown

At times like last Thursday, when 1.3m people tuned in to the Ireland versus Czechia match, we were bonded, irrespective of profession, income, or background. We watched, chanted, celebrated, and mourned together, united as one tribe. It’s a rare arena where social hierarchies are flattened and melt into a common emotional investment.

During those hotly contested minutes, we are emotionally synchronised. As Albert Camus wrote, “all that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football”.

Yet, when the match is over, we return to our narrow rat runs, and privilege reasserts itself again through ownership, power, and, crucially, access.

Troy Parrott comes from what some might consider to be a “marginalised background”. In reality, he comes from an exceptionally strong family and community.

Watching his grandmother say: “I love you, Troy” was emotional. His talent has allowed him to become a national symbol, embraced by a broader audience.

But the reality is that the kinds of support and infrastructure young sporty people get often depend on their postcode. It isn’t a level playing field when it comes to kids playing in the inner city as compared to the leafy ’burbs.

I mention this because Troy Parrott has had to campaign to save the local sports pitch on Dublin’s Portland Row, known locally as “the Strand Pitch”.

Boxing double Olympic gold medal winner Kellie Harrington, and former Irish football internationals Wes Hoolahan and Olivia O’Toole grew up near Portland Row. All of them have said they developed their skills on that pitch, which has now been earmarked for a new housing development.

According to Tuath Housing and Dublin City Council, the new 49-unit development represents a “meaningful step forward” for housing delivery in the north inner city. Really? It’s not that the housing isn’t needed. It is. But as Harrington has said, the houses should be built on the depot next to the pitch. The decision from An Coimisiún Pleanála is due in May.

Do you think this would happen to the St Mary’s or Blackrock rugby pitch? Not in a million years. If anyone tried to take away that pitch (and they wouldn’t dare), there would be endless judicial reviews of the decision in the High Court with senior counsel old boys making sure it wouldn’t happen. And they’d be right, by the way. Because kids need places to play.

As Kellie Harrington said of their area: “We already have plenty of antisocial behaviour going on around here. And take this away, the kids don’t have anywhere to play. You know, they don’t have a safe space, so it just encourages them to go out and to hang around the corners, to run in and out of the flat complexes.”

Troy Parrott’s mother, Jennifer, told RTÉ Radio 1: “The area that we’re from, it’s a disadvantaged area in the inner city. Football kept him disciplined and kept him in line from getting in trouble.”

The difference is that if kids in the inner city go off the deep end, there’s often no safety net.

Getting bailed out takes on a wholly different, life-changing meaning. Whereas plenty of teenage boys I know had bumps in their teen years, as young men often do, including mental health issues, trips to rehab, and brushes with the law, there were resources there to help when they needed them and to deal with the problems.

All Troy Parrott, Kellie Harrington, and their community are campaigning for is a place for kids in their neighbourhood to play.

It’s not a lot to ask for, particularly when many in the north inner city will have had an experience of the establishment that is entirely negative.

If you have ever taken pleasure in Parrott’s hat-trick or Harrington’s Olympic victory, you surely can’t fail to agree that Dublin City Council taking away a vital recreational space in the north inner city from future Troys, Olivias, Weses, and Kellies is nothing short of disgraceful.

Yet, when the match is over, we return to our narrow rat runs, and privilege reasserts itself

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