Paul Rouse: The Lowry name has always been synonymous with excellence within Offaly GAA
Shane Lowry: Funding for Offaly GAA will be used to support the development of underage activities in the 41 clubs across the county
The partnership between Shane Lowry and Offaly GAA is the latest step in attempts being undertaken to try and improve Gaelic games in the county.
For those who have not seen it, Lowry, the reigning Open champion, has pledged a multi-annual sponsorship and support package for the GAA in the county. This package includes a financial contribution as well as other ongoing assistance with the development of Offaly GAA.
The funding provided by Shane Lowry will be used to support the development of underage activities in the 41 clubs active across Offaly. It will also involve an expansion of coaching in the county, extending across clubs and both primary and secondary schools. There will be funding for Offaly GAA development squads and the beginning of bursary supports for young players as they transition from secondary schools into third-level courses or apprenticeships.
As well as his financial contribution, Lowry has also pledged to use his expertise as an elite international sportsman to contribute to the enhancement of the GAA in Offaly. This commitment will include support with ongoing commercial and fundraising initiatives.
That the initiative came from Shane, himself, is fulsome tribute to the strides being made in the county. This is manifest most obviously in the fact that Offaly’s minor football and minor hurling teams are waiting to play in the delayed 2020 Leinster finals. But it is also manifest — more importantly — in the root-and-branch rejuvenation that is being undertaken in every aspect of the GAA in the county.
There is no denying that these are just the very first steps in what promises to be a long, hard road. There is no denying also the fact that Offaly GAA is now coming from a place in which it is well back in the pack, by almost every measure.
At inter-county level, the scale of Offaly’s demise is well-documented. In senior football, the county that stopped Kerry’s five in a row in September, 1982 has won only one Leinster championship since then (and that was back in 1997).
As for the hurlers, an All-Ireland final appearance in 2000 bookended a period which saw four All-Irelands won in two decades. But the team now operates in the Christy Ring Cup and will play its first championship match of this summer against Sligo.
But the story of Offaly’s decline has been obvious for many years also in the lack of progress made by its underage teams, by the uncompetitive nature of its schools teams, and by the standard of the club championships.
It takes time to accept such a spectacular decline, to understand it and to respond to it. It is not so much a question of being mired in the past, locked into the nostalgia of former glories — although that can be a problem for a time.
Rather, it is more a thing of understanding how the world has changed around you, how what you did in the past is no longer good enough and, most of all, discovering the hunger, the drive, the clarity of purpose and the absolute commitment that brought success in the first place.
The success of the past is neither a burden nor a roadmap. Instead, it is a just herald of what can be achieved. Previous sporting success is useful only as proof that something is possible.
There is rightly an immense pride in Offaly at what the county’s hurlers and footballers achieved in the past. The hurlers and then the footballers and then the hurlers, again, performed feats that are without parallel in the history of the GAA.
Viewed back through the historical prism of a new millennium, these are feats that appear somewhat incredible. That a county of 58,312 people should win All-Ireland championships in hurling and football in two glorious years — 1981 and 1982 — defies all historical experience across the 137 years since the foundation of the GAA.
The Lowry family were a vital part of that story.
There is huge pride, also, in what Shane Lowry has done. He, too, has done things that no other Irish person has done.
It is not too much to say that he is loved in the county. The pride that Offaly people feel in Shane Lowry is real and goes beyond a shared geography. It is because of the type of person that Shane is that he inspires such warmth. His obvious loyalty to his home town of Clara and his home county is not something that can be faked. He has a humour and a humility that is immense. The people who were around him as he celebrated his success in Portrush were his old friends, the boys he went to school with and hung around Clara with.
It would be a profound mistake — to the point of being laughable — however for people to allow this personality obscure just how hardworking Shane is, just how ferociously he competes, just what he has done to make himself one of the greatest golfers in the world. That doesn’t happen without supreme desire and a work ethic to match.
That he should have chosen to commit his support to Offaly GAA, its clubs, its schools, and its county teams, says it all about the man and sense of where he comes from.
As Michael Duignan, the chairman of the Offaly County Board said this week: “We are all honoured and excited by the prospect of working with Shane in the coming years as we strive to improve the fortunes of Offaly GAA. Shane has inspired us all in Offaly by the way he has progressed to the upper echelons of the world game and we are all extremely proud of his achievements. “Shane has pledged his support in order to help our players of all ages to fulfil their potential. His passion, ambition, and honesty, while at all times remaining humble and grounded, are attributes that we are looking to build in to the culture of all our players. We are on a journey in Offaly GAA and it is fantastic to have Shane on board particularly in his support of our coaching and games initiatives, that will benefit all our clubs and young players. The Lowry name has always been synonymous with excellence within Offaly GAA and we once again thank Shane for joining us on our journey.”
