GAA must realise bigger picture lies beyond cash
Every time I approach these bars with the same dread and sense of injustice, sick of being forced to hand over a $20 note to a broadcasting rights middleman for the empty privilege of watching a big GAA game on a small screen. I feel cheated but that’s the free market at its best so you take it on the chin.
Now is the perfect time for a new dawn. I’d like to think that Clare’s astonishingly positive display of pure hurling might force the issue. Maybe now the GAA has a huge opportunity to choose wisely on how they manage the overseas television rights, particularly in markets where hurling is beginning to thrive.
With all the enthusiasm for the games popping up in the most unexpected places, nurturing and exploiting images of the best players might one day ensure that the young offspring of GAA parents are not forced to dodge between high stools in dark lounges where take away coffee cups conceal the real reason for the heated atmosphere.
I always think back to Tim Buckley, who has taken on the task of developing hurling at the Middle Tennessee University: “It’s very hard to find any hurling match,” he said. “Mostly a few of us gather around a laptop or try stream it into the TV from some odd site. We can’t afford the TV package that would have it — most pubs have the package but ours does not yet.” Letting players in Middle Tennessee and Milwaukee and San Diego and Orlando watch the jewels of the crown of the GAA calendar without anything resembling hassle would do more for the Association than any sum of cash gleaned from overseas broadcasting rights.
Leaving the path completely clear for total beginners on foreign soil to develop a love for the games is an acknowledged component of the five-year GAA Strategic and Action Plan in the middle of which we currently find ourselves: a “communications strategy to attract newcomers” and a “global communication plan to include media and website opportunities worldwide”. You might start to see the fruits of it in coming years because a lot of amazing work is already being done at grassroots levels.
Out in Queens, the vibrant Shannon Gaels club recently launched their Field of Dreams campaign aimed at completing their impressive new facility for teams ranging from U8 to U16. Their first minor team will stream in next year.
Up in Rockland County this weekend, Rockland GAA will host the Second Annual Mary Cosgrove Sevens Hurling Tournament welcoming in teams from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Mary Cosgrove left the Botchany, Charlestown farm and bog, on the Mayo/Sligo border, at the age of 19. She passed away just over two years ago, succumbing to cancer. She left behind a hurling-mad husband and sons, the youngest of whom David is the driving force behind bringing hurling back to Hoboken, New Jersey.
America offered the Cosgrove family a better life but hurling was how they stayed grounded: “She will always be my mother,” recalled David this week, “and what a person, what a mother, what a leader she was. Naming this tournament in honour of her and my family’s GAA work is one I do not take lightly.”
Rockland served as the October 2010 launching pad for what is today the burgeoning New York Junior Hurling Division. “The New York hurling scene prior to 2010 was a bleak one,” explains David. “With only three clubs participating in the NY Senior Championship from what was a robust, multi-tiered hurling championship of more than 20 teams through the 70s.”
Relying on several hurling managers as well as players and supporters from Queens, the Bronx, Rockland and New Jersey, the junior division was brought back to life but with a new mission: to grow the sport and welcome new hurlers of all standards and fans like never before.
You’ll find Cosgrove and some beginners every Thursday night on the banks of the Hudson on some newly-laid astro-turf provided by the city of Hoboken. “I’m thrilled with the new faces which pop up every Thursday,” he says proudly. Enticing new players to GAA will hopefully become much easier when the games are available to everyone.
