O’Sullivan plan for emigration-hit clubs
O’Sullivan has identified the loss of players as a serious issue for clubs in the west of the country in particular and believes efforts must be made to accommodate players who have moved across the Irish Sea for employment.
“We have sanctions for people who play in New York but if we could get a proper sanction to bring them back from a club in London, it would keep the identity of their home club and their parish alive. If say the London club is his home club, maybe the player could get a weekend sanction to come home and play with his club in Ireland. It would definitely help to keep clubs here alive.
“I don’t think that people realise that the west of Ireland is being cleaned out, with all the young people leaving. Kerry for example is a seasonally-adjusted county with tourism on one half of it and farming the main side on the other half of it. When the summer season goes a lot of people don’t have work. We have no major industries at the moment.
O’Sullivan, who was elected chairman to succeed Jerome Conway at last Monday night’s convention, has also warned there will have to be a thorough examination of Kerry GAA’s proposed Centre of Excellence project in Currans near Farranfore. O’Sullivan insists the county board cannot end up with ‘a big Taj Mahal’ and then struggle to meet the day-to-day costs thereafter. The GAA’s Central Council are set to decide at a meeting in January whether to give the green light to the project.
“It’s all right to put up pitches but you have to feed players, treat their injuries and provide those facilities for them. If you look at Mallow or any other big GAA development, it’s the running costs after that’s important. It costs a lot of money to run these places. We need to look at all costs because we can’t come blind into this and have a big Taj Mahal and no money to pay for it after.
“We have to look at all aspects of Currans, or maybe another place in Kerry because we are not tied to any place at the moment. If it is to be Currans, we would have to plan the whole area, in terms of recovery rooms, medical rooms, and so on. A masterplan would have to be drawn where everybody could work to that going forward.”
O’Sullivan also revealed that he may be looking to tap into the coffers of Kerry GAA people abroad to help the funding for the project. The Munster Council have already committed €1m to aid Kerry in the development but other funds will need to be sourced.
“We have to look at the spending. It’s harder to get money now then it was four or five years ago. Back then you could make 10 phone calls and get €50,000 if you rang the right fellas but they don’t have the money any more.”
“I will be talking to Cairde Chiarraí in the next few days.
“We will have to look for money, and we might have to look to Kerry people abroad for the money. Hopefully we can get enough money to get the thing going.”
