Rural clubs facing identity crisis

Former Munster chairman Sean Fogarty has called on the GAA to relax the parish rule to help save rural clubs.

The Tipperary man, an ex-GAA presidential candidate, said the rule is only working in favour of urban clubs and rural units are becoming “feeder clubs” to them as rural depopulation continues to grip the country.

“It has to be relaxed in some way, I have no doubt about that, because it’s only facilitating one-way traffic at the moment,” said Fogarty.

“There’s no problem now for a player from a rural club to play for an urban club. He gets a job, even a temporary one, a flat and he’s on his way. There’s no possibility of traffic going the other way. The job isn’t available.

“The last thing I want to see going is the parish identity. If we can work around the parish rule to allow urban clubs with a surplus of players who are giving up the game because they know they won’t make the top team to outflow into the rural clubs it will go a long way.

“I know it has to be controlled. We can’t just say our parish rule no longer exists but we need some accommodation to facilitate rural clubs to exist.”

Fogarty fears amalgamation is only a short-term fix and is concerned at the possibility of rural clubs existing only to serve those in towns and cities.

“If we don’t do something about it now rural clubs will turn into feeder clubs for the urban ones. That is never good for the parish identity.

“We have to preserve the number of clubs we have. The problem with amalgamation is with most clubs now have modern facilities, they have a field and some form of a stand, and if a clubs fold then that property is no longer any use to them.

“Who are the only inheritor of it only the local soccer or rugby club.”

Fogarty says it’s only the GAA that are going to find a solution.

“We can’t work in tandem with the politicians because their thinking has gone in the opposite direction for the past number of years with the closure of Garda stations and post offices.

“The last bastion of community that some people have in rural Ireland is the GAA club. Not alone do we need to preserve that but we need to reverse that trend.

“The emphasis is on the urbanisation but we have ghettoised people to an extent. We make great capital of the fact we have the greenest pastures in Europe for producing food but in rural Ireland we’ll soon have plenty of food and no people.”

Areas like South Kerry and West Cork have seen their clubs decimated by rural depopulation and Moyne-Templetuohy man Fogarty has outlined part of the problem in his own county.

“We had to amalgamate at U21 last year and even at that we only had 17 players. Injuries or suspensions and we would have to pull out of the championship.

“It’s costing up to €1,000 now to field a team. A neighbouring club of mine had two football teams last year, junior and U21, and had to pull out of both.

“They paid €1,600 in the forlorn hope players might be available to them but they weren’t and the money went down the drain.”