Munster Chief: Some towns are too big now to be limited to one GAA club

Munster GAA chair Tim Murphy

Munster GAA chief Tim Murphy says shifting demographics is a huge challenge for the province and has highlighted the mushrooming town of Midleton as potentially requiring a brand new club.

In a wide-ranging Irish Examiner GAA Extra podcast interview, provincial chairman Murphy pointed to urban overload and rural depopulation as the 'number one' issues facing the provincial council.

The population of Midleton, in east Cork, is expected to grow from 13,906, in the most recent census of 2022, to almost 28,000 by 2034.

As things stand, just one club services the sprawling town while Murphy noted that at the other end of the spectrum, in places like South Kerry, several clubs have had to join together at underage level just to field a single team.

Croke Park has already highlighted the dramatic demographic changes at play nationally and pointed out that urban clubs are suffering from overcrowding, stretched resources and player losses.

"If we see that there's too few clubs serving a large population, we have to make an intervention, or we have to try to make an intervention," said Murphy, when asked specifically by Tony Leen about Midleton.

"It's not easy to do that because facilities is one major issue in terms of just getting pitches. GAA pitches by their nature are obviously big, you need four acres for a GAA pitch relative to, say, a soccer pitch.

"So there's a lot of challenges in that, and starting a new club is not an easy task. So that's something that the demographics group, and we as a council, are certainly trying to prioritise over the next number of years.

"And there are parts of the province that are at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum to the Midletons. We've heard stories of numbers in schools falling off to such a dramatic level that the very existence of clubs is in doubt."

GAA President Jarlath Burns stated last December, in the context of a potential second club in the Ballygunner area in Waterford, that the push for a new club needs to come from locals, that it can't be imposed on them.

"The challenge for us is to make sure that those urban areas which are exploding with population, relative to urban areas, are going to be adequately serviced by the GAA in years to come," said Kerry man Murphy.

"And that means facilities, but it also means or will necessitate, in my view, the formation of new clubs. And the formation of new clubs in the GAA has historically been a really difficult issue to address, a really thorny issue where new clubs are trying to be formed. There can be a bit of self-protection for existing clubs, where there's a fear factor that they're going to lose out."

Murphy suggested the idea of 'municipal facilities' where land and space is at a premium, not just in Cork or Munster but nationally.

"Whether that's stadiums or even centres of excellence, or training facilities, that can be shared, that is definitely an area that needs to be looked at by the association and the government in towns and cities and big towns and cities throughout the country," he said."

The Munster Council has a demographics committee in place, with Kerry's Joe Crowley as chair.

"They've looked at that area of East Cork," said Murphy. "There's a survey going to be taking place over the next number of months. There's already been a lot of engagement with the clubs in that area. A set of recommendations will come back out of that."