Westmeath
By John Harrington
The Westmeath U-21 and senior hurlers and management hope other county teams will follow their example by donating a post-match meal to the homeless this Christmas.
At 5.30pm this evening in Cusack Park they’ll feed a number of homeless people from Mullingar before travelling to Dublin where they’ll deliver over 100 dinners on Grafton street at 8.30pm with the help of the Cairdeas Homeless Action Group.
The initiative is the brainchild of Westmeath hurling U-21 manager Adrian Moran, and he would love if it starts a domino effect that sees many other county teams perform a similar act of charity this Christmas.
“Yeah, the hope would be that our example will encourage the other counties to do the same,” Moran told GAA.ie.
“That every county would give up one post-match meal that would be served to the homeless. And that could be done in their own county or wherever.
“There's no real cost, because it's just a dinner that you're giving up. The only cost is someone bringing the dinner to the venue.
“We're just going to go without a dinner some night in January on a collective training night and lads will bring their own sandwiches or whatever.”
Moran was inspired to do something to help alleviate the homelessness crisis in the country after a recent Christmas shopping trip to Dublin.
“I was standing around outside Jervis Street shopping centre and I noticed a guy lying in a door-way,” says Moran.
“I thought he was asleep initially, but I then realised he was just staring into oblivion, basically.
“On the way home we talked about it, my wife and two kids, and then a couple of days later I was in Mullingar and saw a guy in the same situation, sitting in a door-way. So I went home to my wife and said, 'we'll have to try to do something'.
“She suggested that whatever I did wouldn't have a huge impact unless I could think of something a bit different.
"So I spoke to the lads involved in the Westmeath U-21 management and and a few of the players and then spoke to Darren McCormack who would be a link between the U-21 and senior Westmeath teams and their manager Michael Ryan.
“Everyone was agreeing they'd give up a post-match meal. That's roughly 70 meals, and then I spoke to the Annebrooke Hotel who said they'd bump it up to 100 or whatever it takes. That's where it started.”