As part of the Sporting Memories Programme, last month Cavan GAA hosted Cavan Dementia Group for an afternoon in Kingspan Breffni.
By John Harrington
Outstanding work tends to get its due recognition, and that has certainly been the case for Cavan GAA’s Health and Wellbeing Committee.
In 2023 they won the GAA National Health & Wellbeing Committee of the Year award and an Ulster GAA Award for their work in the sphere of Inclusion, Equality, and Diversity.
They were overall winners in this year’s Cavan County Council Cathaoirleach’s Awards, while the Accessibility facility and Sensory Room the Committee developed at Kingspan Breffni was recently shortlisted as a finalist at The Stadium Business Design and Development Awards 2024, in the Community Project Award Category.
The accessibility room in Kingspan Breffni.
For Cavan GAA Health and Wellbeing Committee Chairperson, Tony Ryan, all the awards are a nice boost, but seeing the positive impact their various initiatives have made in their local community is what really motivates them to keep their shoulder to the wheel.
The longest running one has been the club visits they’ve organised to Kingspan Breffni. Clubs are invited to bring their elderly members to Cavan GAA’s HQ for a day out, and the feedback is universally positive.
“We invite them into Kingspan Breffni two hours before an inter-county League match or when their own club is playing in the championship,” says Ryan.
“The first thing they do is a tour of the home dressing-room where we have a local historian that does a talk.
"Then we go on to the main pitch and there's a photograph taken in front of the main stand. We then bring them to the history wall in Breffni park where there are fantastic photographs and stories, and then they go up then to our Breffni gallery which is full of historic aspects of Kingspan Breffni and Cavan GAA.
“They sit here and get another talk from the historian and then they get food and free-entry into match with reserved seats in the stand. They get a programme, photographs are taken, stories are told, and then they watch their match.
“The feedback is phenomenal. The clubs get great buy-in from the people they bring on the bus and it costs the club nothing.
“At one of the visits shortly after Covid I heard an old woman saying to an old man, 'I haven't seen you in three years and you only live down the road'. You couldn't buy that.
“When they get off the bus they shake hands with each other, all of these people that haven't seen each other socially in a long time. It's unbelievable. The clubs to a club all come back and say how successful the day was, how much they enjoyed it.
“We've even had people getting emotional coming in. We have 28 of 40 clubs done. We've 12 more clubs to do.”
As part of the Sporting Memories programme, last month Cavan GAA hosted Cavan Dementia Group for an afternoon in Kingspan Breffni.
It’s not just GAA clubs that are invited to Kingspan Breffni. As part of the Sporting Memories programme, last month Cavan GAA hosted Cavan Dementia Group to for an afternoon.
“Savina Donohoe has done a lot of work in this area bringing in community groups other than GAA groups,” says Ryan. “They're always extremely well received and the gallery is getting a lot of use and so are the grounds.”
Cavan GAA’s Health and Wellbeing Committee are also very enthusiastic supporters of the GAA’s All-Stars programme for children with additional needs.
“Committee members like Anne Fortune and Mark Gilsenan and many other people around the county have a passion for helping children with additional needs and their families,” says Ryan.
“What we've done in Cavan is create seven hubs in seven GAA clubs. There's a ten-week programme for these children where they come once a week for one hour to do different activities within the hub.
“For the last week we then bring them in to Kingspan Breffni for a couple of hours to do activities on the field and we've also brought All-Stars teams to Croke Park when they open it up for an All-Stars activities day.
“We've also run a Kellogg's Cúl Camp for our All-Stars in Killygarry where they have great facilities, a new indoor arena with astro.
“All I can say from a personal point of view is that the joy it brings these people and their families, you'd just love to bottle it. It really is fantastic to see firsthand the joy and satisfaction it gives these families and their children.”
Cavan GAA All-Stars players pictured at Croke Park.
Some of those same families are also making good use of Kingspan Breffni’s recently developed Accessibility facility and Sensory Room.
“We always had a wheelchair access area but we did some work around covering that and making it warm and decorating the inside of it for people who are in wheelchairs or have other accessibility issues getting in to Kingspan Breffni," says Ryan.
“Wilson Waste helped us fund the accessibility area and Kingspan helped fund the sensory room which is beside it, and we also got some financial help from clubs.
“It's one of the very few sensory rooms in sports stadiums in Ireland and it’s being used a lot by families that have children with additional needs. They come in and sit down in that room in comfort and they can watch the match and the child that has additional needs is in a good, safe environment."
The sensory room in Kingspan breffni.
Cavan GAA’s Health and Wellbeing Committee in partnership with the HSE have also developed ‘The Stronger Programme’ which aims to help people in the community with mental health issues (see below video).
They’ve also gone out to many clubs to deliver power point presentation son how to set up Healthy Club committees or improve existing ones by giving them practical advice on health and wellbeing initiatives they can go after.
The net result is that Health and Wellbeing is now very much to the fore in Cavan GAA, as evidence by the 200 plus people who attended last weekend’s ‘A Way of Life’ Cavan GAA Health and Wellbeing Conference.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re not a GAA member, LGFA member, or Camogie Association member, Health and Wellbeing is for everyone in the community and the GAA can be just an avenue to get the people involved,” says Ryan.
“I know certain clubs that have people on their Health and Wellbeing committee who have no interest in the GAA but they were very interested in the Health and Wellbeing programme and what it had to offer.
“The impact that the Irish Life Healthy Clubs programme is having on our clubs and communities is fantastic. It’s all about living up to the GAA’s manifesto, ‘Where We All Belong’.”
“There’s no reason why all the initiatives that we’ve promoted here in Cavan can’t be replicated in every other county and we’re willing to help in any way we can.”