How GAA clubs can face down the challenge of changing demographics

By John Harrington

The huge challenge the GAA faces due to the changing demographics of Irish society has been a hot topic for the past week.

Chairperson of the GAA’s National Demographics Committee, Benny Hurl, rang the alarm loudly in an article published by GAA.ie last Friday and did the same the following day at Annual Congress.

The mantle was also taken up GAA President, Jarlath Burns, and Director General, Tom Ryan, over the weekend, and there’s now an acceptance that adapting to the population shift from rural to urban areas should be a top priority for the Association.

Rural GAA clubs are struggling to field teams because they just don’t have the numbers, while urban GAA clubs have major issues catering for the surging populations in their catchment areas.

The GAA hopes to work in partnership with the Government over the long term to address some of these challenges, but what can GAA clubs do in the short-term to help themselves?

National Demographics Committee member and former Offaly GAA secretary, Colm Cummins, will have some valuable tips for attendees at Saturday’s Leinster GAA Club Development Conference when he speaks on the top of ‘Demographics – Practical Considerations’

Cummins is about as well briefed as you could be on the topic having also chaired the GAA’s Community Development, Urban and Rural committee under the presidency of John Horan.

His first tip for GAA clubs who find themselves challenged by changing demographics is to see advice from those best equipped to help them.

Every county board now has a Demographics Officer and Committee who have access to a Data Insights Hub that collates all demographic data relevant to GAA clubs from the Central Statistics Office, the Department of Education, and equivalent bodies in the six counties.

This allows clubs and counties to know the birth-rate and population in their catchment area, how many players they have in their club at any one time at all age-groups, and what the participation rate is compared to the overall population in those age-groups.

Clubs should be engaging with their county’s Demographics Officer because they can provide them with that data and advise them accordingly.

“It could be a very small rural club that's going to be coming under pressure if we look at birth rates so you can say to them, ‘you have a problem coming down the line, are you ready for it?’” says Cummins.

“The same in the urban areas. Are you maximizing your participation? Have you got a presence in all of these schools in your area?

“It's a relatively new role, and I think in some counties where there's a real appetite to get an understanding of their demographics, the Demographics Officers themselves are very energetic. They're making huge strides already.

“The National Demographics Committee is working with every county to provide the support. I know there's a workshop upcoming in Croke Park to bring in all the Demographics Officers and share their information set out a work plan for the year ahead.

“That's going to be hugely beneficial. What you'd like to see then is the Demographics Officer gets an opportunity at every county board meeting to give a brief report and an update, which will raise the awareness of their role, and, then, in turn, clubs who want to get organized and get moving, have a point of contact.

“Somebody to go to who can point them in the right direction and share the relevant information with them. It's about being able to pull together and collate the relevant info, which is really important and can be a huge benefit clubs who want to plan for the future.”

If quantifying the challenge is the first step, the second is meeting it head on.

There’s no size fits all solution because every GAA club is so different, but the simple nub of the issue for many rural clubs is that they either currently or in the near future will have a dearth of players.

What can be done about that?

“There's still no substitute for hard work,” says Cummins

“Sometimes, and I'm not saying this is all the time, we're just a little bit quick to say we haven't the numbers and we give up and we decide to amalgamate with another club too soon.

“Clubs that really don't want to do that and so work really hard to get every available player in the area involved...from my experience that serves them better in the long term.

“Something that should help our rural clubs is the One Club model.

“No matter how small you are, if you promote the One Club model and promote all codes, then it's easier to retain your identity. In the last 20 years the development of Go Games has just been revolutionary.

“One point that I'll be pushing on Saturday at the conference is that it's a huge benefit for all clubs, and small clubs in particular, to use Go Games to keep your identity.

“At U-8 the games are five aside. So if you can gather up five boys and girls in your area, you should be able to field a team at under eight in your own club colours, and hopefully at under 10 as well, and maybe under 12. That keeps your identity.

“I think it's important that the Chairpersons and Secretaries in the small club must realize that it's their responsibility as leaders of the GAA in their community, that they're the driving force behind that.

“I think a lot of the times in small clubs the Chairperson, Secretary and the Executive Committee can get obsessed with what the one adult team they might have.

“If their underage teams are part of amalgamation then its sort of outsourced to another group of people who look after the underage.

“To me, this is part of the hard work piece. The Executive must take control of their own club, and I think they should be able to find enough boys and girls to field their own teams at Go Games level.

“Now, some areas, unfortunately, just won't have the numbers then to field at 15-a-aside when you get to championship age teams, and then that's where the independent teams come in and are of great benefit to provide games for all the boys and girls. To me that the starting point.

“It's about leadership at the local level, realizing that your resources are thin for now in the short term, and working hard to retain your identity by using Go Games in particular.”

Clubs in urban areas tend to have the opposite problem to rural clubs and struggle to adequately cater for the sheer number of people in their catchment area.

This is especially true in Dublin, but clubs in provincial towns are now faced with the same issue due to increased urbanisation.

Over the past 20-odd years more and more towns in Leinster have been lassoed by the Dublin commuter belt which has led to a steady rise in their populations.

Increasing numbers don’t always make for a healthier club, though, if the club doesn’t have the foresight and will to react accordingly.

On Saturday Cummins will use his own club, Edenderry in Offaly, as an example of how shifting demographics can be boon for clubs in growing provincial towns if they put a plan in place.

“20 years ago our population was steady at 3000 people, and then it began to grow quite rapidly and now we're on the verge of 10,000 at the last census,” says Cummins of Edenderry.

“We recognized early by looking at demographics that this challenge was coming.

“In 2006 we were fielding nine teams and we really were just a GAA club with football teams, predominantly. Now in 2024 we're fielding 52 teams.

“We knew we had to attract the growing population in so we changed over to the One Club model and started working more closely with ladies football.

“We developed camogie and we got hurling going again in the club, and that's why we now have 52 teams.

“We knew as well in order to cater for all that, we had to expand our facilities. So, again, using the demographics and planning appropriately, we were able to achieve that.

“So there's a little story in there that I'll be getting across to the clubs to give some practical advice as to how the demographics can be beneficial to you in terms of making cases for funding and making cases with the local authority to zone land close by so you can acquire it to expand your facilities.

“We feel we've been quite a success, albeit never perfect, and we still feel we could be doing better, but we have made huge progress.”

Occasionally GAA clubs don’t grow to scale with the increasing population in their area because they don’t work hard enough to engage with the new families who have moved to the area.

And even if you manage to get more young players through your gates, it’s vital to make a significant effort to also recruit enough coaches to maximise their potential.

“It's about being open and welcoming,” says Cummins.

“The big thing that I would have found from my experience is the importance of doing all the little things really, really well. You don't have to work and do anything majorly significant to attract these people in. Do all the little things and have standards that you hold.

“I think people observe a huge amount without a lot of being even said. They come to your nursery and see that this is really energetic and the people involved are really good people. People automatically without even saying it just observe and say this is where I want my children to be.

“That grows and grows and then they want to become part of it, and they get involved. And it's an organic thing, and that's the best way. But, again, it's back to the hard working, maintaining your standards and doing all the little things really well.

“That just takes consistent, hard work but I think it does pay off, because you do bring in the new volunteers, you bring in freshness, you bring in people maybe from outside the area who haven't a tradition in the area with different ideas and different ways.

“When you mix it all together it creates a huge energy.”

Perhaps the greatest demographic challenge faced by the GAA is in Dublin where the population continues to rise year on year but the number of clubs remains stagnant.

‘Super Clubs’ like Na Fianna and Cuala who won the senior All-Ireland titles this year go from strength to strength but they’re still only reaching a fraction of the population in their catchment area while many smaller clubs in the capital are struggling to survive.

St. Joseph’s O’Connell Boys are the only GAA club that exist between the Royal Canal and the Grand Canal in Dublin city centre, and they’re hanging on by a thread with just as single adult men’s football team and no underage teams.

“It’s frightening to think that we don't have a presence, really, within the canals,” says Cummins.

“In the future the population is only going to get more densified, and it's going to grow even further and we can't just give up on it.

“So, again, re-establishing or establishing clubs within there should be a top priority. We need to look at that and see how we can deliver it. And we need to be banging on Dublin City Council door to ensure that the facilities are delivered inside the canals to support that.

“When we have an issue like we do in the greater Dublin where there's an under representation of the GAA we can't have clubs failing or folding while clubs beside them grow too big.

“So there has to be a rebalancing there and use the resources that we have and some sort of levelling work needs to be done. It's never been done before, but it's something we'd have to come up and look at and see how can we facilitate the growth of the smaller club in the area, and maybe create two mid-sized clubs, rather than one super large one and one very small one.

“I think that could be helped. There's uncomfortable conversations to be had but we need to have them as an Association or we're just going to have more slippage.

"They’re the difficult discussions that probably have to had to see do we want to really grow the games in the city or do we just want to have a pile of success and clap ourselves at the back and think we're great when really we're giving up on a whole swathe of the population?

“Is that good enough? I suppose that question we have to ask ourselves.”

Cummins is a strong advocate for a long term strategy of robust engagment with Government and local authorities to help both rural and urban clubs retain strong roots in their communities despite the shifting sands of demographics.

Zoning land for housing around existing GAA clubs in rural areas, the inclusion of playing facilities on the plans of new housing developments in urban areas, and lobbying the Department of Education to deliver GAA pitches when constructing new primary, secondary, and third-level schools and education insitutions, are just some initiatives he believes would have a positive impact.

But he also believes that the GAA needs to grasp the nettle of somehow creating more GAA clubs in urban areas where there is clearly a need for them.

Of course, setting up a GAA club from scratch is a massive endeavour and there are a couple of obvious obstacles.

GAA people from that area with an affinity to an existing club are not going to be motivated to set up a rival one. And those who come into the area with a strong interest in the GAA will also gravitate towards the existing club as they seek to make connections in a new community.

But one club in a sprawling urban area can only reach so many people, and so to prevent the GAA’s market-share of the population shrinking, Cummins believes it's time we found a way to overcome the obstacles to establishing new clubs in urban areas.

“A new club unit would effectively help establish new clubs and go into areas that need a club or new areas that have been developed and encourage the establishment of a club," he says.

“Because I don't think it's successful that we would sit back and allow half our population to be serviced by a very small proportion of our clubs.

“We just can't do that, because we're in the comfort zone if we believe that's okay. We won't grow the Association, which we need to do.

“We're the generation that's present at the moment and it's our job to protect the Association."

For more information on the 2025 Club Development Conference, go HERE