By John Harrington

Sligo GAA club, Castleconnor, have come up with a novel way for families in their parish to beat the boredom caused by social distancing during the current Covid-19 health crisis.

They’ve started a campaign that has quickly caught fire whereby club-members #BinTheBoredom by videoing themselves kicking a football into a wheelie bin and nominating others to do the same.

“The idea came from our club registrar, Rory O'Connor,” says club PRO Neil Corcoran who has been busy uploading videos to social media for the past few days.

“He just dreamed it up on Friday, I think he was a bit bored at home, and he just felt this would be a good idea.

“He and his wife Deirdre had a bit of a brainstorm at home and came up with the hashtag #BinTheBoredom, because it was borne out of boredom.

“Deirdre's sister Siobhan is a graphic designer and she did up the poster to get it going and they were the first people on the videos.

“We've pushed it on Facebook and we pushed it on Twitter and had a bit of fun with it and it caught on. We've nearly everyone in the parish doing it at this stage. I'd say we must be up over 50 videos at this stage.”

At a time when club activities have been forced to cease by the Covid-19 pandemic, the benefits of the #BinTheBordeom challenge have been two-fold.

It has connected everyone in the rural West Sligo club in a different sort of way, and has gotten children out of cabin-feverish houses and into the fresh-air again.

“Everyone is at home at their kids are driving them daft,” says Corcoran. “The kids are not expending the energy they normally would playing football, so this is helping them expend that energy.

“The idea of kicking it into a bin, it looks on the videos like everyone is getting it in first-time, but the reality is you're probably out there for half an hour trying to get it in and having a bit of fun with it.

“A few people were kicking it in left and right and one guy kicked it in from off the ground around 40 metres away.

“Some were making it a real challenge, and for some of the wee ones it was just about getting it in. It was great to see all the different age-groups doing it and having a bit of fun with it.”

Like every other GAA club, Castleconnor have been proactive in the way they have dealt with the many challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We've been really pushing the government and HSE's messaging on hygiene,” says Corcoran. “We're trying to get it across to younger people especially.

“They have a devil may care attitude and think they're invincible so we're just trying to get that message out there that you have to be careful because your health can affect someone else's.

“We have a weekly e-mail we send out to all our members with news and we always mention it in that as well. We've had to curtail our lottery.

“Previously one third of our lotto would have been done online and two-thirds would have come through envelopes, but we took a decision last week to kill the envelopes and we're asking people to go online.

“We're pushing a phone-number too for people to ring who aren't sure how they register for the lotto online, we're there to help them.

“Some people are annoyed we can't do the envelopes, but we can't be risking the health of our volunteers by asking them to handle envelopes and cash that have come from elsewhere.”