GAA Handball Club Support Officer Pauric Dowdall.
A comprehensive eight week webinar series has been stitched together for Handball clubs throughout the country.
During these uncertain times GAA Handball Club Support Officer Pauric Dowdall is adamant that the offering can provide assistance to those running clubs.
“The idea behind the webinars was to keep engaging with our clubs and to provide them with opportunities to upskill,” Dowdall explains.
“We are following on from a very successful National Club Forum which we held in November last year at Croke Park.
“We had decided to run provincial club forums this year, but with the current scenario that isn't feasible. So we decided to look online and we came up with this range of webinars, hopefully there will be plenty of stuff for all of our club members to use.
Encouraging signs have been available in recent years with Dowdall optimistic about the future of the game with the newly refurbished headquarters at Croke Park especially noteworthy.
“It is going well, numbers are slowly rising,” Dowdall admits. “We are trying our best to promote as best we can. We are a small organisation, a small wing of the GAA. We do our best to promote it as much as we can.
A general view of the new GAA National Handball Centre at Croke Park.
“We are delighted with our new building and our new home. We are going to try to use that as much as possible in our future development.
“We will try to get as many kids in, between Darragh Daly, the National Development Officer and myself, we want to get as many kids in to play, to maybe link in with the museum doing tours. That is a great carrot for us to use and hopefully it will drive on our development.”
Facilities throughout the country are also being enhanced with Dowdall delighted that new clubs are being formed
“We have maybe four or five clubs every year,” Dowdall replies. “With handball originally you had the 40x20 and 60x30 which would cost a lot of money to build a new alley. Now we have one wall which is relatively cheap and we have teamed up with the Healthy Clubs in Croke Park.
“We are trying to get that into all GAA clubs. We have a target set up of 300 clubs for 2021. It is cheap, it costs 500 euro to get the little wall up and it can be indoors or outdoors.
“It is a great way for starting off and hopefully it will progress then to 40x20 and 60x30.”
That handball can be played by people of various ages ensures Dowdall is adamant about the benefits of upgrading courts and installing walls.
Eight online webinar sessions will take place for GAA Handball Clubs.
“With handball you have different levels,” Dowdall adds. “You have your elite players, who want to be playing from Under 8s and Under 9s, getting the eye in.
“We find there is a great recreational element to handball, especially for people within the GAA, who maybe have retired from football or hurling at 30, 35 or 40. We have grades all the way up to 75. So there is a wide ranging aspect to it and it is a great recreational game for people to keep them competitive and within the GAA.”
The broad range of webinars being delivered will be most helpful to club officers according to Dowdall. “It is a serious operation and in fairness to the handball clubs they wouldn't be blessed with massive numbers of volunteers,” Dowdall states.
“You could have two or three people running a club so they could do four or five of these little jobs. The idea was that we would try to cover as much as possible to pick up little bits. Hopefully they can bring that back to the club, to help them improve.
“Our members are very busy because we are generally very fixture orientated. We have loads and loads of fixtures at every grade. In my role as National Club Support Officer it can be hard to get time so I saw this as a great opportunity to get more work done because there is no training or no games.
“We had about 50 clubs online last week and we have approximately 180 clubs. We had 50 attending the webinar which was very positive for our first one and we have received plenty of emails, very positive feedback.
“We are looking forward to Wednesday now on volunteer recruitment and, more importantly, volunteer retention.”
**Registration is now open for our seventh webinar which takes place on Wednesday June 24 at 7:00pm. Please try to register by 12 noon on Wednesday. Once registered you will be sent a link to the webinar on Wednesday afternoon, the webinar will be live from 6:50pm and start at 7:00pm.
_ Gearóid Ó Maoilmhichíl, GAA National Children’s Officer/ Child Welfare & Safeguarding Manager along and Michelle Harte, Child Welfare & Safeguarding Officer, will will cover 'Child Safeguarding within your Club.'_
_ Registration remains open until 12 noon on Wednesday 24th June. Please click here to register._