Kids GAA Melbourne has gone from strength to strength since being founded two years ago.
By John Harrington
The rapid growth of the Kids GAA initiative in Melbourne, Australia brings to mind the old Irish proverb ‘Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí’ - encourage the young and they will flourish.
Established just two years ago by Kilkenny native Michael Comerford, Kids GAA Melbourne (Na nÓige Melbourne) has already put in place solid foundations that it hopes to build on in the coming years.
Having wished for a long time his sons could have an organised outlet to play Gaelic Games with other children their age in Melbourne, Comerford eventually resolved to make it happen himself.
Like most good ideas it quickly captured the imagination of a few like-minded souls, and from the very start Kids GAA Melbourne has been something of a phenomenon.
“I've an 11 and nearly 13-year-old and I've been taking them down to Gaelic park in Melbourne for a number of years and chatting to people wondering if there was anything done for kids,” Comerford told GAA.ie
“We'd be down there for any big event from when they were little down there with hurls and sliotars, footballs.
“Eventually I realised...when you're waiting for someone to do something it's yourself that needs to do it.
“A few years ago then I started posting on all the Facebook and family sites in Melbourne regarding who would be interested and who would be prepared to give me a hand out to see if we could get something happening down in Gaelic Park.
“It was a notion that went from there. The first Sunday we had an event we had over 50 kids from the ages of four to 14. That was a Sunday in November 2016.
“It’s gone from strength to strength, and that’s because we have some wonderful people and families involved.”
Kids GAA Melbourne founder, Michael Comerford, pictured with his two sons.
Comerford says the help they’ve gotten along the way from the Global Games Development Fund has also been crucial to their success over the course of the last two years.
“It's been absolutely unbelievable. We've had two allocations and ever dollar and cent is getting spent on equipment.
“The last instalment of the second grant is now going for smaller helmets for the smaller kids.
“We've bought a whole range of sizes of footballs, hurls, sliotars, the whole range of the little soft sliotars, the size 4s, all range of helmets, sets of goal-posts.
“So now once the seniors are finished with access to Gaelic Park we set up goals so we effectively have multiple pitches set up on pitch one at Gaelic Park so we can roll out and have these activities going forward.
“We've spent every dollar on equipment and it's absolutely been fantastic.”
Right from the start, Kids GAA Melbourne has had a couple of unique selling points.
Most organised team sports for children like Australian Rules Football and Basketball are run off during the winter, whereas the Kids GAA takes place in summer.
And rather than try to artificially create a hyper-competitive environment, Comerford has put fun and skill development at the top of the agenda and then let the innate competitive instincts of the children come to the fore naturally.
“Anyone who's involved in sports here in Australia would realise it's a very competitive environment at all age-groups,” he said.
“As much as I wanted my kids to be involved in Gaelic Sports, I wanted the environment to be a little bit different than it is here. To be a little bit more inclusive.
“We're all about inclusion, diversity, and being an organic group based on those principles.
“The signs are that things will grow and we want to maintain the ethos. The kids attend because they enjoy the environment. They learn the skills of Gaelic Football and Hurling.
“What we have witnessed and discovered is that kids are innately competitive. Even the ones who appear not to be sporty.
“And they’re innately tacticians. In a sense what we're trying to do is create a frame-work where we teach skills and then, in a sense, get out of the way.
“They want to come back for the environment they're in.”
Kids GAA Melbourne mentors Michael Comerford (centre), Carl Walsh (second from left), and Keith Kavanagh (far right) pictured with Hawthorn AFL club stars Conor Nash (far left) and Conor Glass (second from right) who are both big supporters of Kids GAA Melbourne.
The motto of Kids GAA Melbourne is ‘Ní neart go cur le chéile’ - There’s no strength without unity.
With that in mind, they’ve fostered not just an inclusive ethos within their own club, but they’re actively trying to make connections with others.
Last summer they brought a team of kids to Adelaide to play an exhibition match against a team of Adelaide children before the Adelaide Gaelic Football Association’s Grand Final.
They’ve given a lot of advice and support to the recently established Geelong Gaels Grasshoppers who are also growing quickly after following Melbourne’s template.
Next month Geelong will host an underage blitz that both Melbourne and Adelaide will compete in, so the bonds already created will become much stronger.
A week before that, Kids GAA Melbourne will send two teams to the Irish Festival in Sydney to play an exhibition game before the Wild Geese Trophy match between the Kilkenny and Galway hurlers.
Fun, inclusivity, and skill development are central pillars of the ethos of Kids GAA Melbourne.
Comerford hopes a few parents from Sydney or the wider New South Wales area will be inspired by the show the Melbourne kids put on to establish a similar initiative in their city or state.
Down the road, Comerford hopes it will be possible to establish a juvenile GAA competition in Australia akin to the hugely successful Continental Youth Championships in North America.
The explosion of underage Gaelic Games there has been powered by the recruitment of huge numbers of children with no Irish identity, and Comerford believes something similar is possible in Australia.
“This is potentially where we see an opportunity," he said. "The cross-over from footie (Australian Rules Football) into Gaelic Football is almost seamless for some of these kids.
“Our plan now is to start working at the infrastructure in terms of how do we get them to become affiliated to Gaelic Park so they have a couple of weeks off and then roll in to playing summer sport.
“That will be part of our next phase of what we're trying to develop here.”
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.
* Applications are now open for the Global Games Development Fund. See below for details.