An increasing number of GAA activists are worried that the deepening recession, and the unemployment and emigration that ineluctably accompanies it, is going to clean out the playing personnel of rural clubs and cause severe problems in many counties, writes An Fear Rua...

Ultimately, there may also be gaping holes in many of our inter-county panels where once a star hurler or footballer donned the jersey proudly.

Unfortunately, this will not be the first time the ravages of emigration will have taken their toll of the GAA and, particularly, its younger members of playing age. The Eighties recession is one instance. Prior to that again, are the examples of counties like Roscommon, Mayo and Cavan who dominated football and won several All Ireland titles in the Forties and Fifties. That is, until the appalling economic gloom of the Fifties devastated their populations, to the point where it took them another forty years to recover some semblance of their old selves.

In the past, being an inter-county star has often been the passport into a well-paid secure job. Partly, because people who themselves mightn’t be able to handle a camán deftly or kick a football straight, liked to have the aura of an inter-county star near them in their business. They might even get a chance to boss them around without them being able to answer back! Partly, too, it was an attempt by shrewder heads in the county board to make sure their best players were not tempted out of the county, or even abroad, by either the need for - or the prospect of - a better job.

Sales jobs, where the player’s face and name meant instant recognition to potential customers were popular berths for the stars. They sold office equipment, fertiliser, building materials and even alcoholic drink. You always had the feeling that a farmer would buy an extra bag of cement or fertiliser from a GAA ‘name’ as a token of appreciation for their efforts on the playing field.

In an earlier, simpler Ireland, the oil distribution companies always liked to have a hurler or footballer on their sales and distribution staff. For example, Cork’s own Christy Ring worked on an Esso lorry. The story has often been told that he carried a hurley in his cab and – on his lunch break – practiced tirelessly to keep his eye in. Pious Corkonians noted how the great man was careful enough to do his stick work on his own time rather than his employer’s.

AFR recalls seeing Christy making a delivery to a business premises near the famous Mount CBS hurling nursery in the city of Waterford at a time when Déise hurling was enjoying something of a renaissance. Some of the older boys, hanging around after school and smoking surreptitiously, espied the great man and began to make some sarcastic remarks. It was clear that Christy – a somewhat choleric character at the best to times – found it difficult from restraining himself from grabbing his hurley from the cab and putting it to use.

A few years later, in his distinctive navy overalls, the man making the same delivery was none other than Tipperary’s Michael Babs Keating. Time had moved on, Tipp were dominating the All Ireland championship while Waterford were fading into the shadows. Maybe that explained why Babs could cheerfully ignore the belly ragging he got from the pupils or maybe he was just a better humoured man than Ringey anyway?

These days, the hurling zealot Justin McCarthy manages the Munster operations of the Top oil company. And – in a stroke of pure marketing genius – an oil company in county Waterford employed Dan Shanahan as a driver. It is said that fuel sales immediately rocketed in the western part of the county as flustered housewives put in orders to have their tanks refilled by Dan. Puzzled sales staff couldn’t figure out why they were getting orders for refills as small as fifty litres, even during periods when the weather was warm and humid.

Back in 1999, oil sales and deliveries loomed large as well in the efforts of Meath county board to raise funds to prepare the Royals to contest the All Ireland senior football final. As you might expect, the generous people of Meath were not found wanting but their approach to the Draw’s prizes was intriguing, to say the least.

AFR would be the last one to accuse any of the Meath lads - or even lassies for that matter - of not being out and out romantics. An Fear Rua has spent enough time on GAA business in exotic places in the county of Meath to know better. Places like Michael Lynch's Céilí House beyond in Oldcastle, chatting to the good lady of the house herself in the Yank Connell's above on the Hill of Skryne, or even discoursing with some of the people with Sligo and Galway ancestry in the aptly-named Hatchet Inn on the merits or demerits of Seán Purcell or Seán Flanagan. Not to mention many's the good night he spent up around Dullardstown being beguiled by the more than ample charms of a barmaid whose fame – a bit like her assets - had spread far and wide around the Royal County and beyond into the neighbouring Midlands.

Any lingering doubts AFR might have harboured were finally banished by the prizes on offer for the Draw in support of the Meath Footballers Training Fund. At five pounds a throw, the tickets were not cheap, but then keeping a top class footballing outfit like Meath did not come cheap either. First prize in the Draw was a special wooden rocking chair said to be worth five hundred pounds. Second prize was a thousand litres of home heating oil, courtesy of Stafford Oils, then the employers of star Meath forward Tommy Dowd. Third prize was a weekend for two in Paris, and fourth prize was another thousand litres of oil from another company. Other prizes included tickets for the big match and replica Meath jerseys.

Now, where else in Ireland would you see a rocking chair or a thousand litres of home heating oil valued ahead of a romantic weekend for two in Paris as a prize in raffle? An Fear Rua has no doubt some of the wily lads in the hills above Oldcastle would probably think that the only thing worse than a weekend in Paris would be two weekends in Paris. After all, how would they be fixed in a place the likes of that for the few pints, the packet of oul smokes and a fish and chips or a 'Chinese' afterwards?

But surely in some of the more sophisticated parts of the Royal County, places like - say - Dunderry, Kiltale or even Boardsmill - there would be many's the couple wouldn't mind jetting off to Paris courtesy of An Cathaoirleach and the lads in the County Board? And wouldn't it be an added bonus to think that spending a couple of nights of passion in the French capital was helping the team to score against Kerry, apart from what you might score yourself in Paris!

Still, in these recessionary days, and with the price of home heating oil what it is, maybe a couple might get better value out of the thousand litres through the Winter than from a fleeting weekend in Paris?


Hard to decide ... a thousand litres of oil or a weekend in Paris...