What the club means to me…

On the 29^th of May, I’ll be participating in the Swap the Ball 100K Solo fundraiser that is being run between my local GAA club, Michael Glaveys, and Doon GAA in Co. Offaly. Both teams will solo a ball 50km to Knockcroghery, each participant doing 500m before passing the ball on to the next person. I signed up to participate and do my 500m and donations are being very gratefully accepted here.

This fundraiser isn’t the kind of thing I would’ve been part of a year or two ago, but recent years have opened my eyes to the force for positivity the club is in our community. And though the Michael Glaveys GAA has always been there, it’s only as I’ve gotten older that I’ve appreciated its importance in my life, to my sense of community and my own story.

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On-and-off since the age of eight, I’ve been playing football. I’m neither a good footballer or a bad; I am an average footballer, a playable corner-back if numbers are short. I played in school, in college, around Dublin, later in Chicago and then last summer – mid-pandemic – the wheel came full circle, and I found myself back out with the Glaveys ladies, doing laps and drills in the shadow of the tree that grows in the club’s stand.

Whether at home or abroad, I keep coming back to football. I come back because it’s familiar, because I know how to slot in, because a GAA team is a good place to find sound people. But I keep coming back too because I really enjoy playing football; I enjoy the physicality, the hard tackles and the scramble for possession. Football training is one of a few places where women are hardy and proud of it, where female strength isn’t played down in the name of a nonsense ‘girly’ ideal.

Last summer, I was initially slow to get involved; I thought I was too old, too unfit, too uncoordinated (I am all three) but the joys of playing as an adult is not caring about such things – it’s the team that matters not myself. And the reward for looking beyond my own nose is the well-being that comes with being part of something bigger than myself.

Glaveys is home; I was born into it, just as one is born into a village. There’s a sense of belonging when I attend a game, of knowing and being known, and though I’ve come and gone (and gone again) that feeling hasn’t faded. The club was a big part of my childhood – as were matches, training, Lotto tickets, meetings and lifts. I remember we’d have Sunday dinner on Saturday evening because Sundays were spent at matches. I wouldn’t recognise Athleague, Fuerty or Ballyfarnon if you landed me in them, but I bet I’d recognise their pitches. The big nights out in town that stand out in my memory were after Glaveys games or wins (the night of the Junior B championship win in 2000 still stands out) and the biggest nights of all – dinner dances, big band nights, school reunions, the Rose of Roscommon – were held at Glaveys.

That the club is more than just a sports organisation was clearest in 2018 and 2019. In 2019 a treasured member died tragically and in the fog of universal grief, Glaveys provided an outlet for that grief – literally and figuratively, by making available a space to come together, to mourn, to volunteer, to feel some bit useful.

The year before, in 2018, the men’s intermediate team reached an All-Ireland final and the exhilaration of those days will live long in local memories. Together we stood on streets around bonfires lit for homecoming heroes, giddy with pride, soaked but euphoric in the racket of car horns and cheers. After the All-Ireland defeat, only the most invested were devastated; the rest of us were roused by the solidarity – the communion of goodwill – that that team had inspired. It wasn’t just about football; it was the excitement of possibility, of ambition; a light shone on what a small parish could achieve.         

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Big changes have occurred in how we mix with people as modern living nudges us gently towards more individualist or isolated lives – if we think about it, we’ve likely been socially distancing for far longer than we think. Where I come from, having twenty or more people in one place is not unheard of, but it is rare enough. One place though where there will be a crowd, a group, people to be bumped into and spontaneous chats to be had about nothing and everything, is at a Glavey’s match – especially if it’s a home game.

Injured last year, I discovered the joys of Sunday morning football. I remember one particular Sunday morning when the ladies were playing Eire Óg and having gotten a lift with a player, I was ridiculously early. Admittedly, it was quite idyllic; the sky was clear, the grass lush under the sun, the sound of birdsong punctuated only by the warm-up and people stopping to chat and enquire after my ankle. But what was especially lovely was the array of people there; parents getting children out of the house, husbands down to cheer on wives, former players, future players, neighbours, the hardliners who’d turn up no matter what the gender, age or division. Standing around, cheering, chatting, being a community.

Those of us who have moved about, who have done time in cities and settled into new communities, know that a sense of belonging isn’t to be taken for granted, nor is turning up to an event knowing that you’ll know people there. We therefore appreciate it when we have it, and Glaveys has certainly given it to me.

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And that’s what Glaveys means to me; the sense of belonging, of being part of something bigger than myself. Plenty others feel as I do, and the satisfaction they get from their involvement with Glaveys owes itself to the hard work of generations of volunteers who’ve kept the show on the road. That’s what makes this fundraiser so apt; a hundred or more people doing their bit to achieve a bigger goal. A bit like running a GAA club.

If you’d be interested in throwing me a few quid, you can do it here. All donations will be gratefully accepted, not least because they’ll mean I’m doing better than my brother.

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