Underage Gaelic Football in Edinburgh

Started by Zulu, May 24, 2013, 08:23:59 PM

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Zulu

I hope the mods won't mind if I promote a club I'm involved in a little bit. Two years ago there was no underage Gaelic football in Edinburgh and little effort to develop it, however thanks to a handful of people and a lot of hard work there is now an underage club, fielding teams at U8, 10 and 12 and a primary school league involving 7 schools. Below are some slide shows of the games played so far. We will also have an U10 and U12 team in this years All British Championship and with most players underage for both grades again next year we would hope to compete for honours in 2014, if not this year. We have a club Twitter and Facebook page so please follow if you want and will, hopefully, have an annual international underage invitational tournament in the next two or three years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igFABhHJtGo&feature=youtu.be - Broughton V Lorne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGKk3o2Vig - Lorne v St. Nin/Brun/NCH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwPHdL6tExs - Duddingston V Royal High

BennyHarp

Good man Zulu, great work up there. I know from experience how hard it is to get the young ones out but it's amazing how quickly the pick up the skills.
That was never a square ball!!

Zulu

Yeah Benny, there's some amazing talent but plenty of challenges too. We have over 100 kids signed up for the schools and games are 10 a side which is great as we thought we might only get 6 or 7 a side. It's been a big boost to the club too and has encouraged a few more kids to start coming out to club training. At the moment we have around 80 kids, most between 6 and 11, training regularly with the club so hopefully we'll get that to over 100 before the end of the year. The potential is massive in Britain but the focus has been all wrong for over 60 years IMO.

BennyHarp

Quote from: Zulu on May 24, 2013, 08:37:34 PM
Yeah Benny, there's some amazing talent but plenty of challenges too. We have over 100 kids signed up for the schools and games are 10 a side which is great as we thought we might only get 6 or 7 a side. It's been a big boost to the club too and has encouraged a few more kids to start coming out to club training. At the moment we have around 80 kids, most between 6 and 11, training regularly with the club so hopefully we'll get that to over 100 before the end of the year. The potential is massive in Britain but the focus has been all wrong for over 60 years IMO.

Great stuff. The difficulty we're finding is getting them to play outside the schools for the local clubs. Theres loads of great work going on in the schools but this just isn't being reflected in numbers for the clubs. We had a crazy catchment area rule drawn up in Yorkshire based on where kids lived and it meant that some kids would be forced to play for different clubs than their mates, thankfully this seems to be improving. Also, the age structure being based on calendar year rather than school year caused problems too. What you are doing up there shows it can be done with the right plan and right people in place.
That was never a square ball!!

Zulu

To be fair we've only one club so we haven't those kinds of problems but we'd have half an eye on the future and the potential of more than one club coming into existence on the basis of the work being done now. Far better to have 3 or 4 underage clubs in Edinburgh than having one super-club with nobody to play. The big advantage for us is that our club members are doing the coaching in the schools so the kids who do sign up are coming out and meeting the coaches that coach them in schools as well. This is a massive help both in terms of their willingness to join and their behaviour when they are with the club. We also have all year round coaching with the same schools so if you are a P3 in one of the schools in which we coach you will get football coaching all year round for the next 5 years in your school.

From the Bunker

Have to say this is where the real bones of the game lie. Exposure to the beautiful game! Well done to all.

brokencrossbar1

Keep her lit Zulu and make sure and keep us informed of the tournament,I wouldn't mind a chance to storm the Castle!!!

Zulu

Will do BC1, we will definitely be over to you guys in the not too distant future. I'd say next year we will start to travel over to clubs outside of Dublin in a 'relationship building' effort and a chance for us to learn off other successful clubs. Crossmaglen will be one of our first ports of call for sure and we would love to be able to develop some sort of reciprocal type of arrangement with a number of Irish clubs. One of the main things we need to do is to show the kids that football is not a mickey mouse sport and trips to Croke Park is a big part of that. The other thing we must develop is the community ethos of the GAA which is hard in a major city but visiting clubs like Crossmaglen is one way of demonstrating to kids and parents the community ethos of the GAA and how we must replicate that if we are to be a successful club on and off the pitch.

I must say there is great satisfaction in helping to develop football in a city where it didn't previously exist and it's great to see how much the kids and parents enjoy it. After one of the school games a Polish Dad came up to me to tell me (in broken English) how much he enjoyed the game and was hugely keen for his young lad to get more involved. I'm hearing from more and more parents how football is becoming their kids favourite sport and it's very rewarding to see kids from Nepal, India, Poland, Pakistan, China and Scotland taking to the game so enthusiastically. We only have 3 kids with any Irish background involved and that is the key for me.