I know this subject has been talked about previously but now we are at the end of a season which has probably seen the biggest rise in emigration yet.
I have noticed in the past few months that emigration has began to hit Down clubs hard. An Riocht have lost nearly half of their team that won Down Division 1 in 2007. Liatroim over the past few years have lost nearly 30 male players. My own club has lost three to Australia and one to America.
Is every club experiencing this? Are clubs doing anything to try to stem it? Have any county boards interjected with any plans in regards to reducing emigration?
Also the bigger question at hand here: will any club Senior teams not be able to put out a team next year considering that emigration will increase over the Winter months?
Well I know my own club lost at least 20 from an already small panel. As we were Junior club it our squad took a huge hit. Last year we finished mid table in division 2 and were in the reserve division 2 championship final and finished second in the division 2 reserve league. We lost 8 players from last years first team to emigration this year and we were relegated from division 2 and finished mid table in the reserve league.
When we got a few players back from the county panel we managed to win the Junior championship this year, but if the emigration trend continues, you would have to fear the worst.
Yes, it's a sad sight, but hardly sadder than not having a bob for Christmas or a pint on Saturday night or a roof over your kids heads if you are at that stage.
Not too many coming to the USA, they must be going to oz or the uk.
Funnily enough, the ones that have left my club for pastures new didn't necessarilly do so for work reasons. Most of them just wanted to travel.
Id say that a good percentage of those that have left here would be in the 19 - 26 age bracket and just wanted to travel to see places like the US and Australia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc1G7aCpSsI&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc1G7aCpSsI&feature=related)
Needs another verse now.
I was talking to the auld fella yesterday and he mentioned some pub in Oz that hosted 42 young men from the parish of Williamstown in Co. Galway recently. That is the kind of haemorrhage that kills a rural club.
The tiger covered up a lot of structural unemployment problems that have to be tackled if Ireland is going anywhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOjSOAxN9Wg
O saolaiodh thu is mairg a ra go raibh an long anonn i ndan duit
Emirgration is only hitting home now. Dublin clubs are being decimated by it as well. We've lost upwards of 40 players in a 12 month period.
I left in 1997 to go to University in Scotland and got into the GAA scene there quite quickly. However, I stayed because of a woman and a job. However, I would really like to come back and (hopefully) have a job lined up at home. I personally am desperate to get back to Ireland, but the job opportunites (North or South) are not there.
My younger sister is a qualified physiotherapist and has been bumped about every health board in the 6 counties in the last 2 years which gives no stability for her. Also her boyfriend is a school teacher from Glasgow and the poor sod can't get a job anywhere in Britain or Ireland. They're talking of going to Australia or New Zealand next year.
This seems to be a worrying trend developing and all of Ireland's best young people are leaving. What will we be left with?
From being in and about Glasgow, I know that there are a lot of Irish people that want to come back and pine for home (and free cooking and washing)
The Dail and northern government need to get something sorted soon or we're going to lose a generation of good people, but also a good generation of footballers/hurlers/camogs!
Quote from: INDIANA on November 18, 2011, 07:59:47 PM
Emirgration is only hitting home now. Dublin clubs are being decimated by it as well. We've lost upwards of 40 players in a 12 month period.
jesus, how are yous still going ? are you the county team ? thats unreal. If we lost 40 players we would close the gate
LOL Hoof Hearted! I'm maybe getting too old to play (the wrong side of 30 bigtime) but I have a good friend from Co. Derry that got married to a girl from Tyrone (Carrickmore) - interesting wedding!!!! But they both (good GAA backgrounds) want to come back to Ireland too, but jobs aren't there and they're gutted!!!
These are just anecdotal stories, but I would say are typical of the Irish in britain wanting (desperately to come back home). The government needs to do something to get good people to stay and to get people with skills back
Quote from: Hoof Hearted on November 18, 2011, 11:35:56 PM
Quote from: INDIANA on November 18, 2011, 07:59:47 PM
Emirgration is only hitting home now. Dublin clubs are being decimated by it as well. We've lost upwards of 40 players in a 12 month period.
jesus, how are yous still going ? are you the county team ? thats unreal. If we lost 40 players we would close the gate
All our teams at adult level are struggling. Senior footballers are still up there to some degree but the rest are freefalling.
I'm actually considering coming home! Should I ?
Quote from: hardstation on November 19, 2011, 05:50:57 PM
Quote from: Carmen Stateside on November 19, 2011, 03:35:20 AM
I'm actually considering coming home! Should I ?
Missing thon row in Dunmoyle was the last straw?
Is thon used all over Ulster ? Or anywhere else?
Quote from: Hoof Hearted on November 18, 2011, 11:35:56 PM
Quote from: INDIANA on November 18, 2011, 07:59:47 PM
Emirgration is only hitting home now. Dublin clubs are being decimated by it as well. We've lost upwards of 40 players in a 12 month period.
jesus, how are yous still going ? are you the county team ? thats unreal. If we lost 40 players we would close the gate
Sure the way you boys have been playing you may as well shut the gates anyway!!
Quote from: DownFanatic on November 18, 2011, 12:30:44 PM
Funnily enough, the ones that have left my club for pastures new didn't necessarilly do so for work reasons. Most of them just wanted to travel.
Id say that a good percentage of those that have left here would be in the 19 - 26 age bracket and just wanted to travel to see places like the US and Australia.
I would say the majority go for this reason but as has been alluded to, the economy is the reason a lot will never be back.
When life gives you lemons you make lemonade.
This is a golden opportunity for the GAA to grow internationally and not repeat the mistakes of the past when the games were just seen as a bit of entertainment for emigrants and were kept to the Irish community. The influx of players into clubs outside of Ireland needs to be translated into a new effort to get the games out there beyond the Irish community where they can truly grow.
Shane Dooley is a massive loss
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/21/irish-exodus-costs-gaelic-sports
Irish economic exodus costs Gaelic sports dear
Top hurling and Gaelic football stars are heading abroad to play Australian Rules football and work on New York building sites
Tweet this
Henry McDonald in Dublin guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 December 2011
It was Dublin's Gaelic football and hurling dream club, with some of the most promising young sports starlets in the Irish capital. But now the Roundtower Gaelic club is watching its talent haemorrhage overseas, as the financial collapse and recession drives Irish youth to seek their futures elsewhere.
From the precocious under-19 side of 2004 which contained some of the most promising footballers and hurlers in the Irish capital, no fewer than eight of 15 original stars have emigrated over the last 18 months, most of them to Australia.
It's part of a wider trend in which Ireland is once again waving goodbye to a generation with little to keep it at home. The Republic's central statistics office has projected that 50,000 people will leave the state by the end of this year, seeking work abroad. Australia and the US are particularly popular destinations.
Many of the images on the walls of the Roundtower clubhouse are the human faces of this loss. The club has been in existence since 1884 – the same year the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded – and has 450 adult members and up to 800 youths on its books.
Staring at a framed photograph of the 2004 team, club chairman Tony Delaney points to some of the star players back then.
"There's Eoin Moran who played as a senior hurler for Dublin, and there's Mick Hallows who was a minor player for the county too. They are both in Australia now," Delaney says. "Those players, that minor team would have been in their prime now as senior hurlers and footballers."
He remembers the last recession of the 1980s but regards this one as worse in terms of losing players.
"Back in the 80s most of the lads emigrated to the UK and some were even able to come back in the summer to play games. Then Australia was out of bounds; it was too far away for most Irish people.
"These days it is much easier to emigrate to Australia and the lads can keep in touch instantly with family and friends. Lifestyle changes have made Australia more accessible."
Delaney who played at minor level in the 1980s for the current All Ireland champions Dublin says his lost players are also attracted by the thriving Gaelic sports scene in Australian cities like Melbourne and Canberra.
Alan Milton, who works at Croke Park, the Gaelic sports equivalent of Wembley stadium, says that for the first time in 30 years top-flight players are leaving the country because of the 14%-plus unemployment rate.
"You have one of the greatest hurlers of his generation like Shane Dooley who played for Offaly. He is now working on a building site in New York City. We are meeting up with him next month when the GAA All-Stars (a Gaelic sports touring team) arrive in San Francisco for their tour. The loss of a star like him epitomises how bad it is in Ireland at present."
Milton says that up to 15 senior county stars from across the Republic have signed up to play professional Australian Rules football.
But he stresses that the majority of lost Gaelic sports talent are young men who were earning high wages in the building trade during the boom. Despite inter-county GAA matches attracting crowds of up to 80,000 its sportsmen and women are dedicated amateurs, unlike the megastars of the English Premiership who can earn £100,000 plus per week.
"There are thousands leaving or getting ready to leave. I know Gaelic players who have gone to Perth to work in the mining industry. They are crying out for young Irish tradesmen and workers out there. The difference between now and the 1980s recession is that today urban clubs are suffering the haemorrhage of talent. In the 80s it was mainly rural clubs, which were ravaged by emigration. In this downturn everyone is getting a hit," Milton says.
As a consequence of the growing Gaelic sports diaspora there are now 32 new GAA clubs dotted across the planet. The latest has been set up in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia by Irish immigrants working on engineering projects.
Recessions in the past people couldn't afford the price of flights if they wanted to emigrate they had to endure long distance travel by boat, nowadays most can fork out big money for far fling flights with the option of returning within the year if things are not working out.
Quote from: Eamonnca1 on November 21, 2011, 06:11:16 AM
When life gives you lemons you make lemonade.
This is a golden opportunity for the GAA to grow internationally and not repeat the mistakes of the past when the games were just seen as a bit of entertainment for emigrants and were kept to the Irish community. The influx of players into clubs outside of Ireland needs to be translated into a new effort to get the games out there beyond the Irish community where they can truly grow.
Well the carry on in San Francisco this year with the young lad in a coma for a few weeks won't encourage too many locals to join the GAA. Added to that the response of the local GAA authority where they showed no spin in trying to protect their own players and lay down a marker that it's unacceptable for that sort of carry on. Why would anyone want to let their son/daughter out to play a game that is run by a bunch of amadan's???