In the GAA this is The Talking Season.
It is also The Arm-Twisting Season. The Season of Head-Scratching and Handwringing. The Season of Martyrs.
Once upon a time club AGMs were spiky, like Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, with members on the opposition benches bristling with righteousness. Now? There are more arguments in Santa’s grotto.
Volunteerism is still the bedrock of the GAA. It is the GAA’s most bountiful source of energy, its greatest point of difference, its biggest boast. In this age of bespoke facilities, floodlights, gyms, all-weather pitches, clubhouse bars, ball-alleys, on-site coffee, on demand, the most precious resource in every club is still its people.
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Where are they? More and more of them are standing back. Skulking. Being cute. Not getting “caught”.
At the Cavan GAA convention last December, county chair Kieran Callaghan expressed a universal concern in vivid language. He stopped short of describing the nationwide deficits in volunteering as a crisis, but the picture he painted would be familiar to everyone involved in clubs everywhere.
“The first excuse is ‘I haven’t got time’. For the record, none of us have – but we make time,” Callaghan said.
“Other excuses include health and safety courses, child protection courses, online abuse, critics who do no volunteering, hiding behind a phone or laptop criticising every volunteer, parents who think they have a sense of entitlement, that their son or daughter should be playing even though they only turn up to training when it suits.
“[But] if everyone in this room decided not to give their time to the GAA, what would the GAA in club and county look like?”
Callaghan referred to three teams who were being honoured at convention on the 25th anniversary of their county final success. He said he knew that, after they had finished playing, many of them had recycled their passion for the GAA into coaching and administration and refereeing and doing the odd jobs that keep the small wheels turning.
“The jubilee teams honoured this year totally get the ethos of the GAA,” said Callaghan. “It’s a voluntary organisation, you must give back.”
The motive that Callaghan described in the jubilee teams was a sense of duty. For generations, the GAA depended on that. People felt obliged to keep going. There was stuff to do. Strictly speaking it was a choice, but the impulse to stay involved had a hectoring quality. In a way, staying in was easier than getting out.
Society has changed, though. Being a volunteer, in any organisation, is one of many choices available to people in their free time. Nobody feels compelled. Callaghan argued that in a voluntary organisation such as the GAA former players “must give back,” and that would be a common feeling. But it is unenforceable, and it is waning.
The challenge for the GAA is to excite other feelings that will generate the desired outcome. For people not to feel overwhelmed by the workload or daunted by the responsibility or put off by the prospect of unsolicited feedback. To make it feel like fun, somehow, and not arduous.
In that respect, being a GAA volunteer has an image problem. It is perceived as a lifestyle choice for die-hards and fanatics. In every club there are people who are seen as martyrs for the GAA. In a society hell bent on gratification, though, martyrdom has a repulsive quality.
For GAA clubs it presents a circular problem; with a scarcity of human resources, clubs cannot manage without martyrs and yet the sight of martyrs and their hard labour is a deterrent to recruitment.
The obvious solution is an equitable, manageable division of labour, where more people do a bit so that nobody does too much. But in most clubs, the workforce is shrinking in inverse proportion to the workload. In that environment, the martyrs are being flogged.
Running a GAA club properly is a big job, there is no avoiding that. On the GAA website there is a document called Club Planning Toolkit. It is a comprehensive to-do list under a list of key headings: Games, People, Community, Communication, Governance and Resources.
Each section is broken down into a series of actions, graded in importance: must do, should do, could do. In all 121 actions are listed and 51 of them are graded as ‘must do’. Many of them involve form-filling and email-sending, but others are challenging.
For example: Does your club have at least one mentor per team trained in first aid and AED? The recommendation is: must do. And another: does your club take part in the County Scór na nÓg and Scór Sinsir competitions every year? Must do, is the answer provided. Really?
Does your club’s treasurer present an up to date and accurate account of finances to each club executive meeting? Must do. Is all expenditure approved at club executive meetings? Must do.
Not on the list are all the sidewinders that come from left field. If there was any question that running a GAA club according to best practice involved work for many hands, this document would eliminate all doubt.
The GAA’s numbers are still extraordinary. There are more GAA clubs in Cork (259) than there are rugby clubs all over the island (209). In total, there are roughly 650,000 members spread over 1,600 clubs.
But how many of these people will attend a club AGM over the coming weeks? Most of them will feel like it’s none of their business. Or that turning up puts them at risk of being saddled with a job.
Attendances at AGMs have been dropping steadily for years. Contests for positions at the top table used to be a staple of club life, but that is no longer the case. Now, clubs spend weeks canvassing people to find one candidate for any position. Some clubs have taken to their social media channels to advertise vacancies on their executive. The assumption that somebody else will do it is endemic.
The GAA are acutely aware of this challenge. This year, the role of Volunteer Development Officer was created as a full-time position in Croke Park. At no other time in the history of the GAA was this position necessary.
There needs to be a climate change. There is no future in martyrdom. It is killing us.
