OPINION: Sport is a numbers game­ and the GAA are losing

The population of boys aged 10-19 is set to explode in Cavan, writes PAUL FITZPATRICK. How will the local football fraternity, who have seen the number of teams fielding on their own at U14 level drop by 30pc since 1997, capitalise?

Forget money or facilities – ignore intangibles like momentum or tradition. In Gaelic football, population – and more specifically, playing numbers – is the greatest determinant of whether a club or county will be successful or not.

It's why Dublin are so dominant – it's why counties like Cavan, Roscommon and Mayo combined won half the All-Irelands between 1933 and 1952 and, having subsequently been ravaged by emigration, haven't won one between them since.

Ignore talk of curses or, according to a theory put forward by one old-timer in Dan Gallogly's Cavan's Football Story, the distractions of the disco in Crover – the reason those three counties fell away was that their population, particularly in the rural areas where football ruled, declined.

As we've noted before, when Cavan won the first of their five All-Irelands in 1933, the county was the most 12th most populated in Ireland. When Roscommon won in 1944, they were 11th and when Mayo last won in 1951, they were fourth.

The counties' current standings, in terms of population and taken from the 26 counties in the Republic, are now 20th, 22nd and 12th. Case closed.

So, Cavan – where we cling to the past like it's a life raft - should know as well as anyone the importance of keeping the numbers up.

I wrote some time ago about how, when I was growing up, almost everybody seemed to play Gaelic football. We had just one four-teacher school in our catchment area in Redhills yet in my age group, we always had a team, from U12 right through to U21, without amalgamating.

We didn’t win very much but we had plenty of players and so did all the teams we lined out against, clubs like Shercock, Butlersbridge, Drumalee, Munterconnaught, Killeshandra, Lacken, all of whom, like my own club, are forced to amalgamate at many of the underage grades now.

So I looked into the old case files to make sure the memory wasn’t playing tricks. And sure enough, the evidence stacks up.

In 1997, there was just one amalgamation in the U14 league, a combination of Arva and Cornafean. The other 38 teams all had the numbers to field on their own.

By 2016, that figure for teams who fielded in their own right had dropped to 30, with five amalgamations (not including Killygarry or Castletara’s second teams).

The trend is even worse at minor level. Twenty years ago, there were 32 teams in the Minor League – this year, the same competition (which threw in just a couple of weeks ago) caters for 28 teams and just over 50pc (21 clubs) have their own team.

As a rule of thumb, if we say that each underage team has 20 players (some grades are 11-a-side or 13-a-side but we’ll use 20 for handiness), that means there were 1420 juveniles playing in those two grades back in 1997, a figure which has dropped by 18pc to 1160 now.

Without being privy to the figures playing at U16 level, we can assume – as it’s between the two – that it’s similar to U14 and minor. Why, then, have male children – in their hundreds – turned away from Gaelic football in the last 20 years?

Competition from other sports is one huge factor. Let’s take Virginia as an example – while Ramor United is a force at underage in Gaelic football, there is competition from strong soccer, basketball and rugby clubs, none of which existed at juvenile level 20 years ago.

Over the road in Kingscourt, where the number of males of all ages jumped from 502 in 1996 to 1156 in 2011, there is also huge competition and the same goes for the likes of Ballyjamesduff (the fastest growing town in Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal between 2006 and 2011) and other urban centres.

Soccer, in particular, has made huge inroads in traditional GAA heartlands. In the past, many talented dual players naturally drifted back towards Gaelic after the age of 15. That was the point at which there was a massive drop-off in soccer due to the lack of a proper pathway for the best players but there are moves afoot to address that and that is likely to hurt the Gaelic clubs, too.

There have been significant societal changes as well, too numerous to mention here only to say that there are more diversions than ever, family units vare smaller and the GAA must now actively recruit rather than just watch as kids flock through their gates.

Those days are gone and are never coming back and it is hard to argue that, here in Cavan, we have adjusted well. Certainly, it’s a poor reflection to think that participation has dropped so drastically at a time when population is going the other way – not declining or even stagnating but actually exploding.

In 1996, the population of the county was 52,944 – according to last year’s census, it is now 76,092, a rise of just under 44pc.

However, it is worth noting, again using the 2016 U14 league as our case study, that there was no increase in the population of 12-14 year-old boys in the same period.

That will come in the next few years, starting with 2017; the ‘baby boomers’, as the figures show, are only just now beginning to reach football-playing age.

There will be 10pc more boys eligible for U14 football in the next three years than in the last three.

For the record, in 1996, there were 1683 boys aged 12-14, of whom approximately 780 were playing U14 club football -an extraordinary figure.

By 2016 (based on the most recent 2011 census figures) there would have been around 1708 boys in that age bracket, with around 640 playing, including the two clubs who fielded second teams.

It is interesting to speculate as to what the relevant club and county authorities intend to do to capitalise on the explosion in population among juveniles which is coming down the tracks. For example, there are now in the region of 22pc more boys under the age of 14 in Cavan than there are in Monaghan, which gives this county a massive advantage.

Then again, the decline in playing numbers at juvenile level – let’s not even mention adult level, where reserve football is at a low ebb with matches routinely conceded – has been well flagged.

In fact, the number of teams unable to field on their own has accelerated of late. Just six years ago, in 2011, there were more standalone clubs in the U14 league (36 as opposed to 30).

The obvious area in which participation is up is in Cúl Camps. Approximately 3,000 children took part last year compared to 1,400 in the 1996 summer camp, although the extraordinary growth of ladies football must count for a large proportion of this.

The hope is that the trend can be reversed so that Cavan, decimated by emigration in the middle of the last century, can take advantage now that the roles have been reversed. Otherwise, if recent trends at U14 level continue, a crisis is coming down the tracks.

It will take vision, strategic planning and an almighty effort to buck the trend in an era where GAA no longer dominates in counties like Cavan as it once did. We will watch with interest.