Cavan GAA to link up with businesses for player career pathway

GAA news

Cavan county board are to launch a groundbreaking new project which aims to connect footballers, at club and county levels, with local businesses in order that they may be able to progress their careers without having to move to Dublin or further afield.

County chairman Kieran Callaghan explained the broad outline of the scheme at an online launch on Monday evening.

“What the players did on the field in the four games in the Ulster Championship was unbelievable and compliments have to go to every player for their commitment and dedication and their self-motivation off the field during lockdown last year,” Callaghan said.

“They brought such joy, not just to Cavan people but to the country in the way they played and represented the county.

“The big challenge for players is the time commitment they are giving at inter-county level and we have to look and see how can we help the player off the field. With Coaching and Games in Cavan, we have a brilliant system the whole way up, volunteer coaches, strength and conditioning and everything else in place to make the best possible player on the field.

“But it’s so important to look at the player off the field and how we can help them develop. They have to think about their careers as well.

“We are trying to partner with different companies and businesses so players can have a career path.

“And we are trying to educate, from TY students up, on what road they are going down to ensure that there is employment locally in Cavan and we want to work with local companies on that. This is across all codes, men's and ladies, and all the development squads as well so we are opening this up to a massive pool of people in Cavan, so it will benefit all of our clubs as well.

“I think it’s very important that we can get the message across, ‘work local, stay local’. I would hope the players and the clubs of Cavan, Cavan county teams and employers will be the beneficiaries of this.

“With a footballer, you get the same commitment and desire to drive on off the field as well as on the field.

“You will not get a better worker than a GAA player. The same attributes that you get in a player are the ones that you want in an employee. You’re getting honesty.”

The board have put in place a committee tasked with reaching out to employers and creating partnerships.

“We have a group of people set up who are working with businesses and creating platforms and our plan is to partner with businesses and we hope to introduce players to graduate programmes within businesses locally.

“We will identify the business that suits that person in the locality. If a player is studying, for example, to be a quantity surveyor, we hope to be able to get him work in the summer in that area. We are trying to open doors and then it is obviously up to the players to keep the doors open.

“It will be win-win for everyone. By the looks of things, Covid is not going away very quickly so we have to move and evolve with the situation we are in, work on different solutions. For example, Cavan Digital Hub, how do we promote it? All of these other great businesses in Cavan, how do we get our players working with them?

“The commitment, the gym sessions, all these things that have to be done are eating up a lot of time and it would be a help to our players if they were working locally and be a help to local businesses too,” he said.

See next week for more details on the launch of this initiative.