Men in the Donagh area of Co Fermanagh have been making use of an initiative from a GAA club in the area which aims to get people out to play non-competitive sport.
St Patrick’s GFC club in the village has been running the ‘Dads and Lads’ programme within the club, which allows older men and those who do not wish to play Gaelic football competitively to get out and exercise while socialising with other members.
Other ‘Dads and Lads’ teams are springing up throughout Northern Ireland, but the Donagh club was one of the first in the country to introduce the scheme.
Club chairperson Ciaran McMahon, who also participates in the team, said it is another way for men to get involved with the club and their local community.
“We were setting up the ‘Mothers and Others’ for the first time, and we were thinking there was nothing there similar for fellas,” Ciaran told MyFermanagh.
“Having finished up playing competitively myself a couple of years ago, I still thought I’d like to go out and kick a ball and there was no opportunity to do it at a leisurely level.
“The current senior level was way beyond what I was fit to do at this stage in life. So we just said if it can work for ladies it can work for men.
“We run it for about six to eight weeks per programme and we run two programmes a year.
“It’s quite a wide ranging group of people that come to it, probably more so than what I expected. I thought it would have been mostly fellas my age playing, but it’s very much a different sort of crowd coming to it from different backgrounds.
“It has been a lot of guys who maybe played when they were younger but stopped after a while, and then missed the social side of it.
“There’s other fellas there who couldn’t play football competitively for medical reasons, but they can play at this level as it is just a kickabout really.”
The addition of the programme has helped local fathers and men get involved in the club when they may not have done so in the past, Ciaran added.
“We certainly feel it has added to us as a club and gives us something that creates opportunities for people to get involved at all levels.
“Part of the view that led to us setting this up was that if our club is important to the parent, the parents will make the club important to the children, and in time we will benefit from that.
“We want to try our best to make out club important in people’s lives and relevant to people and for a number of years we maybe weren’t focusing on those things.
“Quite a lot of the Dads and Lads players have now got involved or more active in coaching at youth levels within the club and that certainly has been a knock on effect as well.”
