LGFA launch strategic plan...
- May 12,2011
BY 2016, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association claim the number of spectators attending their All-Ireland finals will have risen from 22,000 to 40,000.
That’s just one of many ambitious aims outlined in the far-reaching five year strategic plan they published in Croke Park last night.
"It’s something we had huge debate over, but we believe it can be achieved within the next years," says Ladies Gaelic Football Association CEO Helen O’Rourke.
"The All-Ireland Senior, Intermediate and Junior finals in Croke Park is the biggest day of the year for our association, something all of our players dream of being part of. We now have to get people to start coming out and supporting them because we do have a tremendous product.
"Even looking at the League finals, the three games in Parnell Park last weekend, the feedback is that the standard of the football was exceptional. Support from the media is very important. If we can keep that increased media coverage, more and more people will come along to see our games."
The popularity of Ladies Football has exploded in the last 10 years, and by 2016 O’Rourke is confident they’ll increase their current membership of just under 140,000 to over 200,000. They’ve targeted urban areas for much of the expansion where they plan to established 40 new clubs and gain 10,000 new players.
"What we have identified in the last 18 months is there are huge urban areas with actually very little activity going on, within GAA and other sports as well," says O’Rourke.
"With support from the GAA, we have put in place urban officers and programme officers who identify different areas where they can go and set up our Gaelic For Girls and Gaelic For Mothers programmes which have both been hugely successful.
"The number of clubs out there currently cannot cater for the huge urban areas and we have identified that as an area where we make great strides. And the other area where we will make great strides is in the recreation element of our sport – through Gaelic for Mothers.
"It’s all about fun, friendship and a cheap way of getting together and getting fit. It’s developed into a hugely vibrant social scene for them."
As their playing numbers increase, the challenge for the Association will be to keep pace by bringing through more and more coaches from the ranks of former players. It’s something they haven’t always done well in the past, and the vast majority of senior club and inter-county coaches are men who have a background primarily in Gaelic Football rather than Ladies Football.
"You can gradually see it going that way, but it will take time and we need to support it and put in a place a structure that will attract former players into coaching," says O’Rourke.
"We’re still a relatively young association and a lot of players don’t want to get involved in coaching while they’re still playing. What we’re starting to see now is that many former inter-county players have beenattracted back to the sport by the recreational element of programmes like Gaelic For Mothers.
"Many of the Kerry nine in a row team for example got involved again, and once they came back to the game they decided to get involved incoaching and refereeing as well.
"This is happening all over the country and we need it to happen more and more. It’s a huge target for us because we need more and more people involved in refereeing and coaching."
How successful they’ll be implementing it remains to be seen, but the five year plan for Ladies Football they published yesterday is certainly ambitious, far-reaching and visionary.
It’s not all that long ago when Ladies Football was barely treading water, but the success of the last ten years has clearly energised the sport.
"When our association was set up we started off small and we’re still relatively young – only 37 years old," says O’Rourke.
"We’ve been able to sit back and see what other associations did and take our time in developing ours. It was very slow in the beginning, but the last ten years have seen unprecedented growth and we’re determined to respond to that."
"Originally we thought it was a job which would be done within six months but when we started it we realised that there were a huge amount of areas that we hugely needed todevelop. In our previous strategic plan we went down the line of a national strategic plan, with provinces and counties developing their own then.
"This time we thought we’d develop one strategic plan with clear guidelines for each provincial council, county boards and clubs. Taking that extra time was worthwhile."
Report courtesy of the Irish Examiner
Images courtesy of sportsfile.com
CEO of LGFA Helen O