Sport for the good of society

ALTERNATIVE VIEW - Brian Gillespie

IN a column on these pages eight years ago (July 21, 2015 – 'Giving everyone a sporting chance'), I wrote about my two children's experience in sport. It's interesting to look back now and see how Child the First (female) was gravitating more towards the stage and Child the Second (male) more towards the football fields.

At the time, it had been revealed by the Irish Sports Council that a greater number of women than men in the Mayo/Sligo area were participating more regularly in sport.

Since then we've had a global pandemic and I don't have updated information on how it may have altered that particular fact, but there's no doubt that participation in sport continues to grow among girls and women. The current FIFA Women's World Cup (COYGIG!) should only serve to increase participation – and not just in Association Football, I would wager.

Around the time I wrote that column in 2015, I started to delve into the world of coaching myself. I was egged on by Child the Second to do so, and therefore concentrated on the boys' game initially. Later, for a couple of reasons (including the aforementioned pandemic), I drifted towards the arena of girls' football.

The main driver was Child the First this time because there was a big danger that her football team would cease to exist without a coach. Her sporting career was slow to take off but she grew to love football (of the Association variety, and tried rugby and Gaelic as well), and I was anxious – as were some other parents – to see that she and her friends could continue to play with the local club.

At the time, the club had few girls' teams, so we set about trying to do something about that. It took a while but this past year has seen an explosion in numbers, allowing the club to field female teams at all age levels bar senior.

While it is mere anecdotal evidence, from the club's experience we can at least speculate that interest in sport among females is growing at a healthy rate.

Back in 2015, that Irish Sports Council survey (Irish Sports Monitor) had found that 48.1% of residents in Mayo and Sligo were taking part in sport regularly, but the breakdown among the sexes was that women (49.0%) were participating slightly more than men (47.1%).

I don't recall if the Gaelic 4 Mother & Others initiative had started at the time; certainly not many local clubs had run with it, as far as I recall. That has changed now, and there are tag rugby and walking football programmes that have likely attracted some women back to these teams sports. In addition, the various lockdowns for Covid reignited interest in walking and swimming and running, etc.

So again – at least on an anecdotal level – we have to say that more women (and men too, most likely) than ever are participating in sport. That, ultimately, is good for society at large and why many of us start coaching at our local clubs in the first place. It's not a desire to be the next Brian Cody or Pep Guardiola. Rather it's the chance to pay it back to society and hopefully leave young people with a life-long interest in sport and activity.