Normally from April onward, the website is filled with weekly club activities, reports on blitzes, training, matches, social activities and plenty of photos showing action on and off the pitch.
It’s been a very tough ten weeks when everyone has faced difficult and very different circumstances: our brave and dedicated key workers continuing to work through tough conditions and uncertainty, everyone adjusting to the ‘new normal’, home-schooling, missing seeing our families and in some cases coming to terms with the loss of our loved ones without having the opportunity of being able to say good bye.
The flip side of these circumstances is that our members and families have maybe been able to try things that they haven’t had the opportunity to do before. When you read and listen to the news, and catch up on social media, it is amazing to just see the wealth of charity challenges that people are getting involved in, new hobbies, D.I.Y., exercise, zoom and team meetings and quizzes plus catching up with numerous jobs on the ‘to do’ list and bingeing on that series on catch up t.v.! That would also include being able to access all the GAA games of years gone passed.
The activity within the club has been varied. The older players started off with the 5K and 10K Challenge, keeping their fitness in mind. Every day the leading time was being broken and over a period of weeks, the challenges were serious and the leader board established with position and times changing.
Then came the cycling, which helped those who maybe weren’t the natural long distance runners. This activity has proved very popular with a recent journey by the to 10 football stadiums in London on the one day.
Fitness is being maintained by the older youth age groups through ‘virtual’ weekly training sessions, the slightly younger age groups have been doing skills challenges, such as the 30 second right foot/left foot ball exercise. An array of resources being made available by the GAA which have been very valuable given the situation.
https://www.gaa.ie/my-gaa/getting-involved/kids-activities
https://www.gaa.ie/my-gaa/community-and-health/community-development/covid-19-support
https://www.gaa.ie/news-archive/news/joe-o-connor-shows-you-how-to-movemoreathome/
https://learning.gaa.ie/gaacoachwebinar2020
Nothing makes up for not being able to participate in the game that we love. Unfortunately that seems still to be some way off. Until then all we can do is keep safe, stay alert and hopefully ensure that by following the lockdown rules, our return to training and games will be on the horizon sometime soon.
