Using our national games as platform for positive actions

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It is apparently an accepted reality that, when you say or do something that knocks a person’s self-esteem, it takes twenty positive actions to get them back to the level you toppled them from.

At least it was a reference point used by the President of the GAA, Liam O’Neill, last week when he spoke about bullying, harassment and self-esteem on a visit to Galway.

The Laois man was launched a fantastic fundraiser in aid of Pieta House – 100,000 Steps for Cormac will be a celebration, both of the late Cormac Connolly and all that is good about the GAA, as well as a major boost for the suicide awareness charity.

And it was because of the work being done by Pieta House – he also referenced the Samaritans because of a link-up with Croke Park on a mental health and wellbeing programme – that Mr O’Neill spoke of the need to protect our children.

And he didn’t mean from sexual or physical abuse – although he acknowledged the depths of that problem throughout our history – but this was more about building them up instead of knocking them down.

Anyone who has children who play sport, or who has attended a juvenile match in any sporting code, will know what he is talking about when he refers to the shouting and abuse directed at small children as they do their best on the field of play.

It wouldn’t be tolerated in any other aspect of life; if you shouted at a child on the street in the way that some parents shout at them on a football pitch, you’d quite possibly be arrested and charged.

So seriously does the GAA take this problem that the Association’s President said they were considering a proposal to play all matches at U6 and U8 level in complete silence.

So if parents or other adults cannot learn to behave themselves on the sideline, the organisation with responsibility for our national games will do it for them.

It’s a revolutionary proposal but one that, if it comes to pass, could be taken on board by every sporting body in the world.

Because this is not exclusively a GAA problem by any means – and this sort of criticism and abuse does nothing other than to dent a child’s confidence, often to a point where they give up a sport they love altogether.

There’s nothing wrong with shouting encouragement from the sideline and with offering positive observations after it’s all over – even a shoulder to cry on if it does have to end in tears.

But these children will have to take criticism for long enough in later life; they don’t need to be lambasted at such a vulnerable age before they’ve matured enough to see things in proper perspective.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.