{"id":629496,"date":"2026-09-19T11:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/629496\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T11:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:14:14","slug":"the-gaa-can-build-croke-park-so-why-not-build-houses-south-kerrys-radical-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/629496\/","title":{"rendered":"The GAA can build Croke Park. So why not build houses? South Kerry\u2019s radical solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE St Mary\u2019s club in Caherciveen posted a sliver of nostalgia this week on the 25th anniversary of their first Kerry IFC title in 2001. It was a side containing Bryan Sheehan, Maurice Fitzgerald, Austin Constable, Ray Keane et al and fifteen years later the club would celebrate an All-Ireland club title<\/a> at the same grade. But over the last quarter of a century, such days have been fewer and far between.<\/p>\n

St Mary\u2019s social media post this week appeared the same day applications closed for a pilot GAA post to navigate a two-year insight into changing population, participation and club demographics \u2013 in Kerry. For the future \u2013 and future policy – of Gaelic games in rural Ireland, there may not be a more important, if sobering, body of work in the next quarter of a century.<\/p>\n

South Kerry make their Kerry SFC bow this Sunday with a preliminary round tie away to St Kieran\u2019s in Brosna. They’ve won ten titles and served up some of the Kingdom’s greatest. Micko. Dwyer. Jacko. Maurice. But that they are still at it in 2026 is something of a statement. John O\u2019Driscoll, who captained Skellig Rangers to a county JFC title in 2009, is managing and they have a body of work to carry with them. They also have a stubborn streak that speaks to their isolation and pride that in this corner of football country, the GAA still dominates a diminishing output of school boys and girls. Eight out of every ten primary school boys in south Kerry play Gaelic football. It might a cantankerous debate but if one were to nominate the most football-obsessed bloc of the most football-obsessed county, South Kerry would be hard beat.<\/p>\n

They have to be. Simply for the clubs, and the game to survive. It\u2019s no coincidence that the GAA\u2019s first Demographics Project Coordinator will be based in Kerry. Joe McCrohan,\u00a0the chair of the South Kerry GAA Board, works with the South Kerry Partnership. Rural preservation and development is his round the clock. \u201cI said all this 15-20 years ago and people were laughing at me. I wrote that (oft-quoted demographics) report back in 2011.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LOCALLOCAL PRIDE: St Stephen’s Day 2015 and the battle for the Jack Murphy Cup (South Kerry SFC) between rivals St Mary’s and Waterville. Here Fion\u00e1n Clifford of Waterville gets the ball away under pressure from Paul O’Donoghue of St Mary’s. Pic: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile <\/p>\n

McCrohan has moved well beyond the keening around clubs no longer being able to field their own teams. He made his peace with club amalgamations a long time ago because he\u2019s seen the maths. \u201cAmalgamations is the way it\u2019s become and it won\u2019t change any time soon. I haven\u2019t (yet) got the new schools numbers that enrolled for this month around south Kerry but I\u2019d have a fair idea. It\u2019s not rocket science. Your five olds will be your Under 10 team in five years\u2019 time. You have your numbers there. And the numbers are down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trend is going the wrong way. There are probably three schools holding their own in terms of numbers – Caherciveen, Waterville and Sneem \u2013 the rest are falling. This has been going one way with 20 or 30 years, this is nothing new for us. But others are beginning to cotton on to the gravity of the situation. It will be more and more amalgamations. There will always be teams, always be football, we will just have to go further for it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

South Kerry might well look wistfully at the Government strategies that promoted spokes and hubs in more populous, central parts of the county. They developed small business hubs in Farranfore and the centre of the county, while decentralising state bodies to Tralee, Listowel and Killarney.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why you have the likes of Ballymac, Firies, Listry and Fossa full of South Kerry people playing football. Most of the clubs are run by south Kerry people! Take Fossa alone. If decentralisation didn\u2019t happen the Cliffords might be playing in Dublin, and if their father worked with the Legal Aid Board in Caherciveen rather than the Department of Transport in Killarney, they\u2019d be playing with South Kerry tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valentia\u2019s famed Young Islanders \u2013 who gave us all Mick O\u2019Connell – stopped fielding an adult team three years ago, but they have rallied and went to a (fifth tier) Novice Championship semi final this year. Small wins. Whether it\u2019s a temporary reprieve, who knows? The numbers, and the lack of housing opportunities, indicates the likes of Dromid Pearses, Reenard and Valentia are the most challenged south Kerry clubs in terms of a future. It\u2019s not very difficult to reach into their respective pasts to see how they have served Kerry football well.<\/p>\n

\u201cReenard, just outside Caherciveen, is starting to move beyond the financial scope of a lot of first time buyers,\u201d McCrohan explained. \u201cThat\u2019s a socio economic trend that isn\u2019t peculiar to Reenard or even south Kerry. All-Ireland winning clubs like Dr Crokes in Killarney and Dingle are going to suffer the same problems \u2013 no new housing because of spiralling land cost and green fields. It\u2019s a major problem in Reenard \u2013 you need to have deep pockets to build there. There\u2019s a lot of millionaires living in south Kerry – and west Kerry for that matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Therefore every win, however modest, is a fillip. On Thursday night, the South Kerry minors won the (secondary) Co MFC Shield final against Kenmare District. It followed similar wins at Under 14 and Under 16 level, though at county league level, it has necessitated five south Kerry clubs coming together to form one team.<\/p>\n

Is the future as inevitable as it is hopeless? Not with bold thinking, says Joe McCrohan.<\/p>\n

\"We'veWe’ve done it: St Mary’s Daniel Daly celebrates winning the South Kerry SFC final in Portmagee. Pic: Stephen McCarthy, Sportsfile<\/p>\n

\u201cThe GAA need to build houses. Yes, you heard that: Build houses. They need players. Players need houses. There\u2019s no one else going to build houses for our members. The Council won\u2019t, the Government haven\u2019t and private developers are not particularly social conscious or conscientious.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey built Croke Park. They\u2019ve built many of the finest facilities in this country. I\u2019ve been saying this for quite a while. Look what Reenard built. Or Fossa. These are the finest facilities so why wouldn\u2019t they build a house?<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout it there is a fraught future. The players now will come home from Killarney, Tralee or Listowel to play with the club, that\u2019s not the problem. It\u2019s their children who join up with the local club in those towns and they are lost. The next generation. A lost generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the player is living and working in Ireland at all, he still wants to play for his club, in the main. They are coming from London and Dubai to play local championship. There are areas of north Leitrim, Donegal and north Mayo that would be as bad in terms of depopulation but they wouldn\u2019t have the same density of clubs that we would have in south Kerry There are eight clubs in the division, and some parishes with three clubs. Imagine, if Ballymac was in South Kerry, it would be split into three clubs. That\u2019s why amalgamation is inevitable. We have to go out and get nearly every player to play. That\u2019s why eight out of every ten boys play football down here. If they didn\u2019t\u2026.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a proud, if necessary, truth. South Kerry GAA clubs outrank most when it comes to participation percentages among primary school kids, up towards 80%. \u201cThese are our wins at the moment. If you are measure success over the next ten years in terms of winning things, it will be the Ballymacs, Fossa, Listrys,\u201d the South Kerry chairman predicts.<\/p>\n

Whether South Kerry go deep into the championship or not, the divisional football grudges for the Jack Murphy Cup will be rekindled over the autumn and winter. McCrohan has great pride in what his neighbour Jack O\u2019Connor has done for Kerry football, but he\u2019s not with him in terms of inter county men sacking off the local championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot done to free up the players to play with the county, we don\u2019t see them hardly at all for the Co League. So we only get the county players back to their clubs from August to October. That\u2019s a small window.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does that flintiness and desperation to keep dressing rooms busy help? \u201cIt does, but there\u2019s a mighty love of football still. They\u2019d go anywhere for a game. Two and a half hours to Tarbert for an Under 12 game. They pay no notice, no big deal. Off you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n *Kerry SFC: St Kieran’s v South Kerry, Sunday, Brosna, 1pm\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE St Mary\u2019s club in Caherciveen posted a sliver of nostalgia this week on the 25th anniversary of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59841,4365,6937,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-629496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gaa-the-changing-game","tag-gaelic-football","tag-kerry-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}