The chairperson of Sliabh Rua has described as \u201cheartbreaking\u201d the situation whereby the club will have to split for certain age-grades and work under strict guidelines at others.<\/p>\n
Feeding into the adult set-ups of both Ballymartle and Belgooly, the existence of Sliabh Rua actually pre-dates the formation of the latter, the entity having competed as far back as the early 1970s.<\/p>\n
From 2026, independent under-age teams – i.e. those that are not directly linked to a single adult club – are subject to strict rules, with the new monitoring committee deciding on what should happen at each level.<\/p>\n
While the maroon and white of Sliabh Rua may still be seen on the playing fields from U11 Go Games up to minor (U18) inclusive, there are conditions: the U11 teams must only consist of players born in 2015 and the U12 sides only 2014 births. For U14 and U16, a combined side will only be able to choose players on the age or the year below – if, however, Belgooly and Ballymartle were to compete on their own, they would be entitled to pick players born across a three-year period. For U8 and U10 Go Games, the clubs must operate separately.<\/p>\n
Paul Hannan, the Clare native who is the Sliabh Rua chairperson \u201cWe’re a community, two villages, one primary school in Belgooly and the boys play with Sliabh Rua,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, of course, we\u2019re not technically recognised as a club – we\u2019re class as a group of independent teams, even though we have our own structures, committee and governance, we have our own money, we do our own funadraising, all of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids had their U6-11 end-of-year party recently – the first time holding it together with the camogie club, and we had a \u2018Dunk The Coach\u2019 fundraiser last year, which was obviously great fun for the kids, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s heart-breaking, really, to see these young boys having fun together with their friends at the weekend and getting their medals – they\u2019re in the one primary school and now they’re being divided.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The strong identity created by Sliabh Rua\u2019s longevity means that any impending changes have left people very upset.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the mums came to a coach in tears the other day,\u201d Hannan says, \u201cshe has two boys, one is U12 and the other boy is U8. One fella wants to play with Ballymarkle because his best buddy is from Riverstick and the other boy wants to play with Belgooly because his best buddy just around the corner, the family’s from Belgooly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve heard of mums and dads saying that they’ll take their kids into Kinsale or off to Tracton, because they’d just prefer not to get involved in this split. I\u2019ve had coaches say to me that, if it goes through, they\u2019ll just step down and not be involved. He said he couldn’t coach one team against the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can see from the demographics how, five years ago, there was a good number of pupils in the school, whereas in the last couple of years they\u2019ve started advertising for enrolments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s there is a single strong structure, based on family and community engagement and increasing inclusivity, but when you\u2019re splitting up our boys in the school, friendships will be fragmented and there\u2019ll definitely be community division.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth clubs are holding EGMs this weekend and I wouldn\u2019t like to predict the outcomes but, because of the restrictions and stipulations in place, they might say it\u2019s unworkable and that it\u2019s best to split the whole way up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be very sad if that turned out to be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chairperson of Sliabh Rua has described as \u201cheartbreaking\u201d the situation whereby the club will have to split…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[24,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-189450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-cork-gaa","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115577888725710019","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}