Running to stand still

Fears are growing that the economic downturn is taking its toll on the numbers participating in sport, writes EMMET MALONE

HAVING SPENT the boom years looking at ways to cater for busy people with a bit of cash to spare, a significant portion of them living in rapidly expanding communities around the country’s big cities, the nation’s sports administrators are facing up to a new array of challenges in 2010.

A week before Christmas, the second annual Irish Sports Council-commissioned (ISC) Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report confirmed what everybody in the business already knew: times are tough.

But those involved in some of the leading sports organisations identified as having suffered in 2008 insist that participation levels remain buoyant, with most insisting that they have experienced a change in the pattern of involvement rather than any dramatic decline and all expressing a considerable degree of confidence about the future.

The headline figures in the report are fairly stark, with 2008 overall participation levels in sport down about 2 per cent on the previous year.

The finer points of the wide-ranging findings are more complex, but the general trend would appear to have been that younger women and the unemployed did a little more exercise over the course of the year while men and those in work did a little less.

The numbers are based on a telephone poll of some 7,000 respondents and the results point to a decline in most types of participation, particularly visits to the gym, which would appear to have dropped by about 20 per cent year-on-year. Most of the major sports are down significantly too, however, with some individual pursuits – generally reckoned to be more price-sensitive than those played by teams – suffering badly.

There are exceptions though, with rugby actually increasing its numbers during the year in question while swimming, a sport that tends to have an appeal across age and gender boundaries, experiencing a drop but still holding up well enough to be now regarded as the country’s number one in terms of participants.

The report’s author, Dr Peter Lunn of the ESRI, is confident that the recession is to blame for the drop, which is partly offset by increased numbers of people walking or cycling to work. And at the Football Association of Ireland, where officials are surprised by the suggestion that participation is down by 10 per cent, there is certainly a feeling that changes in the employment situation nationally must be a factor.

“If there has been a fall in participation,” says the organisation’s director of communications, Peter Sherrard, “I’d suggest that it’s more likely to be on the recreational side of things with workplace five-a-sides and the like declining because, on the one hand people are losing their jobs and, on the other, those who are still in jobs are under a bit more pressure and so less likely to want to skip out of the office to play football.”

But, he insists, there is no general sense within the game that numbers are falling in the more organised, club-based sector. “We have struggled to cope with the demand in some areas, places where perhaps there was one club established for many years and serving a small community that suddenly expands through the addition of 20 new estates.

“In those sorts of situations we have had clubs that have had to turn people away. We’ve been working very hard to improve facilities in those places though, and we’re still seeing things coming on stream, which means that numbers are actually increasing.”

The association has also placed considerable emphasis on developing the game through a series of pilot projects both in less well-off communities and areas where the game has traditionally enjoyed less popularity. Both schemes, Sherrard maintains, have considerable scope for expansion over the coming years, pretty much regardless of how the wider economy is faring.

Similarly, those involved in running athletics find the claim of a decline in participation by women in the sport after several years of dramatic growth, a little hard to fathom.

Entry levels for many of the country’s leading mass participation races were up very significantly and clubs around the country have, says Frank Greally of Athletics Ireland, embraced the association’s targeting of recreational runners through its “Fit 4 Life” programme in recent times.

“It [the campaign] has brought a whole new dimension to many clubs around the country, a very positive one, and that’s going to go a few notches this year.

“We’ve seen an explosion in the numbers of people running over the last couple of years and there is a lot of high visibility evidence that people are still getting out there and taking exercise in very high numbers.”

Greally says the health benefits to participants are self evident but claims that another selling point is the need to set an example for children. “The reality is that we don’t see parents doing basic things like going for walks together nearly as much as we would have say, 30 years ago,” he says, “and it’s a lot harder to tell a child to turn off the TV or video game and do something if you don’t do anything yourself.

“Kids who see their parents play some form of sport are clearly more likely to see that as the norm so, by going out and doing something, you’re not only improving your own health but also laying the groundwork for the next generation to stay healthier too.”

Other sports, some of them with lower profiles than the likes of football and athletics, are targeting significant growth over the next few years with badminton, for instance, embarking on a three-year development plan. The sport has already benefited from the major capital expenditure by public bodies on sport in recent years and by increased grant aid.

The number of badminton clubs has actually declined – from about 500 to about 425 – as players shift from the sort of single court church or school hall with which it was sometimes associated to far better, multi-court local sports centres.

“I don’t think badminton is hugely affected by economic factors,” says Sheila O’Flanagan, until recently director of strategic planning with Badminton Ireland, “but over the course of the boom we did increase our numbers, particularly at the schools level and that was because we got more funding and prioritised bringing young people into the sport.

“One of the main problems you have, though, is that you’re trying to plan for the next three years but getting your funding on an annual basis and that makes things difficult. It’s not all funding but when you are planning for the future you do have to be conscious of how you are going to pay for things.”

Pretty much everybody agrees that it’s not all about funding but, like many, Paul McDermott of the Irish Sports Council acknowledges that the link is pretty strong.

“The connection between income and participation is well established,” he says. “People buy physical activity as part of their leisure time. In the current economic climate, then, it’s not entirely surprising that we have seen some problems.

“Overall, though, more people are participating in sport now than ever before and even the downturn needn’t be all bad from a participation point of view. Obviously, unemployment is a bad thing, but it’s a reality and we will need to do some work to help people see that they can at least put some of the additional time they have on their hands to a more positive use.

“There’s been a huge investment in facilities which means that we’re in a much better position to respond now than we were in the 1980s. There are still a lot of resources there too.

“We’ve had cuts but not on the scale that we can’t react to what is going on and what we need to do now is, through structures like the national associations and local sports partnerships, look at the sort of programmes and initiatives that can help to reverse the declines noted in this report.”