Madam, – Ian O’Riordan’s excellent article (Sport, September 5th) prompts me to give expression to an idea that has been swirling around the back of my mind for some years now.
During an extended sojourn in the Netherlands I discovered athletics as an “everyperson’s” sport, both as participant and spectator. A keen road-runner, a Dutch colleague advised me to join a local athletics club. What a discovery that was.
Running on a proper track for the first time in my life was an indescribable feeling, a thrill that I had absolutely not anticipated. I was confronted with the reality that athletics is an extremely versatile and varied sport. There really was something for everyone, from the smallest and youngest, to the biggest and oldest. I encountered, and trained with, every age, sex, and size.
And what did it take for so many of society to exercise and socialise day and night together? A 400m track around a grassed field, a set of floodlights, and a clubhouse with changing rooms, showers, and a refreshments bar. As found in practically every town in the Netherlands.
On my return to Ireland, it bothered me that, in a sporting nation, no-one seemed to share the same enlightenment. I learned that our serious athletes have to go abroad if they want the facilities to succeed.
I looked around but could not find the athletics tracks. But I saw the space for them in many GAA clubs. I knew the middle A stood for Athletics.
I knew that the GAA competed with other sports to preserve their own. I knew that getting a true athletic culture would have to come from within.
So, GAA, why not? Make athletics your own. Make it ours. A national sport that does not have to be exclusively national, but one that we can be as justly proud of. One that can provide yet another platform for the athleticism and skill that was so much in evidence in Croke Park two Sundays ago.
O’Riordan expresses a degree of doubt as to whether an athletics meet in Croke Park would garner the crowds.
Believe me, if we had an athletics track in every GAA ground across the country, you wouldn’t be able to keep them out. What would that do to our national fitness, our national identity, and our national pride?
Come on GAA – start the revolution! – Yours, etc,