Féile feel-food factor failing as frets fobbed off

LOCKER ROOM:A fine competition is in danger not from the fall-out from parents choosing not to have their children stay with unvetted strangers but from a doctrinaire insistence on telling them what to do with their own kids

WHEN THE Dublin under-14 camogie team trains in the Phoenix Park the girls from Lucan are nearly always late because of the traffic. Everyone is doing stretches by the time the Lucan gang pour out of their cars away over on the tarmac and come scampering across the grass, hurleys swinging one way, gear bags dangling the other way, helmets being jammed on. Voices shouting, "We're here, we're here."

They are a happy clatter of kids, the best players of a talented generation of girls from a club which is just beginning to excel at the most skilful and beautiful game a kid can play. They play with a joyful exuberance which is an extension of their personality.

A few weeks ago the Lucan girls brought a first Dublin Féile title to their club. They hosted the event with the grace and friendliness long associated with Lucan Sarsfields and for the final, in a nice touch, the girls from Lucan and St Oliver Plunketts were led out onto the field at Twelfth Lock by a lone piper.

Then the Lucan girls cut loose. Won well. A proud, proud day for their club, their mentors and their parents, which they didn't want to publicise. For a bunch of kids there is nothing quite like the joy of winning a Féile together but to bring the first one home to your club? That is special.

Since then everything has been a helter-skelter of preparation. Spare hurleys purchased, extra socks and skirts procured in case of rain, funds to be raised, a Féile magazine to be produced, training sessions to be attended most afternoons, challenge games.

It's Feile! No excitement like it. The draw was made. Lucan's first game against the mighty Freshford, to be played in Freshford on Friday at 2pm. You could hear little hearts beating the countdown. Sport doesn't get much better.

On Saturday a good chunk of the Lucan girls represented Dublin in a blitz sponsored by Coillte down in Carlow. They won all their games, ate their sandwiches and went on as a group to shout for Dublin against Wexford in the hurling in Nowlan Park. Another great day together as comrades on the road to Féile. By the time they got home somebody had taken the decision that in all likelihood the Lucan girls would not be allowed to play in next weekend's Féile after all. The problem?

The girls' mentors (all of whom have girls on the team) and a majority of the remaining parents had decided that as a group (one 11-year-old, five 12-year-olds, eleven 13-year- olds and seven 14-year-olds), they would prefer the girls to stay together in Kilkenny rather than be placed in pairs in houses with strangers.

However, the National Féile Committee, which it has to be said runs one of the great competitions in sport, assumes for itself the right to tell parents what to do with their own children. If the Lucan girls don't stay with host families in strangers' homes they cannot play.

This column has to declare an interest here. In 2005 I co-managed a team which competed in the All-Ireland Féile in Cork. For specific reasons and in accordance with the wishes of a majority of the parents involved we kept the girls together.

The girls reached the final, got a hammering but had what is by common consent the happiest weekend of their lives and formed a bond with each other that will last a lifetime.

The decision wasn't universally popular but our club executive did what they had to do and respected the wishes of the parents involved. The girls played a full part in Féile and represented their club and county with pride and honour and joy.

No parents or mentors who take a decision to keep children together as a group need to justify themselves to the National Féile Committee. Our decision back in 2005 and the decision by Lucan in no way reflected on the hosts clubs, who are made up of fine, generous GAA people who exhibited perfect understanding of the delicacies of the situation.

Concerns differ. Some parents are happy to have their children stay with host families and feel that should be part of the experience. Some parents have children who are upset by the prospect of staying away from home in the first place. Some parents have dietary concerns for their daughters. Some have worries over health and safety. Some would just like a team that has grown up together to experience all aspects of a great weekend together.

Some want to know who, if anybody, is liable if something goes wrong in a host house, anywhere at anytime. (The Féile representative I spoke to yesterday said simply that whoever committed a wrongdoing would be liable.) Many parents point out that what is fine for boys is different for girls. Anyone who has ever run a camogie team of that age knows the delicacy of what used to be called "women's issues" being encountered for the first time by girls of that age.

Some parents are just concerned about sending their daughters for home stays with host families who haven't been vetted. It is their right to be concerned. Many parents are happy to have their children stay in the homes of unvetted strangers. That is their right too.

On this issue of vetting, the National Féile Committee, or at least key parts thereof, seem indifferent. This column spoke yesterday with a senior officer of Féile who professed himself unaware of the existence of Garda vetting even.

"You are telling parents that if they don't send their children to stay with unvetted hosts their children cannot play in a competition that they duly qualified for?"

"That's the rule and you and I know there is no such thing as vetting in this country."

"The gardaí have a Central Vetting Unit in Thurles."

"Well I'm not aware of that."

The great pity here is camogie as a national body has been ahead of the curve as regards the implementations of child-safety guidelines and is doing admirable and commendably progressive work. This decision, if it holds, is a huge setback.

Vetting is a simple precaution. For example, all 30,000 volunteers to help at the Special Olympics in 2003 were vetted by the Central Vetting Unit.

Lucan, who intended keeping the girls together in a local boarding school for the princely sum of €15 a night, have offered to take their children home to their own beds each night and drive up and down to the Féile competition if needs be.

This is not acceptable either, although the girls from the two Kilkenny teams in Lucan's Féile group will be sleeping in their own beds each night.

Féile needs a guarantee that Lucan will send their children to sleep in the houses of strangers or the girls will not play in a competition they have set their hearts on.

There is an argument that not staying with host families will "destroy Féile". It won't. Féile didn't collapse in 2005 when St Vincent's kept their team together. The decision to put the name of a fizzy-drinks manufacturer on the back of All-Ireland Féile medals didn't destroy Féile either. The competition is stronger and more vibrant than that.

What will destroy Féile is a doctrinaire insistence on telling parents what they must do with their own children. What would destroy Féile would be a scene which could unfold in Freshford at 2pm next Friday afternoon, when the Lucan girls turn up in their jerseys and helmets to play in a competition they have spent months preparing for, qualifying for and dreaming about and some blazer tells them they cannot play because their guardians' concerns over their safety are at odds with some arcane rule.

I love Féile. I revere the competition as one of the greatest elements of the GAA calendar, but I hope the cameras and the tape recorders are there to record that awful moment for posterity on Friday because it isn't often you see something wonderful take out a gun and shoot itself in the foot. It isn't often you see children being bullied out of their play by the very people who should be making their welfare sacred.

It would shameful and wrong to make such a wonderful bunch of girls suffer the consequences of institutional inflexibility. Hopefully, wise heads will prevail.