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Coaching & Games
Congratulations to all three Kerry Senior Captains for 2021.
Heartiest congratulations to Paul Murphy and Aislinn Desmond of Rathmore Club who will lead the Senior Men and Ladies Kerry teams in 2021. Also, Congratulations to Daniel Collins from Kilmoyley who is the Senior Hurling Captain for 2021. It’s a great honour for all three players and for their respective clubs. We look forward to supporting you all in 2021. Ciarraí Abú!
Coaching and Games
Last Thursday night The Munster Development program was rolled out in our Club. It was delivered over the internet. It was a very well organised and well-run presentation by The GDAS and well worth attending.
In summary it is a forum for us to look at our own club and suggest ways to make it stronger and grow into the future. In one sense it’s a sad time without on the field activity.
However, it is also an opportunity for all of us to sit in and listen to a well thought out and well delivered program. It is open to coaches and administrators and any member interested in the future of our club. If you are interested, please contact Stephen O’Brien our clubs Coaching Officer and he will arrange the link.
What is the Munster Development Program that is being presented to Ballymac GAA ?
A program that examines and evaluates all aspects of club development under the seven pillars that define optimally functioning clubs.
Undertaking a comprehensive club audit to assess the strengths and identify the opportunities open to the club.
Developing a Community of Learning within the club to bring all stakeholders together to share, learn and develop ideas to strengthen the club as a whole.
Receive on-going support to develop short-, medium- and long-term development plans for the club.
The format is three visits to club and at present the visits are online. Our local GDAS deliver the program and there are 7 pillars to the program:
Coaching & Games, Health & Wellbeing, communications and PR, Facilities, Finance, Fundraising, Social & Community, Organisational Structure and Governance, Volunteers’ and recruitment.
In between each visit working in our community of learning groups to identify the strengths and identify the opportunities open to the club.
Develop short term-, medium- and long-term goals to support all areas of the club.
Ongoing support from our local GDA and any other personnel that can assist.
Health & Wellbeing Committee
Changing Gears is a programme which is designed to help people who are 50+ to manage health challenges.
It promotes resilience in later life, facilitating participants to be more self-directive in making life style choices to optimise older age.
Changing Gears is a 6-session course that offers participants time to think about the health challenges they face and steps they can take to manage them better; develop skills which build confidence for the future; reimagine ageing as a time of hope with positive opportunities.
The course is set up so participants can use life lessons from past experiences as well as current strengths, abilities and resources, to manage health issues more positively in the future.
Age & Opportunity is the national organisation that provides a range of opportunities for older people who want to get more involved in arts and culture, sport and physical activity, civic engagement and personal development.
Our aim is to inspire people aged 50+ to be more active,more visible, more creative and more connected.
Age & Opportunity has secured funding from the Sláintecare Integration Fund to deliver Changing Gears to people with health challenges.
The main goal of this project is to implement a positive intervention for people who are 50+, especially vulnerable older people, resulting in better management of their health conditions.
The programme will be delivered via Zoom.
To book your place on the programme, please contact
Fiona Holohan, Engage Programme Co-ordinator, Age & Opportunity at
engage@ageandopportunity.ie
Dates: Tuesdays 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd February and 2nd and 9th March 2021
Time: 2.00 – 4.00 pm
Future Leaders – GAA Solo
GAA Solo is back. The very successful initiative to keep teenagers active during Lockdown 1 is back! The initiative is designed to promote positivity, physical activity and wellbeing among young people, while encouraging them to stay at home and follow HSE guidelines at the same time. There will be different challenges each week for the next 4 weeks. To get involved, students and teachers record videos of themselves doing the various challenges and upload them to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. There will be prizes each week sponsored by O’Neills. To find out more visit https://learning.gaa.ie/gaasolo
You can also check out Sally’s video for more details too: https://youtu.be/80TtK6pK34s
Interested in becoming a Covid 19 Officer?
Duties identified by governing bodies in line with government COVID-19 protocols
As part of comprehensive ‘Return to Play’ protocols issued by governing bodies of sport, all clubs are expected to appoint COVID-19 officers tasked with facilitating safe participation in sport and reducing the risk of spread of the coronavirus. This role is responsible for ensuring safe environments for training and play through regular risk assessment and communication as well as tracking attendance at training and club events in the event of a need to trace contacts of people who acquire the illness.
The GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) has specific resources and training material relating to COVID-19 roles in GAA clubs with specific guidance for players, team personnel, parents, match officials and the dedicated role of COVID-19 Supervisors. The COVID-19 Supervisor role overview for GAA clubs -all supervisors are required to complete the Gaelic Games Return to Training module on the GAA eLearning website.
Who can become a COVID-19 Officer?
This is an important new volunteering role within sports clubs and requires a specific skill set – the appointed person must keep up-to-date with the changing environment and act in accordance with the latest protocols set out by government and governing bodies of sport. The person should be organised with good attention to detail and good record keeping, should be comfortable working with young people, should be mindful of individual privacy/confidentiality and be a clear communicator. Where working with juveniles, COVID-19 officers will also have to have completed police vetting and any safeguarding courses outlined by the governing body.
Responsibilities of the COVID-19 Officer
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of responsibilities but instead highlights the key areas of responsibility and references documents published by various governing bodies to ensure club volunteers are armed with the best available information to create a relatively safe environment for sports participation.
Risk assessment
Identifying the risks around the club such as many instances of direct transmission and indirect transmission of the virus, forms the basis for ensuring a club is well prepared to manage safe participation.
Creating a safe environment
With knowledge of the likely risks prioritised by level of risk, the COVID-19Officer can then take relevant steps to minimise those risks and create a safe environment for participating in training, games or other club-related activities. Some of these steps are outlined below but may not cover all scenarios across different sports:
Communicate expectations around drop-offs / pick-ups (e.g. staggered arrival time, no congregating in car parks etc.)
Making signage visible to reinforce social distancing, cough etiquette, sanitisation etc.
Providing hand sanitiser at entrance/exit to facilities
Ensuring use of sanitiser by participants
Limiting group sizes (based on government regulations, available space, coach-to-player ratios etc.)
Regular sanitising of equipment (e.g. training equipment, goalposts etc.)
Health screening – start with COVID-19 questionnaire to ensure participants are fit to participate
Tracking attendance – maintain a record of who has attended and when
Keep direct contact to a minimum (until guidelines are changed)
Attendance tracking
In the event of a club member testing positive for COVID-19, it’s important from a community health perspective to be able to trace their known contacts in order to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Communicating protocols
Given the changing nature of the pandemic and new variants of the virus coming into the community, the protocols are subject to a certain amount of change (e.g. masks were not used initially but are commonplace now). People may also not have yet fully established habits around hand hygiene and social distancing etc. and need to be reminded through regular communication by all volunteers but this ongoing initiative is part of the role of the COVID-19 officer including verbal reminders and visual cues such as COVID-19 signage.
Reporting
The COVID-19 officer will also provide frequent updates to the club committee (and if necessary, the governing body) especially where breaches of protocol or coronavirus outbreaks occur in their club.
Ballymac GAA appreciates your support.
We really appreciate the support we have got from our play ball players every week. The minimum purchase of €2.00 per week adds up to at the end of the week. Alas, we are not playing at the moment. When our players return, we want our pitches and facilities to be in top-class condition and anyone involved in our weekly draw is a partner in this work. We are Ballymac. We value our GAA Club where we all belong.
The results of our Play Ball for the 25th January 2021 (totally online due to Covid19 restrictions) are as follows.
The numbers drawn in this week’s play Ball lotto were: 4,15,28 and 29.
There was no winner of the Jackpot of €1200.00
Congratulations to the lucky-dip winner John Daly.
We appreciate your support John and thank you for supporting Ballymac GAA.
We thank everyone who supported Ballymac GAA Play Ball Lotto this week.
All the money raised, is for the upkeep of our two pitches
Next week’s Jackpot is €1220.00 and the draw will take place on Monday 1st February after 9pm
You can buy your ticket by logging on to our web site or any of our social media outlets.
Anyone that needs help can contact Jer Lynch.
Sympathy
Ballymacelligott GAA Club extends its sincere condolences to the Family of the late Jimmy Foley of Tralee. Jimmy served as The Chairman of Tralee Board for years and was superb in promoting football in Tralee and the surrounding areas.
He was so interested in Juvenile Competitions’ and never missed a game at any age run by the Town Board. He was an innovative Chairman and ran various competitions to promote underage football.
He invited many outside clubs to join the Board for competitions, long before it was popular elsewhere. His big love was the final of the U12 competition and he put many hours of work into those finals to ensure the young players had great memories of playing in the U12 final in Tralee. Suaimhneas go raibh aige.
