Greater access to GAA abroad can provide youth with link to ancestry
Gary Mason with his son, Eamon, as a six-month-old in 2020.
Social media in the UK was in awe of the intensity and range of skills being broadcast on BBC 2 during the recent titanic All-Ireland hurling final between Clare and Cork. It showed the potential for the game to grow in front of new audiences.
Last year’s football final between Dublin and Kerry received similar praise, and the clash between Galway and Armagh, which also was broadcast on BBC 2 last weekend, was also set to win new admirers.
The broadcast not only opens up the GAA to new audiences, it also makes it accessible to the diaspora who have emigrated across the Irish Sea.
Gary Mason, grandson of Roscommon’s All-Ireland winning midfielder from the 1940s, Eamon Boland, raised this point on X, stating that he was looking forward to showing his own son — named Eamon after his great-grandfather — the sport he is so passionate about for the first time.
“My son Eamon was born in 2020, which would’ve been the year my grandfather turned 100. The links between the two of them felt so strong.
“My grandfather was my best friend. He was so quiet and shy about his achievements, but when he opened up about ‘43 and ’44 you could see his face light up, and it was magic.
“I’ll always have that, even though he’s not been here for 24 years. I’ll always have that pride in what he achieved and his midfield partner Liam (Gilmartin), and how immense they were in the middle of the park,” Gary told the .
Gary, who is based in Milton Keynes with his wife Erin, highlighted the difficulty in watching GAA, and in particular Roscommon games in the UK.
“I’m kind of technologically naïve, I stick to traditional media, the TV and newspapers, so I didn’t know too much about GAAGO. It was certainly something I wasn’t aware of.
“Following the GAA on Facebook and the Roscommon clubs, I had never heard of it. We’ve got a huge Irish family down south in England and up in Manchester, and from talking to everyone, I don’t think anyone uses it. There’s a lot of people that would use it, but have never heard of it at all,” he ideally.
Gary spoke about the particular difficulty in accessing Roscommon games.
“Ideally, we want access to as many Roscommon games as we can, across all sports and age grades. Anything I could get a hold of, I would watch, but it’s just so difficult to get anything.”
He believes that not having games readily available to watch will affect his son’s generation’s interest in following the GAA.
“Eamon’s only four right now, so his interest in sport is quite limited as it is, but if he’s not going to see it (GAA) week after week, he’s going to focus on soccer, and what’s available to him.
“I need him to have that link to where he comes from. Without that, I can’t see how you can grasp how the youth in the UK can have a link to their ancestry,” he concluded.
