Derrygonnelly Harps manager, John McGovern Picture: Ronan McGrade
No club has lost more players over the past five years than Derrygonnelly Harps. One of the most progressive clubs in the county, the success of their youth structures has been all the more important given the difficulty keeping players locally once they reach the senior ranks.
John McGovern, chairman of Derrygonnelly, acknowledges the difficulties created by the steady leak of adult talent.
“The year after we won the championship [2009] we lost our whole half back line, Danny Ward, Aidy Gallagher and Niall Burns. Neil Gallagher went away too for a couple of years, but he came back. It leaves it harder to progress. Sometimes you are rushing minors through a bit quicker than you would like. We’ve lost two or three really good teams over the years due to emigration. Lads go to college and don’t come back, some really good footballers. But you just live with that. You don’t begrudge fellas going away to make a living for themselves.
McGovern has had personal experience of leaving home himself, having had to leave in the 80s to find work in Germany and the UK. However he believes the reasons behind emigration aren’t exclusively down to employment.
“It’s mainly economic, but some of those fellas would have been playing football non-stop from under 12 and had gave great commitment and maybe they wanted to see a bit of the world, it’s part of life.”
Making the impact of the past few years of departures all the more difficult is the fact that the boom at the start of the noughties had allowed clubs to expand their reach.
“We were probably spoiled for ten years,” said McGovern. “We had three teams, we had a junior B team as well. We were the first team in the county to have three teams.
“There was loads of work about here, everybody was doing great and all the young boys were staying. It was a bit of a bubble and when the bang did come a lot of clubs got hit.
“We’ve got good numbers coming through at the minute and that compensates for the loss of players, but there are other clubs hit a lot harder and are struggling to put out reserve teams at the minute even when there’s no senior games.
“I would be slightly worried where the whole thing is heading numbers-wise. I’m not sure what the future holds, but in the last few years the number of games being conceded at adult level is concerning. Hopefully that trend can be reversed, but the numbers seem to be dwindling everywhere and it’s hard to know what is the way forward.”
Part of the reason Derrygonnelly has been able to weather the recession better than most is their tireless work at underage level.
“This past 20 years we’ve been getting children at primary school from age four, five on and have had them up to Sunday morning football and we get great numbers at that,” said McGovern.
“It’s constant hard work to keep it going. We try to bring everyone with us and keep as many as possible to play senior football. We know you’ll not keep them all, you’ll have natural wastage as well. There’s players you lose you might never have had in the first place only you put in the effort to get them out.
But McGovern says if players have to go, at least they are bringing a valuable skill with them that will help ease the transition to a new culture.
“Fellas heading away is not a new thing, it’s been going on for generations. But it’s a great opener whenever you go anywhere. There’s always a club near by and if you can play football you’ll land on your feet.”
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