JOHNNY McINTOSH: The power of the GAA when it’s needed most

A FORTNIGHT ago we got the news we’d all been dreading as my clubmate Eunan Harvey passed away from cancer.

Eunan was a special person and an outstanding sportsman. He played hurling for Glenariff and we were all proud to see him represent the Antrim minor hurlers. He was also a fine footballer for Con Magee’s. He was only 17 years old and his potential was endless.

Eunan was very good friends with my son and I know his dad very well, we were very close growing up. He’s been in teams that we’ve been coaching since he was a young child. He was on the county minor hurling squad early on this year before illness struck, so I knew him very well. He was a great young fella.

Plenty of thoughtful tributes have already been paid to Eunan and rightly so, but what I’d like to focus on in this article is the response of the GAA community in the aftermath of the terrible news.

In all honesty, I have what you might call a love-hate relationship with the GAA. As much as I cherish it and that it’s a massive part of my life, I get really frustrated by so many of the things that go on. And it is purely and simply frustration because I can see a solution to the lot of the problems but we don’t seem willing to implement those solutions for whatever reason. Even in Antrim alone, I see so many problems with fixtures and things like that, and it does make me very frustrated. There’s far too much administration and not enough being done on a practical level on the ground. I think the people are there to do those things and a lot of that stuff.

But setting all that aside, the way the GAA community rallied round in support of Eunan’s family reaffirms my faith in the organisation. We can complain about this and that, and I’m certainly not immune to that, but when all is said and done, it’s still a really special organisation.

I’m very proud of my own club, particularly the youth of the club, in terms of how they conducted themselves, but also equally as proud of all our other local clubs – Glenravel, Cushendun, Cushendall etc. Last weekend we had a minute’s silence at all the matches. Loughgiel and Dunloy had very emotional tributes to Eunan and clubs came down and make presentations to commemorate him.

It’s been very, very touching in what must be a horrible, horrible time for Eunan’s parents, Sean and Sharon. There has been a massive amount of love and support shown for the family. It’s difficult for his peers as well – they’re just getting back to school and I think the school is going to support them with counselling and we’re trying to do our best as a club too.

We’d two games last Friday night. We played Dunloy in the league, and it was the first match that minor team had since Eunan died, so it was a very emotional night. We’d our first home minor game on Sunday against Loughgiel. It was good to play those games and thankfully they actually won them. Maybe it gave them all a wee bit of a lift. A lot of our youngsters were understandably devastated and that’s a reflection of what Eunan was like, he wasn’t on the periphery of things, he was one of the boys who was the heart and soul of everything.

I think we’re all aware that whenever someone in the GAA passes, we all offer our support. People come out to do traffic for the funeral, they come out to look at various other things, books of commemorations. Everyone seems to be willing to do what they can, whatever it is.

If we could maybe bring that spirit and sense of togetherness to the every-day running of the GAA, it would be a wonderful thing. Ultimately when push comes to shove, the GAA family is always there for you. It’s a bit like the old Granda that sits and never speaks to you all year. You still know he’s there if he’s needed!