Gerard Bradley's commitment to volunteerism a great example for all
Gerard Bradley of Gortin St Patrick's GAC, Tyrone, is presented with the Ulster Award by Uachtarán Chumann Lúthchleas Gael Jarlath Burns and AIB chief customer officer Elaine Purcell during the GAA President's Awards at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
For the past 40-odd years Gerard Bradley has been calling the Bingo numbers in Gortin St. Patrick’s GAA club.
That’s a fair commitment, but it’s only one of many hats he’s worn as a GAA volunteer in that time.
This Week is National Volunteering Week 2026 and Gerard is an apt case-study for the great work that volunteers do to make the GAA the vibrant community as well as sporting organisation it is on this island and, increasingly, around the world.
When he picks up the phone he wonders was there nobody else you could have rung instead, but it’s perhaps fitting that he should have been volunteered for this article because his move into GAA administration at county level was something he was gently pushed into rather than jumped at.
“I was a schoolteacher and I went to school one morning and another man who was heavily involved in the county board said to me, 'You're now the Assistant Secretary of Youth Board’,” recalls Bradley.
“I said, 'No, I'm not!' He said, 'You are, you were elected last night'. I said, 'How could I be elected last night?' He said, 'Frank Rodgers said that you would do it'.
“Frank Rodgers was a leading administrator in the county. A lot of the structures we have are due to this man. But I suspect the boy I was talking to was involved too. So, I literally got volunteered.
“I went then from Assistant Secretary to Secretary of Youth Board to County Youth Officer to County Treasurer for a decade. I suppose there were other things as well. I was Ulster Council delegate and various things. So, since that I've virtually been mostly always involved at some level.”
Bradley has brought both hard work and innovation to every volunteer role he has had in the GAA.
A Chemistry and Physics teacher by profession, a combination of interest and necessity saw him become one of the Association’s most knowledgeable volunteers in the field of IT.
He became County IT Officer in 2001, quickly moved Tyrone into one of the country’s leaders in this field, and served on National IT and Finance subcommittees under several GAA Presidents.
“We used to have these NCR forms you filled out for registrations and you kept the first sheet and you sent the next sheet to the county board and that next sheet went to Croke Park,” he recalls.
“And the truth is, there was no real central record at all unless somebody went through all these written sheets by hand and nobody was going to do it. So, I took this notion, computing was just starting, and I wasn't really into computing.
“There was BBC computers that were called Acorn BBC computers in schools and we had no program. So, I went to Boots the chemist because at that that stage they sold stationery and I saw this program database and I bought it and it was on a tape, a little cassette.
“I took it back to school and two of us worked on it for two days and we couldn't get it working. The reason was we didn't realize that O was actually a zero!
“But we got it working eventually and we set up the database and we then moved up to PCs and I suppose I developed my computing skills out of all of that.
“So, the GAA probably helped me my career in many ways because I got a set of skills out of it to be honest. The IT may have come anyway for different reasons, but it certainly drove me into it years before it would have had to.”
Gerard Bradley pictured with his wife Teresa and sons Peter and Cormac.
Bradley is still Tyrone IT Officer and now also the county’s Demographics Officer.
The general public probably know him best though in his role as ‘gate-man’ at matches in Tyrone as well as further afield at provincial championship games across the province.
The old saying that if you want a job done you should ask a busy person seems a particular apt one for the Gortin man. What motivates him to give up so much time in a variety of roles for the GAA?
“It becomes a way of life, I think as much as anything,” he says. “It's definitely pride in community. That's big. I mean, we are a small parish.
“You want to put that in demographics numbers, the primary school in Gorton has 37 boys over seven years. So, we're not big and every hand is needed.
“It’s been part of our life for generations in our family. I was born into it and it was taken for granted, but you can’t take volunteerism for granted anymore because society has changed.
“Nowadays two parents are working frequently, they’re often travelling to work and there are just more demands on peoples’ time. They have less time so they have to be careful with it."
Having given a life of service to the GAA, what advice would Bradley give to GAA clubs hoping to encourage more people in their community to volunteer?
"I think if you want to get someone involved with your club, don't give them the biggest job straight away," he says.
"That sometimes happens where people decide to go looking for a new club secretary and frighten them almost.
"But if you ease people in and they get the satisfaction of working in a team as part of their community you’ll always get enough to keep you going because people will find you get a lot back from giving.
“There’s a good feel good factor from working with a team or a group, and it could be a small thing.
“We have a family up just up the mountain here in front of me and their mother died. Last night I went to the wake and you could see the GAA in operation there controlling the traffic on the road and all the rest of it.
“People want to be part of something like that because it’s community. We all want to be part of a community.”
The GAA Volunteer Strategy 2025-2030 can be viewed and downloaded below.