Young Melbourne are coming of age 

By John Harrington

Young Melbourne GAA Club President, Carl Walsh, is woken on Sunday mornings by his alarm at 6.30am.

He’ll make his way to a self-storage facility in south Melbourne where he’ll meet the club’s coaching officer, Barry Walsh.

There, they’ll load up Barry’s ‘ute’ and Carl’s car with everything they need for the club’s weekly kids coaching session.

There’s the usual equipment like hurleys, helmets, footballs, sliotars, and cones, but also three gazebos and a barbecue because Young Melbourne’s Sunday mornings are a social as well as sporting occasion.

Carl and Barry will make their way to Albert Park where children and their parents will start arriving from 9.30am and it’ll be 12.30 by the time they pack everything back up again and drop it back to self-storage facility.

If it had been a wet day, either Carl or Barry will head back to the storage facility to dry all the equipment out before putting it back in storage.

That’s a little snapshot of what it takes to grow a GAA club on the opposite side of the world where the sort of facilities we take for granted here just don’t exist and all sorts of logistical challenges need to be navigated on a weekly basis.

It’s hard work, but they’re not afraid of that in Young Melbourne which is the main reason why the club is such a thriving success story.

Formed in 2021 having grown from the Kids GAA Melbourne initiative which started in 2016, Young Melbourne now have over 200 kids playing Gaelic football and hurling, and as well as two adult men’s football teams, an adult men’s hurling team, and an adult LGFA team.

They’ve built a vibrant social and sporting community from scratch that makes an appreciably positive difference to the lives of many, so the effort has never felt anything less than totally worthwhile.

“I'm 58 years old, I don't have young kids, my son is 20, so I have more time and this is my passion and I'm very happy to do it because it’s immensely satisfying,” says Walsh.

“This year I also look after the U6s. When they come down and the smile and the craic and the fun that they get from it, that's the true reminder of why we're doing it.

“If you're just in administration you can get a bit caught up in it. But when you're also coaching you really get why you're doing it.”

Gaelic games has always been a passion for Walsh who is a son of the late, great Clare and Munster GAA administrator, Noel Walsh.

He was a handy footballer back in the day, winning a Sigerson Cup with UCC in 1988, a Clare senior football championship with St. Joseph’s Miltown Malbay in 1990, and in 1992 he was a member of the Clare panel that won a first Munster Senior Football Championship for the first time since 1917.

But when you hear him talk with great energy and passion about Young Melbourne, it’s easy to believe that the club’s growth means as much to him as anything else he has experienced in Gaelic games.

GAA clubs in Australia have traditionally provided a home from home for twenty-something-year-old economic migrants and they do a great service providing a social and sporting outlet for the diaspora in this way.

It can be something of a hand to mouth existence though because most of those twenty-somethings will be back in Ireland by the time they’re thirty-something and you’re constantly having to renew and build again with fresh faces.

Young Melbourne’s model is different. They’ve gone after a more sustainable two-pronged approach by catering for Irish people with young families who are in Australia for the long haul as well as recruiting native Australians who want to try something a bit different.

Youth sport in Australia can get very serious very quickly, whereas Young Melbourne put a premium on fun and participation which is a big draw for parents and children alike.

“Number one it's about fun, number two is development, and number three is you compete, but definitely in that order,” says Walsh.

“There's a huge social element to our club as well. We run that barbecue every Sunday and there's a very strong social and cultural aspect to it where you're making connections.

“Generally, both parents of our children are working and have busy lives so this is a nice break away from your busy life in Australia and gives you an opportunity to connect with other Irish people and have a bit of fun on a Sunday morning.

“We've had some parents try Gaelic games for the first time ever, others pick it up again having not played since school. Because we're in central Melbourne and it's a nice venue and good ground they come down and they train and the next thing because we have a junior squad they get a game.

“And we play a lot of tournaments, seven-side, nine-side as well. It gives them an opportunity to play, you know, rather than be elitist about it.”

Young Melbourne’s rapid growth is also down to a few other factors.

They play their games between October and March when there’s no AFL and Sunday is their day for kids training because you’re not competing with swimming and basketball.

Thanks to great support from the Irish-Australian business community in Melbourne they haven’t had to raise their membership fees since Covid which also makes Gaelic games an attractive proposition compared to many other more expensive sports.

The biggest accelerant of all though was making Albert Park their base. Located close to the city centre, it’s a family-friendly public park where Melbourne people go to play.

Since moving there, Young Melbourne have more than doubled their membership.

Albert Park is now about to become their home in an even more real way, because they’ve partnered with Power House rugby club to build a combined clubhouse that will be completed by next summer.

“It will have dressing-rooms, toilets, and kitchen and a function room,” says Walsh. That's a huge thing for us. No other GAA club over here has a clubhouse of their own like that and we'll have it next June or July.

“We would then hope to have floodlights by the following year.

“It will be huge for us to have somewhere to store our equipment rather than bringing it on site and then back off site. We'll also have separate dressing-rooms for females and so on and so forth.”

Walsh believes having their own clubhouse will lead to another surge in membership numbers and he’s confident further growth is possible if they can give their young members a more comprehensives games programme.

“We want to start a competitive league next year in Victoria where we and Geelong would have different teams at different age-groups and we'd also encourage Australian AFL clubs and schools to come and play in competitions so we offer more games to our kids, more competitions like they would have in Ireland, not just the occasional tournament.”

An ethos of innovation has been a big part of Young Melbourne’s growth.

As well as partnering with Power House Rugby Club, they also have partnership with the Canterbury AFL club which sees them use their floodlit ground for training and also share players with Irish footballers trying their hand at AFL and vice versa.

They’ve also raised their profile in the city by forming a relationship with Melbourne AFL Club and having an activation day with them that saw Young Melbourne kids form a guard of honour as the Melbourne players ran out for a match.

They paid the scholarship for local University PE student who coached Gaelic games in high-schools in the city, and they also became the first club to partner with the GPA for an International Scholarship.

Six-time All-Ireland Senior Football medallist with Cork, Dr. Orlagh Farmer, recently finished a year with the club coaching the club’s junior and adult female programmes and made a hugely positive impact in the role.

Considering how quickly the club has grown to this point, it’s going to be very interesting to see how the next few chapters of their story unfold in the coming years.

“It all comes down to having good volunteers,” says Walsh. “If you have a core of good volunteers when it comes to admin, planning, and coaching, then you're more than half-way there.

“And then it has to be fun for the kids and the parents. It's very friendly, it’s very accessible, you're not being over-pushy, you don't over-charge, and ultimately we make it fun.”