By Cian O'Connell

It has been a busy stint for St Oliver Plunkett Eoghan Ruadh GAA, who have truly embraced the GAA Healthy Clubs project.

The Healthy Club Project, delivered in partnership with Healthy Ireland and Irish Life, is the GAA’s flagship health and wellbeing initiative. It seeks to transform clubs into hubs for health for their members and communities.

In January 2018 Phase Three commenced with Plunketts ready, willing, and able to deliver several exciting health promoting initiatives.

Trish Maher, Healthy Club Officer for St Oliver Plunkett Eoghan Ruadh GAA, discusses how it has made a huge impact on the club and local community.

For an expression of interest form for Phase Four of the GAA's Healthy Clubs project click here.

The expressions of interest will be open until Friday November 29, 2019. 150 clubs will be chosen to commence in Phase Four and successful clubs will be notified by Friday December 20th 2019.

Q: Could you give some background on home the GAA Healthy Club project has impacted on the club and how people, who mightn't have necessarily been members have become involved?

TM: Without doubt it has had a hugely positive impact on the club. In Plunketts there was always a good focus on health promotion activities, that kind of thing. Now there is more awareness in general, health is now seen as more than just football, Camogie, or hurling, that kind of thing.

The club would always have been open to accommodating activities outside of those traditional things, but the difference now is that it isn't just accommodating them, it is really embracing anything that will attract people from the wider community or anything that will benefit the health of the wider community.

Plunketts has a relatively small premises. Before we started on our Healthy Clubs journey, in the winter time the hall would be fully booked for indoor training. It was kept specifically for hurling, football, and Camogie. It would be full to capacity, you couldn't get a slot sort of thing. When we started our Healthy Clubs project our first thing was 'Operation Transformation' at the time. As it was the winter we needed the hall indoors in order to run our fitness classes. We were having fitness classes twice a week. The club absolutely went to great lengths to accommodate us.

Teams changed their training schedules, shifted things around so that we could have the hall for two hours a week. That in itself speaks volumes about how the club has sort of embraced the whole thing and the impact it has had.

Q: The 'Operation Transformation' is obviously something you did at the start. With such a wide range of things you can do, is there anything else that stands out to you that the club has done in the time?

TM: We have done so much, we have had eight or nine activities. We did 'Operation Transformation', we did three 'Couch to 5ks', we had diabetes and cholesterol testing for anybody that wanted it from the community, we had a cookery demonstration on how to make healthy snacks, we had Tai-chi classes. On the mental health side of things we health a stress management event for exam students in the lead up to the Junior and Leaving Cert. We got Jigsaw in to do the one good coach programme. We had one huge event 'Mind Matters 2' that had a massive impact.

We ran that due to demand. Before we were ever involved in the Healthy Clubs Project there had been a mental health event in Plunketts 'Mind Matters 1' a few years previous. When we did our survey in the community, to see what people needed we were actually very surprised when we got the results. I think about 150 people had taken part in that survey and the top answer from 80% of those people, in terms of what they wanted, was more focus on mental health.

That night was absolutely phenomenal, the impact that has had, without a doubt there is much more openness in the club and the community. People are talking about mental health and seeking help for it. Now it is normalised. The messages that were given out that night. We had three speakers.

Jim Lucey is the medical director in St Patrick's Mental Health services. He absolutely normalised mental health and gave out the message really that every one of us has mental health. Mental illness will cross the door for every family at some stage or other. I suppose what he did was encouraged us to talk about it. During his talk he actually directed us to take out or phones, to put us two different sites - five ways to wellbeing and the other was six domains of resilience. He directed us to that to show us what kind of things we can do to make us more resilient and normalise mental health as such.

Kenneth Egan, the Olympic silver medalist, he spoke about the negative view he had on himself during his boxing career and about the unhealthy relationship he had with alcohol. He spoke about his recovery from it. He was absolutely brutal honest when he was speaking, about the pressures of dealing with fame. He really drove home the message to people to stay grounded and true to themselves. The thing about it is the silence when he was talking was unreal.

There is no doubt about it, people who were in the audience, at that time were sort of struggling with some mental health issues themselves. What he did, and what Jim did, and what Hannah Tyrrell, who was the other talker. They gave them the message that at times in your life it is normal to struggle with these things, the same as it is with your physical health or whatever. Share your problem, get help, that sort of thing.

Q: That event appears to have been a huge success and perhaps gave you a platform in the sense that the imagination was captured?

TM: Absolutely, that is definitely what happened. I think what was really good for people was that they saw Kenneth Egan and Hannah Tyrrell, she couldn't turn up, but she did a video. We played the video. What was empowering for people was to hear that people like Kenneth and Hannah, who seemed to have it all, that they had been rattled themselves by mental health issues and that they had recovered. It drove home the message that we are all vulnerable to being rattled, but we all have it within ourselves to make a good recovery. Talk and to open up is the first step for that.

Q: In the club does it matter a great deal to be recognised as a GAA Healthy Club? Having that status has it aided the development of the club in particular ways?

TM: Absolutely, that is what we set out for. That is what we definitely have achieved. It was a long journey to it. Before we went on this Healthy Clubs project journey, the club would really have been well on the way to being a healthy club without ever officially going on the Healthy Club project journey. A lot of things were going on in the club that weren't especially GAA related. Things like bridge and Irish dancing.

For years the community registered for the Pieta House Darkness Into Light walks and come back to the GAA club afterwards for a breakfast. They would have been well on their way to it, but it just wasn't as visible in the community as it is now. There was a good percentage of the community that really didn't know that Plunketts isn't just about the GAA.

Literally on a daily basis, this is no exaggeration, if you travel the Navan Road now the effects of this journey we have gone on are actually visible. That is the truth. One of the huge things that has come out of this from children up to 80 year olds, there is a buzz about physical health and fitness, walking, running, that kind of thing. You can actually see it, I know people might find that hard to believe.

Q: Young and old are catered for in different ways, people just seem to want to buy into something in the club?

TM: Really what had happened, I think, is that from the first 'Operation Transformation' we ran, before we applied to be part of the Phase Three, we had our Healthy Clubs team formed with the training done.

The ripple effect that has happened since that first 'Operation Transformation' is unreal. That happened at the beginning of 2018, the 'Couch to 5k' was run by Ronan Doohan, who is a club member. He headed it. A great amount of people took part in that and word spread about it. There was demand for more of this. The people who completed it and kept up running were buzzing.

So as a result of that we responded to the demand, having another 'Couch to 5k' that ran completely over the summer of 2018. The leaders in that - which speaks volumes on how it has impacted on the community - were actually participants of our original one. They took it onboard to run this 12 week programme then. They'd meet twice a week in the Phoenix Park near the Hole in the Wall. From that then other connections were made.

The man who owns the Hole in the Wall, a pub and restaurant at Blackhorse Avenue is a runner himself, he asked all the runners would they get involved in a charity run for St Vincent's on the Navan Road. It has literally gone from strength to strength. If people are driving on the Navan Road you will see people walking and running, who started with our original 'Operation Transformation'. They are doing park runs every week now. A load of them took part in different challenges, many of them got together as a group to run the great pink run at the weekend. It has been absolutely transformative in terms of the impact it has had on the wider community.

Q: Have you any nuggets of advice for a club looking to get into Phase Four which is coming up now? Is there anything you'd guide them about?

TM: The advice I'd really give is to keep it simple and to do it well. Do the survey because the activities we ran we ran them in response to the survey. I think people in the community got what they wanted. We didn't just run with our own fanciful notions, we did what the people wanted. That is why it was such a success.

Another piece of advice is as well as keeping it simple is to keep it relatively small. The one thing the whole team of us that is involved might do differently is to do a bit less than we did. We did so much.

We wouldn't have finished one event or activity when we'd be ready to start. The planning of a second one was going on while the first one was still in operation. There was constantly something going on.

There was always something to be planned or something taking place. They all worked out well, people got a lot out of them. We did about eight or nine different things, it is demanding from a time perspective, people don't always see the work going into them, it can be exhausting.

I'm not being negative about it because it was brilliant, but I'd just say to stick to maybe two events and to use the resources you have available in a club. Look around because they are there. Most of the partnerships we developed ourselves and through other people in the club that had links. Think hard about what you have already and use what you have.

Q: How crucial is it for the whole club to buy into the project?

TM: Our Club Executive were hugely supportive. That is also advice you'd give to a club: to make sure your Executive is onboard. Our Executive were so onboard, it was because of them we were so facilitated. In terms of getting the use of the facilities in Plunketts.

Anything we suggested doing, it was just 'yes, go ahead'. It smoothed the way, if you don't have them onboard it could make things very difficult. Everyone of our Executive knew what the Healthy Clubs project was about from the beginning. We educated them on that from the beginning and they were very receptive to it, so it was a big plus.

**Want more information? **

Email community.health@gaa.ie and we will try to answer any queries you have!

Click HERE to register your club’s expression of interest to be considered for Phase 4 of the Healthy Club Project. Closing date to submit completed applications by is Friday 15th November 2019.