By John Harrington

One of only seven people in the world with Total Amelia, a condition where you’re born without your limbs, Joanne O’Riordan has never allowed herself be defined by her disability.

Rather than be constrained by a society that doesn’t always make it easy for people with disabilities to live the life they want to live, the Cork woman has never been shy about demanding equal opportunities.

This attitude combined with her vibrant communication skills has made her a powerful activist and advocate for people with disabilities.

On Saturday, she’ll speak on the topic of Diversity and Inclusion at the 2021 GAA Healthy Clubs Conference.

A sports journalist with the Irish Times and RedFM, her lifelong passion for sport and involvement in gaelic games makes her very qualified to spread the message of how the GAA can better include everyone in the community.

“My family are absolutely mad into sport,” O’Riordan told GAA.ie

“When I was just two weeks old my parents brought me to my first local GAA match, one of my brothers was playing.

“That was basically where it all started. My siblings always got me involved. They'd bring me outside and put me in goals and literally kick footballs at my head until I was concussed!

“Gaelic Football was always number one for me growing up. I loved watching the Cork footballers, both the men and women. I loved the whole excitement of it.

“My Dad brought me to my first game when I was jour four years old. It was Cork against Kerry down in Fitzgerald Stadium and there's a picture of me in the Kerry's Eye with my Dad and he's throwing me up in the air after Cork scored a goal!”

When O’Riordan was ten years of age her parents signed her up for a power chaired soccer tournament in Tralee because they figured that might be a more suitable sporting arena that having footballs kicked at her by her siblings.

But years of being treated no differently than anyone else made that a jarring experience for O’Riordan.

The competitive instincts honed in her own back-garden reacted adversely to the concession of six goals and she had the dubious distinction of being red-carded for letting her team’s goalkeeper know in pretty agricultural terms just how lowly she rated his goalkeeping skills.

“I literally made Roy Keane look like Mother Theresa!”, says O’Riordan. “I suppose I was just so accustomed participating in sport with my siblings and friends and not feeling any different to them.

“So, when I went to a place that emphasised difference and that I was different and I didn't really enjoy that. That wasn't an environment that I wanted to be in. I wanted to be the same as others even thought I was different. I wanted to be involved.

“If I had to adapt to play the sport, then so be it, everybody else had to change with me. I wasn't a person who wanted to find an environment that matched me, I was more of a person that wanted to change my environment as I went along and hopefully for the better.”

O’Riordan’s own experience highlights the fact that there is no one size fits all approach to being inclusive to everyone in the community.

For example, GAA clubs like Raheny, Scoil Ui Chonaill, Midleton, and Lucan Sarsfields all run hugely successful sports programmes for children with additional needs.

But you can be sure too that some children with additional needs would prefer to receive specialist coaching that would allow them to play with all the other children in the GAA club rather than be segregated from them.

“There's no one blueprint because every club and every person is different,” says O’Riordan.

“I think diversity and inclusion starts with everyone. You know it's not just one disability group talking to other disability groups.

“It's people talking to everyone in society and having a collaborative approach in order to make sure that at least we are on a bit of an equal footing.

“I'm actually involved with Killarney Legion across the border in Kerry. Even small things they do like getting children involved in the Go Games even if they're not able to play.

“They get them helping in some other way on the sideline giving out water or bibs or to just encourage their friends during games.

“It's all very important in terms of integration. Not everyone is going to be able to kick a football and that's absolutely okay. You will always need volunteers in the GAA, you need managers, you need coaches, you need people to hand out the bibs and water boys and water girls.

“It's great if you can kick the winner in a county final, but for others to even feel like they have played a small part along the way can make it all so much more worthwhile.

“As James O'Donoghue once said to me, he's not playing for himself out there, he's playing for all the volunteers who have helped him along the way.

“I just think it's important to have a diverse volunteer group. The only way you're going to know if other people want to get involved in other ways is to ask the people in your community. A quarter of the population have identified as having a disability, so there's definitely people with disabilities in every club across the country that you could get involved.

“GAA clubs should reflect the community that they are part of, and all our communities are very diverse.

“Clubs shouldn't feel under pressure to get it right the first time, but make the effort the first time then adapt and get it right the second or third time down the road.

“That's why it's great to have a Community and Health department in the GAA now, a national group that can share different ideas to see which ones work best and how we can accommodate everyone.”

The day to day obstacles that make life more difficult for people with disabilities often exist because those without disabilities simply don’t realise they’re there.

The first step that many GAA clubs could make to becoming more inclusive is to make a genuine effort to see the not so visible barriers they have unconsciously put in the way of others.

“Exactly, you wouldn't know the certain barriers that exist to someone with a disability until you are around someone with a disability every day,” says O’Riordan.

“Even speaking for myself, for a long time I would have only seen the physical challenges someone like myself with no limbs would have experienced.

“But then I was studying abroad in York in England and I saw that Manchester City were the first club in northern England to have an area in the stadium for fans with autism.

“I had never seen anything like that before and it just blew my mind. It then seemed obvious then that this sort of integration was needed but I had never thought about it before.

“It was basically a sound-proof box in the stand with a sensory room to help keep the children with autism calm.

“I'm not saying every club needs to do something like that, but it's good to raise awareness because I wouldn't have previously thought about how to facilitate people with autism.

“The more you open your club to the diversity in your community the more you'll learn.”

Once you have that mindset, then practical initiatives to make GAA clubs more inclusive and diverse will follow more easily, and some should be more obvious than others.

There’s no excuse for a GAA club not to be fully wheelchair accessible, and O’Riordan is right to be frustrated too that in her job as a sports journalist she has yet to find a press box she has been able to gain access too.

“I'm going to go down in history as the only sports journalist who has never gotten into a press box,” she says. “It's going to be the tag-line on my gravestone!

“I've had to get used to sitting out in monsoons in Ballybofey or freezing in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, Game of Thrones style, with ice hanging off my nose!

“Access to press-boxes wasn't ever an issue until someone like me came along, but hopefully in the future it's something there will be more consideration given to.”

The GAA has made significant efforts to be a more inclusive and diverse sporting organisation in recent years.

Ger McTavish, the Association’s National Diversity and Inclusion Officer, has played a big role in that as have initiatives such as National Inclusive Fitness Day and the Responding to Racism education and awareness campaign.

It’s important we keep pushing that conversation on how better to be more inclusive and diverse, and O’Riordan’s presentation on Saturday should certainly help in that regard to encourage GAA clubs and volunteers to open their minds and arms to everyone in their community.

“Diversity and inclusion in the GAA is just so important,” she says. “We're so engrained in the community that it is important to make sure that everyone feels involved.

“But I would also say that if your first attempt to be more inclusive as a club isn't necessarily a success, don't be discouraged.

“It's important to remember what the foundations of sport and the GAA are and why we get involved, it's to create friendships, create a social group and to create a fun and learning environment that stimulates people and keeps them interested and healthy and active.

“I think once you realise what your core foundation and your core objective is, then the rest of it should come seamlessly.

“So I would say not to sweat the small stuff. Ask people who are in the know. And then just have fun, go with it, and see what happens.”