In Focus: Off the Booze, On the Ball returns

The 'Off the Booze and On the Ball' challenge is back for a third year following a successful second season in 2013.

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The initiative was launched on Tuesday in Croke Park by Mayo footballer Cillian O'Connor and Dublin hurler Peter Kelly, and takes place under the GAA's Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) programme. It invites both playing and non-playing GAA members to give up alcohol for the month of January and use the opportunity that affords them to take up some kind of health-related physical activity.

"It's a health challenge," GAA Community and Health manager Colin Regan explained to GAA.ie ahead of the launch.

"It's inviting members of the GAA and the wider public to kickstart their new year on a healthy footing by abstaining from alcohol for four weeks - that's the 'Off the Booze' element, then the 'On the Ball' element is taking up some health related activity or challenge or something that they can encorporate into their New Year routine that hopefully they'll carry throughout 2014."

Having started in 2012, the initiative has seen around 250 GAA clubs around the country get involved in each of the last two years. The level of participation in each club has been varied - in some cases just a few members have taken on the challenge, while in others, entire squads have given up alcohol and raised impressive sums of money for their clubs as a result.

"The Currin club in Monaghan for example in the first year got a large part of their senior panel to take up the challenge and they raised over EUR2,000," Colin explains. "So if you can get an entire panel to take it up, give each of them a EUR100 target, it's quite easy then to raise money around the EUR2,000 bracket."

Currin's 15 participants raised a total of EUR2,057.50 and used it to buy training gear including new footballs, training bibs, water bottles, tackle bags and more. In the Kinvara Club in Galway, the U16 hurlers took the lead from their seniors who took up the 'Pint Sized Challenge' and decided to go 'Off the Fizz and On the Ball' by giving up fizzy drinks for the month. Their panel of 19 members alone raised EUR802.

Colin Regan explains that one big difference with the initiative this year as opposed to the previous two years is that a number of third-level institutions have come on board for 2014.

"In year one and in year two, it was exclusively targeted at our clubs," he says. "This year we have a number of third-level institutions around the country that are backing it and are pushing it to their student populations.

"We were contacted by a few colleges that were interested in the whole concept and the health promotion message that it gives and we have nine colleges now that are going to push it to their student population in 2014 as well."

Caption: Uachtarán Chumann Lúthchleas Gael Liam Ó Néill and Junior Health Minister Alex White T.D. with Oulart-the-Ballagh captain Keith Rossiter, left, Senan Kilbride, St Brigid's, Roscommon, and Stacey Cannon, Kildare, in attendance at last year's Off the Booze On the Ball launch

Colin has been involved with the initiative since its inception, and says the idea came from trying to bring a positive element to ASAP's message. He says the naturally competitive instinct of many GAA players and members means there is a natural eagerness out there to go and take on the challenge.

He says it is his hope that people who take on the challenge carry the positive habits and lifestyle choices they develop in the four-week period into the rest of their year and beyond.

"With that sort of down time that comes with being off alcohol for a while, people can take a pause and look at their lifestyles and see if there's anything they can tweak, or introduce some positive activities or elements to their lifestyle that they can then carry throughout that year."

Looking at the bigger picture and the context in which the initiative started and has developed, Regan says the programme is the GAA's way of adding to the dialogue in Ireland around our engagement with alcohol.

While he admits that it takes a long time to change a national culture where there is some alcohol misuse, he believes a concerted effort from a number of different settings within the society is the way to approach it.

"It's our attempt to contribute to the conversation that is happening around our engagement with alcohol in this country," he says. "Alcohol in itself isn't the problem, it's how we use and sometimes abuse alcohol that is the problem.

"The original concept came from the idea that GAA players regularly give up alcohol for one or two months in the lead up to big championship matches and so on and this is an opportunity to use that good example to contribute to the positive conversation that's happening around how we engage with alcohol in this country at the moment.

"On the individual level, four weeks off alcohol can be a great way to kickstart any new fitness or lifestyle regime. It will give you an opportunity to get the body fine tuned, it will give you an opportunity to get your weekends back. Your Sunday mornings in particular, and to use that time productively, either as part of a group that's doing it, or as an individual, it can really kick off your new year on a healthy footing."