Geraldine Mc Tavish,
GAA Diversity and Inclusion Officer

From my point of view, as the GAA Diversity and Inclusion officer, what we’ve seen is that sports reflects a little bit of society as well. So, society definitely has discrimination and different forms of racism, and I think sometimes on the sports ground, because of frustration, and physicality and things like that, it can come out even more.

But what I found is that sport is a mirror image of society as a whole. When I talk about discrimination in Ireland, I think for many years, women were discriminated against as well as ethnic minorities, people with disability or mental health issues, and the LGBT community. So, it’s always kind of been there in our society.

It’s human nature that we gravitate to people who are very similar to us, so when understanding other cultures, you can’t go on somebody else’s judgment or perspective. You need to spend time getting to know the person and understanding other cultures and how things work. So that’s where the intercultural programmes that we’ve developed have started to work. And also the Responding to Racism programme that we piloted just before COVID, which launched at Croke Park as an awareness campaign.

We did responding to racism, discrimination and different hostility training as a pilot, and now we run it as workshops online.

Our documentary New Gaels helped us promote the workshops we do. It gave us a stepping stone and helped people understand that we actually do deliver these programmes in our clubs. Community members, club officers, players, officials – everyone attends. We target across the board. The film also highlights the Give Respect, Get Respect programme that we’ve rolled out within the GAA for a very long time.

That programme is all about the values that we hold. If you look at some of the jerseys, you’ll see the Give Respect Get Respect logo on the jerseys. But it’s not just about putting it on jerseys – it’s also taking part in the workshop, and encouraging it from a younger age. It’s given people that educational awareness of what racism is, but also, what to do when you encounter it.

We might sometimes be inclined to let things slide – so we teach a more appropriate way of how to handle it, and also, not putting yourself in danger.

The workshops are run provincially, and it’s one every quarter, with four in the year. What we found is that during Covid, the numbers increased because people were able to go online. So we hope to continue facilitating people who cannot travel and do the face to face – we’ll do a blended approach of online and face to face, and go out to clubs to have it delivered.

We also have that a collaboration with Sport Against Racism in Ireland (SARI) – they actually deliver the programmes in the schools and in the clubs. So if people can’t make it to ours, SARI are available; they’re easy to contact, and they’re happy to travel to the club as well.

I work very closely with a lot of the other sporting bodies, and we work a lot on how to understand different cultures, understand different issues that might arise, understand communication barriers. It’s about keeping a really good open mind. Sport is part of that. But it is all learning: we’re learning every day.

Read Part 2 of 100 Voices: #AllAgainstRacism in the current issue of Hot Press:

Special thanks to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission for their support in this project.