Tori Crawford and Megan Skeffington, both aged 11, play Gaelic football together for their under-12 team at Strabane Sigersons GAA club.

Tori’s younger brother Dáíre (8) has autism, and the young girls have decided to create their ‘Kicking For Autism’ event to raise awareness and money for him and other people with neurodivergent conditions.

There are 51 GAA pitches across Co Tyrone; 47 dedicated football fields, three hurling ones and then Garvaghey’s grounds, which is ‘the home of Tyrone GAA’, where all the inter-county squads train and develop

On September 2, Tori and Megan will travel across each clubhouse and pitch, with the aim of kicking a point at each one, totalling 102 points by the end of the day.

Tori’s father Damien, says this project has been six months in the making, and that while he always wanted to do something to help the Autism NI charity, it was made even more special when the girls said they too wanted to get involved.

He and Megan’s father, Martin, coach both their daughters with the rest of the Strabane U12 team.

Damien explained: “We’ve got access to all the pitches now. We’ll start off at the first pitch at 6am and hope to be back to Strabane around 7.30pm.

“We’ll be kicking our first point at six in the morning! I’m a big GAA head and so is Tori, but we’d have Dáire with us at training and he’d be down at the other end of the field, not really caring about it, so we wanted to do something as well to show him that it’s do-able.”

Damien believes the initiative will also highlight the supportive nature of the GAA community across the county.

“As a family, we know how much there is to learn about autism and how important it is to feel supported. That’s why we want to raise awareness — we want everyone affected by autism to feel supported by their club and county,” he said.

“Tyrone has such a good community, we’re all as one and we’re a good GAA county for bringing everyone together.

“Everyone was more than helpful when it came to asking about access to the pitches,” he added.