Tyrone GAA Clubs Attend Health And Well-being Workshops

Monday 27.11.2017

Club Life

Tyrone GAA clubs have taken positive steps on the road to improving the health and wellbeing of their members and their wider communities by attending an informative and insightful workshop at Garvaghey.

Valuable information and resources were provided by a range of agencies at the event, which was organised by the Tyrone Health and Wellbeing Committee.

Among the service providers represented were: Rural Support, Cancer Focus, CLEAR (Mental health and emotional wellbeing support/awareness), ASERT (Drugs and Alcohol support), AWARE (National Depression Charity) and Department of Communities (Benefits checks).

All the clubs represented on the night were very positive in their evaluation of the content and advice delivered by these support services.

The dangers posed by gambling was a major theme, with Maura McMenamin from Ulster GAA raising some crucial issues. Maura noted that “Problem Gambling” was on the rise due to in the main, the Increased accessibility of gambling online, on Smart phones, tablets, laptops thus making gambling available 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. 

Maura went on to note that earlier gambling creates greater risk of problem gambling in later life and that a problem gambler in the family increases the likelihood of other problem gamblers in the family. 

Maura identified what the GAA Club can do to help ease the problem mentioning 

Organising awareness raising / educational talks on gambling,  working with the Healthy Club Officer in this regard through which Committee members can educate themselves on the signs and symptoms of problem gambling. The GAA presentation is available to all clubs. contact hwb.tyrone@gaa.ie for more details

For now your club can consider these practical steps: 

• Avoid the club engaging in gambling activity which particularly encourages irresponsible gambling behaviour e.g. have modest winnings and modest odds for “Night At the Races” type activity
• limit the number of purchases one person can make in a gambling scenario 
• avoid gambling activity relating to GAA activity
• If using online payment platforms, ensure these are well-managed so as not to promote irresponsible gambling 
• Modest promotion of gambling activity, e.g. the club lotto should not be the “stand-out” headline on a club’s website 
• Sound club financial procedures – our clubs deal with huge amounts of cash and it is important that we remove any unnecessary temptation for people who may have a problem with gambling.