Bills, bonds, bankruptcies? Call the A team!

It is time for clubs without pitches to make that first move; to replace mealy-mouthed protestations about lack of discipline with action; and to make our association one that will attract people, not on its tradition alone, but because it is making a real and positive contribution to community life.

"We must improve our standards of presentation, modernise our facilities and revamp our working structure."
In his foreword to the 1980 Monaghan Yearbook, the then county PRO Paraic Duffy implored his fellow gaels in the Oriel county to get on their bike.

Thirty-years on, the current Director General of the GAA must surely take a lot of pride in what clubs like Aghabog have achieved in the interim.
The get-up-and-go that the Emmets, for instance, have exhibited and continue to display is something which not only Duffy but Michael Cusack and other founding fathers of the Association couldn't but admire.
In 2010, Aghabog's men and women at the coalface of administration affairs collectively rolled up their sleeves like never before.
The sheer tenacity, ambition and determination that they brought to the table with regards to fundraising in particular was something to behold.
As the country played hide and seek with the International Monetary Fund etc Aghabog's bluebloods gave us a pointer as to what a bit of vim and vigour and passion can achieve to boost one's coffers.
Outgoing club chairman Tony McGorman, as is his wont, led the line superbly during the past year but he would be the first to admit that the success of Aghabog's exertions in the financial sphere in 2010 was the result of a superb collective effort.
The club is thousands of euros better off now by dint of the hugely innovative and rewarding fundraising carried out in '10.
The profits garnered from the Strictly Come Dancing and attendant shows last October have been ring-fenced for the development of a new training pitch, gym, toilets, dressing-rooms and community walkway at Ned's Meadow.
Work on the new facilities will remain in abeyance for another couple of months 'till a warmer, drier soil facilitates the necessary sod-turning.
With advise and inspiration on tap from gaels in Augher and Clogher in county Tyrone, Aghabog were blown away by the success of their 'Strictly Come Dancing'.
Indeed, as a fundraiser par excellence, 'Strictly' blew the county away.
The joie de vivre, camaraderie, bonhomie and sense of community the extravaganza engendered had to be seen to be believed.
"We were totally astonished by the response to Strictly," the aforementioned McGorman tells us,"especially in the hard times that's about at the present time.
"The support we got from the parish and elsewhere from clubs around the county was unbelievable."
Tickets for the Cootehill Credit Union-sponsored Strictly show could well have had Simon Cowell's imprimatur on them such was the demand.
There was no hard sell needed either for the 125 page programme for the event which was staged in the Hillgrove Hotel.
The programme sold out in double-quick time too with a bumper harvest of riches garnered from the support advertisements contained therein.
It seemed that everything the seven-person sub-committee charged with running Strictly turned their hands to turned to gold.
For a club that showed anything but the Midas touch at intermediate level, Strictly came as the perfect antidote to the club's travails at intermediate level.
League tables are rarely found guilty of perjury and the club's 2010 IFL end-of-season tally of zero points from 15 games gave the impression of a unit sitting on its hands.
Scratch beneath the surface though and mitigating circumstances, albeit common ones, can be identified.
"There's no getting away from the fact that looking at our intermediate final tally of results this year made for disappointing reading," McGorman concedes.
"People generally tend to judge a club's health and well-being by the number of points they've won at senior level in the league or how the club got on in the championship and, unfortunately, on both counts we didn't come up to scratch.
"At the start of the year, we lost eight players through emigration and then there've been some long-term injuries which combined to leave us struggling.
"It was an uphill battle with the reserves as well but they picked up a handle of points and the spirit in both camps remained good all year.
"We blooded a few young fellas too and we think that will stand to us too. We won the over 35s blitz in Truagh and got a cup for it too so it wasn't all doom and gloom at adult level."
Any suggestion that the club took it's eye off the ball and focussed too much on fundraising in deference to on-field matters?
"No, the work on Strictly didn't kick in 'till September and by the end of August we were out of the championship and in a lot of trouble at the bottom of the intermediate league.
"The launch (of Strictly) happened after the football was over and there were only two footballers involved in the organising committee of Strictly anyway.
"There was as much spent on the players this year than any other year. There were no cutbacks on expenditure as regards the playing side of things."
McGorman sees the Ned's Meadow project as an investment in the future of every young footballer currently playing with the club now and in the future.
The project began with negotiations for the purchase of Ned's Meadow in 2007; negotiations which were finally brought to a conclusion last year.
"When the bulldozers went into Ned's Meadow last April, it gave everyone involved in the club a lift," says Aghabog's long-time chairman.
"I think when people saw the first sods being turned, the prospect of doing something with the land became that bit more real for everyone in the community.
"The completion of Phase One of the project gave the fundraising idea an extra momentum and let people see what the funds were going towards."
The club took its first major step in paying for the purchase of the seven acres that makes up Ned's Meadow, just a couple of minutes walk down the chapel road from Aghabog GFC's current HQ with the staging of a dance featuring an Abba tribute band on Friday, September 24th when over 450 people attended.
The following night, the launch of Strictly attracted 650 punters to the Dome erected on the club pitch which was to host the glittering all-dancing show in which 11 couples would star.
Pointedly, the couples hailed from a raft of neighbouring gaeldoms which helped spread the gospel far and wide.
Dancing enthusiasts and GAA enthusiasts from Killeevan, Rockcorry, Latton, Sean McDermotts, Drumhowan and Monaghan came to see their favourites in all their finery and light-touch mode.
"People were ringing, texting and calling looking for tickets - it was unreal the demand," Tony talks of the night of all nights in Aghabog.
"After the launch, we were convinced it was going to be a success 'cause of the reaction from people and the numbers that turned out."
When he succeeded Owen McCarron in the chair six years ago, McGorman, a self-employed tiler, made the development of a training field his number one priority.
With an increasing number of teams, both mens and womens, seeking to use the club's flagship pitch, it had become obvious that the 15 year old sod was beginning to give out and, sometimes, give in to the vagaries of thousands of studs caked in mud.
In tandem with Paddy Reilly, Eddie Smith and Tom McPhillips, Chairman McGorman kick-started Aghabog's push for an expansion of the club's facilities on a new site.
That was yesterday. Today, McGorman has fingered a March 2012 completion date for the Ned's Meadow project.
Expect things by then to be going just swimmingly, on and off the field, for the go-ahead Emmets Tweet

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