A tribute to Adrian Donohoe inside the St Patrick’s clubrooms in Lordship
The chairman of local GAA club St Patrick’s GFC has backed a new GAA response plan for deaths, suicides and other tragic incidents that affect clubs.
The document which was unveiled at Croke Park on Wednesday will offer clubs and counties a blueprint for dealing with trying and unexpected situations ranging from deaths, illnesses and injuries to instances of severe depression which may affect team members or people within the locality.
St Pat’s have had more than their fair share of tragedy to dela with over the years from the murders of Tom Oliver and Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe to the tragic accident which claimed the life of Eamon Carroll just days after he had won a Senior Championship with the club last year.
Club chairman Alan Scully said at the lunch that the club found real difficulty in trying to deal with the intense publicity and sense of loss which followed Adrian Donohoe’s murder on January 25th 2013.
“Adrian was a huge presence in the club, and the night of the incident when Adrian was murdered, it was just numbness. That Friday night and Saturday morning everybody was just extremely numb and shocked.
“We were dealing with press from all over the world, and as an amateur organisation it was very difficult to deal with it at the time because we were dealing with our own sense of loss . . . We had a lot of under-16 guys who were very impressionable and very shook by what happened to Adrian.
“It’s like somebody turning off the light and you really don’t know what to do, and you’re walking around trying to find your way and I think this document will shed some light on it.”
According to GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail, the organisation’s health and community team receives between 30 and 40 requests each year from clubs and counties seeking help in dealing with critical incidents, which it defines as “a situation that overwhelms one’s natural capacity to respond”.
The generic version of the plan can be openly downloaded from gaa.ie/community, but individual clubs are encouraged to tailor its contents to suit their own area’s particular needs and resources.
