By Seamus Hayes
GAA clubs across the country will agree it has become increasingly difficult to get volunteers to take on club officer roles and it has almost become the norm that some clubs fail to fill some executive posts at their annual meetings.
Eventually, most manage to get someone to take on a specific task. Despite the fact that St Senan’s Kilkee have, so far, failed to find both a chairman and secretary, outgoing chairman Peter Muldoon is satisfied the club’s future is secure and that the posts will be filled.
The positions remain vacant after the AGM and a further meeting failed to find candidates for the posts
Outgoing officials Peter Muldoon (chairman) and John Lynch (secretary) signalled well before the end of last season that they would not be seeking re-election.
Muldoon completed four years in the post, while outgoing secretary John Lynch has been the face of the West Clare club for the past 40 years. First elected to the post in 1972, he has been club secretary for all but one year since then.
“It’s very hard to get people to give of their time but we hope to have something in place in the near future. We are very limited with numbers, as lots of lads have left the area. We cannot field teams on our own at underage level,” Muldoon told The Clare Champion.
He acknowledged, “When it is made known that there are positions to be filed, lads tend to stay away from meetings.
“We are working on getting people for these posts and, hopefully, we will have something in place in the next week,” he continued.
Muldoon noted, “John Lynch has filled the position for a long time and he does an amount of work. It’s a big job (secretary) and one can see why people are slow to take on the role. A club needs to get a few to do the job and share the workload”.
While he is concerned about the situation at present, he is confident the seaside club will get people to take on the roles.
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.