REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE GAA ALL-STAR AWARDS,CITY WEST HOTEL, DUBLIN FRIDAY 16TH OCTOBER 2009
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE GAA ALL-STAR AWARDS,CITY WEST HOTEL, DUBLIN FRIDAY 16TH OCTOBER 2009
I’m delighted to be here in the 125th anniversary year of the GAA, which today reaches from Dublin to Dubai and from Belfast to Beijing with a magnificent showcase in its heartland of Croke Park.
Tonight we celebrate individual excellence but we know that this success is only possible because of the massive everyday effort put in locally by countless volunteers whose passion for the games drives them to extraordinary levels of personal generosity.
Walking through rural Roscommon this summer, I passed an elderly man, entirely alone, marking out a pitch for a game the next day. He would never hear a crowd roar his name or find himself carried shoulder high but his fidelity, like that of so many others, is the foundation stone for tonight’s celebration. I met a young Irish man in Dubai whose spare time is spent training eighty youngsters to play Gaelic football. When I asked why, he said the GAA had given him so much he felt compelled to give something back.
Each of the players we take pride in tonight has been inspired by the quiet people who keep the engine of the GAA tuned year on year. Each All-Star has repaid that army of volunteers by becoming the very best of footballers and hurlers through their training and tenacity. Tonight you get deserved recognition but I hope you also derive huge personal fulfilment from being the finest ambassadors of the greatest amateur sporting tradition on earth. Congratulations to you all.