Earlier this week our South Dublin South Leinster SNA branch organised a GAA Football Blitz for 200 students at the GAA Centre of Excellence in Portlaoise.  
 
The event consisted of 20 teams from 10 different schools in the South Leinster region. All the students were proud to wear a Fórsa jersey for the day and the division hired an ice cream van to ensure everyone stayed cool in the warm weather. As well as their union jersey, students received a Fórsa kit bag and were presented with a medal when their matches had finished.  
 

Head of the Education division Andy Pike said “This was a wonderful event; it was really great to see all the students paying in their Fórsa jerseys. There are now 200 more households where we have some recognition. I would like to thank Annette Murphy, Chair of the SDSL SNA Branch, for making sure this happened and in particular thank our great activist Alex Cathcart from the branch committee who pulled together all the school teams and did so much to ensure the event was successful.” 
 
Alex Cathcart, is the brains behind the blitz and gave us some insight into how the ideas got rolling. 

 
“It’s kinda a funny story, we were on our yearly planning day for the South Leinster, South Dublin branch and we were trying to think of ideas of ways Fórsa could have a community programme. And the idea just came to me and I parked it for a little well to flesh it out and later in the evening when our official meeting finished and I just put the idea to our chair. Wouldn’t it be a lovely way to have an interaction with schools that wasn’t necessarily IR based. That went back to a branch meeting and we decided that we’d run it as a trial programme in Dublin with a couple of special schools.” 

Alex explains how a link up with a local jersey supplier enabled schools to design their own kits, so each jersey is the creative output of the process used in each school. 

 
“We’ve got eight schools here as you can see, just a kaleidoscope of colour and design, it’s been taken on by different schools differently. There’s a whole variety of design and colours on display.” 
 

This event is part of the community development and engagement initiative within the Education Division. The initiative aims to build roots in local communities and to raise the profile of our union.  
 
This week’s event builds on the first Football Blitz organised with the FAI late last year, and further initiatives will be developed by branches later in 2025.  

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