Mick Clifford's new book, There I Long to Be: Life Through a GAA Lens, focusses on the role that Gaelic football plays in his life as a Kerryman.
With people emigrating for warmer pastures and some even going to Australia to play in the AFL, the future of GAA teams might look a lot different to what we've come to know.
This is one of the topics of Mick Clifford's new book, There I Long to Be: Life Through a GAA Lens, which highlights the importance of Gaelic Football in his life.
While he's known as a Kerryman, he was actually born in Galway, joking with Pat Kenny that he's Galway by birth but very much a Kerryman by nature.
A touching part of the book is when he talks about going to "his Disneyland" for the first time, which was his first trip to Croke Park as a child.
He spoke about the segment on The Pat Kenny Show, explaining: "It was in Croke Park. I was brought there for the very first time as a seven-year-old.
"The 1972 All-Ireland Football Final replay and it was, as I describe it in the book, it was like a young fella going to Disneyland today.
"The whole thing, even coming from rural South Kerry up to Dublin, the city, the whole thing."
The pair later discussed how there's a real struggle to fill Gaelic football teams these days, which is an overarching theme in the book.
Mr Clifford continued: "In the first game of the new rules in 2025, it was pointed out that there were fellows on the pitch in their 40s and there was one fella, apparently, who was even underage.
"And there's a question over whether he should have been playing. But the reason for that is quite simply, it is so difficult to fill teams.
"It's about population. It's about economic activity. It's about a global phenomenon over the last 50 or 60 years of moving from the countries to the urban and city.
"I know in South Kerry, there's about 10 clubs. You hear people talking about an incident 50 years ago where, let's say, somebody laid a low blow to somebody else's cousin on the other on the neighbouring parish.
"People remember that sort of thing. It defines relationships, all that sort of thing.
"Now you get to a point where quite possibly, and this is happening already at underage, you have to have amalgamated clubs and that takes an identity away.
"It's a very difficult thing to tackle. The GAA are trying in a lot of different ways to tackle it in a corporate sense."
Mick Clifford's There I Long to Be: Life Through a GAA Lens is out now.
Main image: Kerry v Donegal in Croke Park Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
