The GAA and RNLI: Sharing lifesaving advice together

Last weekend in Dublin, 83,300 people gathered in Croke Park Stadium to watch their teams play for a place in the All-Ireland Hurling final and Camogie semi-final. Organised by the GAA, (the Gaelic Athletic Association), Ireland’s largest amateur sporting organisation, these games are a microcosm of Irish society, bringing together generations of families, friends and neighbours in the shared hope of success for their team and county. Rivals sit side by side and the stadium is a sea of intermingled county colours.

The GAA operates through a network of 2,200 clubs in Ireland, with 400 clubs overseas. For the RNLI, they present an incredible opportunity to share lifesaving water safety advice with an engaged and hugely influential audience. Both organisations have a shared ethos rooted in the power of volunteers and the importance of local communities and the desire to give back to them. For the last nine years the RNLI has been in a charity partnership with the GAA with the aim of saving lives through water safety.

On Saturday, 37 RNLI volunteers walked out on the pitch before throw-in and unfurled a giant flag with a lifeboat in the centre. The cheers were deafening as the crowd showed their appreciation for the work carried out by the RNLI’s lifeboat crews. Volunteers travelled from Antrim, Cork, Donegal, Down, Dublin, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Meath, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford, to get involved. As well as the activity on the pitch, the GAA gave water safety advice to fans in the family zone and carried out pitch side interviews.

The power of sharing the ‘Float to Live’ message to GAA audiences cannot be overestimated. As well as match days in Croke Park, water safety messaging is shared in person and online with clubs and through a range of social media resources, available in both English and Irish.

The President of the GAA, Jarlath Burns, has been a huge supporter of the partnership and late last year, brought a delegation to Poole to see, first-hand, the training facilities at the college. On Saturday, RNLI Trustee and Coxswain Paddy McLaughlin, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Regions, Andy Jordan and Head of Global Drowning Prevention, Kate Eardley, presented him with a framed montage of images taken from the last nine years of the partnership.

Before the game on Saturday, a new ‘Float to Live’ film was shown to the huge crowd in the stadium. Shot in County Wicklow, Ireland, it features the everyday life of a young man who gets into difficulty in the water when he goes for a swim alone but then remembers the Float to Live message.

The long-standing partnership with the GAA is built on mutual respect and trust between the two organisations. A huge amount of time, work and effort goes into making it a success. Ultimately, these lifesaving partnerships help our lifeboat crew, lifeguards and water safety messages to reach more people and to save even more lives.