McLaughlin to be named new Ulster GAA President

CIARAN McLaughlin will be ratified as the new Ulster GAA President at Friday night’s Ulster Council Convention.

The popular Strabane Sigersons stalwart, who has been chairman of his club on a number of occasions in the past, is delighted to have been chosen to succeed Oliver Galligan in the prestigious role and he’s keen to get to work, highlighting several issues he wants to tackle during his three years at the helm.

McLaughlin is keen to retain the competitive nature of the under threat Ulster Senior Football Championship and he aims to achieve this by helping clubs improve their coaching structures, which he believes will have a knock-on effect at county level. And he’s also keen to improve referee recruitment and retention within the Province.

“It’s definitely not about making change for the sake of making change but there are several key priorities,” explained the former Tyrone County Chairperson.

“How we play our games in Ulster is one of the key things to ensure our counties are able to compete at a high level.

“Keeping that competitive within our county structure is obviously very important, but on top of that and possibly more importantly is making sure we have the best possible base in our clubs, that the coaches there have the best opportunities to be the best they can in terms of coaching the children in their clubs because their time is precious.

“Everyone is doing so many different things, so if we can give them opportunities and skill sets to be the best coaches they can then it will have a knock on effect in our clubs and then our counties as well.

“And the other thing is refereeing. That’s another area in terms of how we can encourage people into refereeing.

“Obviously there are different things in terms of how you respect the referee, how they are treated on a match day and how we encourage people to get involved.

“There are various things we can look at in that and those are two key areas and there are plenty of other things too, there’s Casement and things like that going on in the background.”

The Strabane man has been Ulster vice-president for the last few years, is a former Tyrone County Board chairman, and a past chairman of the GAA’s National Games Development committee and chairman of the GAA’s Health and Wellbeing Committee. He will bring a wealth of administrative experience to his new role, which is proud to have been appointed to.

“I like to think we’re all doing various jobs in the same association so I don’t get too carried away with titles, but it’s a great honour,” he beamed.

“My background is very much a man from Strabane and I consider myself a working class man from Strabane.

“ All my energy went into my club and as I grew to love what I was doing more and more, I just wanted to be able to do more if I could and to make things better.

“My first involvement with the county was youth and youth fixtures and how we could do better with the structures we had in place and that’s as far back as 2003/2004, so that was when I got started.

“It’s been a long period but I enjoy working with the Association and great people and long may that last.”