The GAA in WA has been running sports days for young players – both Irish and Australian. (File pic)

The GAA in Western Australia is aiming to get greater numbers of children involved in the amateur sport, by offering a youth programme modelled on the AFL’s Auskick.

Auskick, which has been running for over a decade, provides boys and girls with an introduction to Australian Football.

GAAWA is hoping to replicate the success of that scheme with Gael Kick, a similar voluntary youth programme run on a smaller scale.

The state association has already run a number of sports days for budding GAA enthusiasts this year.

GAAWA President Rob O’Callaghan told the Irish Echo that youth would be a major focus for the state association over the next 12 months.

While the proposal is yet to go through the state committee, he is confident there is enough support for it to progress.

“Our main focus this year is on junior development.

“We are going to have a junior football and hurling committee set up that is going to run the junior aspect of our programmes,” he said.

“It’s basically about getting Australian families down to see how great our game is.

“It’s another option rather than AFL or soccer or cricket and it’s an attractive game to play,” said O’Callaghan.

“It’s just to get the kids actively back involved in Gaelic football again.

“A lot of these families that are here at the moment come from a football background and their kids are used to playing junior football back home.”

O’Callaghan hopes that the youth program will pave the way for a junior league in the state.

“Unfortunately here in Western Australia there is no junior league set up, so the next best set up in order for us to achieve a junior league is to start small with a junior academy, say one Sunday a month or one Sunday every three weeks” said O’Callaghan.

The volunteer coaches would give the children an introduction into both hurling and football.

O’Callaghan said the association had yet to secure any funding but stressed that some would be required to provide the right training resources, such as sporting equipment and first aid kits.

“If people are going out and above and beyond their calls of duty and outside scope of work, in regards of the committee and so forth, it means we have to try compensate some aspects of their work,” he said.

“We are going to have to try to source some sort of funding from the Department of Sports and Recreation or maybe Lotterywest or health programs,” he concluded.