Éire Óg

I play for Éire Óg, and I'm also on the committee, so I see the club from both sides: the pitch, and everything that has to happen so there's a pitch to play on in the first place.

Training and fixtures are the visible part. What's less visible is the fundraising, the organising, the getting-people-involved, and the amount of unpaid work that goes into keeping a local club running at all.

Earlier this year the club ran a 24 Hour Challenge, 1km every hour for 24 hours, on top of everything else people were already doing, to raise money for the club. It's a small enough idea on paper and a genuinely brutal one to actually do.

What I like about it isn't the challenge itself, it's what it represents. Nobody involved was doing it for a following. They were doing it because the club matters to them and it needed the money.

That's most of what club sport is, honestly. Not the scoreline. The people who turn up to paint the dressing rooms, or run the line, or organise the fundraiser, mostly with no credit at all.