As more and more GAA players leave the county in search of employment we talk to several clubs about their experiences and Peter Keogh meets one GAA man who is swapping Kiltegan for the land of Arizona

WHILE few clubs, if any, in this county or beyond have escaped or are likely to escape the haemorrhage of young players now leaving for foreign parts, the case of one small club in West Wicklow is particularly distressing.

The Bolands of Kiltegan

When Micheál Boland boards the plane for Phoenix, Arizona on 2nd February he will be joining an ever growing number of young GAA players leaving for foreign parts.

However Micheál is in a much happier position than most of his counterparts. He is not going in the hope of finding a job. He is an Engineer with Intel and his company are asking him to take over an important assignment for them in Arizona and apparently they have no problem with allowing him to bring his wife and family.

Not that that is going to be much consolation to the community he leaves behind and in particular to a GAA club that he has served so well for a number of years. Micheál is one of six sons of Seamus and the late Kathleen Boland, all of them useful footballers with a little bit of hurling thrown in for good measure. His sisters and other family members also played camogie for the Kiltegan club.

Micheál played full back on the Kiltegan team that played Rathnew in the SFC Final in 1998. That was a game that Kiltegan lost but the tide turned big time for Kiltegan and the Boland family ten years later when the club won three football championships in the one year, Senior, Junior A and Junior C. So Micheál and his brothers, John, Gerry and Paul, collected their championship medals.

Since then the recession has hit this little rural club harder than most. County players like Adrian Foley, Derek Daly, Alister Hanbidge and Rory Finn hit the trail for Australia. They have since been joined by Barry O'conner, Alan Byrne, Ray Nolan, Denis Hayes, Colm Murphy, Laurence Kelly and Michael Kelly. Even before that the club had lost some of its greatest stars. Sean Gartland, centre half back on the championship winning team of 1986, settled in Holland, then Signapore and finally Japan, while Noel Goggins, midfielder on the team that won the first Senior Hurling championship a year later, is in Los Angeles.

While Rory Finn answered a call from Arthur French to return to join Micko's team, the rest stayed put on foreign soil and no club, not even from big towns or cities, could afford the loss of such talent.

The latest big set back the Kiltegan club suffered was when their hyperactive chairman Pat "Judy" Keogh went to work in Scotland. Even the camogie club in the village did not escape the haemorrhage. Two of their star players Elaine O'toole and Edel Wynne also emigrated to Australia.

The Boland family got what could be described as an unusual type of send off.

Their eldest daughter Katie was the First Holy Communion Class in Tynock School just outside of Kiltegan and because she was leaving it was decided to bring forward the date of her First communion to Saturday last, the 14th January.

That gave family, relatives, neighbours and friends a chance to join the Bolands in celebrating this great occasion. (See picture).

The Boland family names are Micheál, his wife Lorena and children Katie, Nick and Ava.