Alan Kerins
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Football Position: | Right Corner Forward | ||
| Hurling Position: | Left Half Forward | ||
| Born | 1977 (age 39–40) Galway, Ireland |
||
| Height | 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) | ||
| Club(s) | |||
| Years | Club | ||
|
Clarinbridge (H) Salthill-Knocknacarra (F) |
|||
| Club titles | |||
| Football | Hurling | ||
| Galway titles | 2 | 2 | |
| Connacht titles | 1 | 1 | |
| All-Ireland titles | 1 | 1 | |
| Inter-county(ies) | |||
| Years | County | Apps (scores) | |
| -2011 2001–2003 |
Galway (H) Galway (F) |
? (12-78) 16 (4–9) |
|
| Inter-county titles | |||
| Football | Hurling | ||
| Connacht Titles | 2 | 3 | |
| All-Ireland Titles | 1 | 0 | |
| League titles | 0 | 3 | |
| All-Stars | 0 | 2 | |
Alan Kerins (born 1977 in Galway) is an Irish sportsman. He plays hurling with his local club Clarinbridge and his Football with Salthill-Knocknacarra. He played with the Galway senior inter-county team until 2011.
Alan plays his Football with Salthill-Knocknacarra. He won an All-Ireland medal with Galway in 2001. He also won a Club All-Ireland with Salthill-Knocknacarra in March 2006, he played at Right Half Forward.
Kerins is the founder of Alan Kerins African Projects which works with children in Africa. In 2004 Alan Kerins took a three-month unpaid leave of absence from his job as a physiotherapist to volunteer in the Zambian township of Mongu, an area devastated by AIDS, drought and desperate poverty. What he saw there changed his life and set in motion a fundraising campaign that has brought hope and a future to a place and people abandoned by the rest of the world.
The year of 2004 had been a disappointment. The Galway hurlers had been hammered by Kilkenny. Salthill-Knocknacarra lost the county football final to Killererin. Dual player Alan had always had it at the back of his mind that he would like to go to Africa to do voluntary work. Now seemed like the right time. "I'd always been interested in Africa and going myself, so I approached one of the bigger agencies to go," he explains. "I wanted to go October, November to be back for the start of next year's play, but that fell through, and I had kind of given up on the idea. But then when I was on a weekend away with the lads, I had a chance meeting with Brother Dan Joe O'Mahony." Once Brother O'Mahony, a Capuchin in Dublin, heard how Alan's African trip had been scuppered, he offered to look into getting another placement. It found him. The Cheshire Home for children with physical disabilities in Mongu, the main township of Western Province, Zambia, needed a physiotherapist. And after taking leave from his post in Galway's Merlin Park Hospital, Alan was on a plane out there in January 2005. A much longer journey lay ahead.
He landed in a country parched by drought and poverty. The rains that winter had been the poorest in 77 years; 75% of the crops had failed. The wells were contaminated by pollution and disease, and food was scarce. Government aid was non-existent. A whole generation of adults was being wiped out by AIDS. Life expectancy was set at 36. Babies starved. And Alan asked how this could be allowed to happen. "You'll see a grandmother who's lost 10 of her children in the last three years to AIDS, who's crippled and has to look after 15 orphaned grandchildren. Every house has orphans. Even the chef in the home has 16 children, seven of his own and nine of his deceased brothers and sisters. That's what you see. People are starving, no food, no electricity, no jobs. They lack even the basics of food and water," he stresses. "It does really affect you. And you find yourself asking questions. Why? Why is this happening? How can this be only nine hours away on a flight? Just how. When you see scenes on television, you can turn them off and go for a cup of tea and forget all about it. When you're in amongst it, it stays with you."
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