GAA is blossoming abroad

Ian Cusack

The detrimental effect the recession and more specifically emigration is having on GAA has been well documented. What you may not know however, is that many have taken the sport to previously untouched GAA corners of the globe.

This weekend Gothenburg hosts the first leg of the third annual Scandinavian GAA Football Championship, a competition which is growing year by year. The championship is contested over three weekends. Gothenburg’s leg will be followed by weekends in Copenhagen in June and Stockholm in August.

This year Helsinki field a team for the first time joining Malmo, Copenhagen, Oslo and Gothenburg who’ll be vying to strip Stockholm of the Aherne Trophy which it claimed in its maiden season last summer.

Stockholm’s treasurer, former Antrim inter-county footballer Niall Scullion, believes that as well as tying together various strands of the Irish diaspora, the championship is bringing the Gaelic football onto the international stage.

“This weekend we are bringing our new Chinese sensation Guo Guodong to Gothenburg with us,” he said. “One of our players works in the university here as a researcher and he put up an advertisement for beginners to come. Guo saw the ad and thought it was for a soccer team so he turned up. But he decided to give it a go anyway and he absolutely loved it and now he rarely if ever misses a training session.

“We also had a former US marine playing with us last year while he worked at the Swedish embassy who developed into a competent full back but unfortunately he moved back to the States. We currently have a French lad training too.”

This healthy mix of cultures is by no means confined to Stockholm as Joe Whelan, secretary of Malmo GAA Club attests.

“Malmo really is a mixed bag. On the international front we have one player from Iceland, an Iranian, a German, one from Wales, four Australians and five Swedes. We’ve got 18 Irish players — six from Cork, three Dublin, two Laois2, two Galway and one each from Derry, Sligo, Tipp, Meath, Longford — we also have a few social members, from Meath, Dublin, Limerick.”

The teams consist of 11 players, a goalkeeper and two players in each of the lines instead of the traditional three. In each leg of the tournament every team plays each other once, usually a 20-minute game. The two most successful teams then progress to a 30-minute final. The overall contest is ultimately decided on the basis of points gained in each leg, whichever team tops the championship table at the end of the summer is crowned champions.

With the Irish connection reaching all parts of the continent, the Scandinavian champions face off against the winners from Iberia, Benelux, East and South Europe and two French regional champions in the European GAA Championship. All clubs operating within the European County Board are also invited to compete in the European Shield.

While there is unquestionably a social aspect to these events, the games are by no means friendlies with bragging rights at stake abroad every bit as much as at home.

“The lads have been working hard to prepare for the first round of the championship. We were training once a week indoors from mid-January, however finding facilities to train in has proved a major challenge and our chairman Phil O’Connor has been working tirelessly to ensure the team has a place to train.

“Obviously with the Swedish winter we were not able to move outside until mid to late March which has hindered preparations but in the last five weeks we have been outside and trying to increase the workload to two sessions a week.”

Sparsely populated training sessions are a sad reality for many GAA clubs across Ireland, threatening the very existence of smaller clubs. However as these emigrants take their passion for the game with them, is this trend actually strengthening the sport?

As more and more young Irish leave in pursuit of work, they expand the GAA factions abroad. With that in mind, all bets are off coming into this weekend’s games.

“All teams have picked up a few new players this year as the tide of emigration sends Irish men and women to foreign shores... or more like Swedish women are dragging Irish fellas over here,” Whelan jokes.

“Malmo is always confident heading into a tournament. Training has gone well over the last few months, with a much better turnout and commitment than last year. A few of the Malmo boys play Aussie Rules with the Port Malmo Maulers, and a couple of the Aussies play with us. We had three pre-season matches with the Aussies, Gaelic football, International Rules game and Aussie Rules. A great help to the physicality of our own game.”

Despite a convincing win in 2010, Scullion stays true to his GAA roots, favouring caution over cockiness.

“We don’t know how the personnel on the other teams will have changed since last season. Especially with the economic situation at home, you always have to be prepared that there could be some fantastic players emigrated out to any of the Scandinavian cities. Sure maybe Colin Cooper met a Swedish girl and is playing for Gothenburg for all we know. We will find out this Saturday.”

Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/4xug3-wGxqY/post.aspx

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