From France to the Philippines, expats carry the torch for their native game

Global warming to GAA

Last weekend Joe McDonagh held a sort of a summit in Amsterdam for the GAA's European diaspora, where he met representatives from the latest generation of young Irish Europeans.

And if the first wave of the so-called Ryanair Generation was often anxious to distance itself from the old sod - lest its cosmopolitan credentials be compromised - there is a growing sense that this generation has a different take on the experience: comfortable with one foot in the global village - and another in the native village from whence they came.

It helps, of course, that it's good to be Irish these days - and having made Irish dancing sexy, then even the GAA could eventually come in from the cold. Which may help to explain why GAA clubs are mushrooming in Europe, not to mention the far east, alongside the traditional territories in England, the UK and Australia.

In April '97 McDonagh announced his ambition to see a European board formed - a kind of county board for the continent - and he moved one step closer to that objective in Amsterdam on Sunday when a list of officers was appointed to a provisional board.

That board will now put a formal request in writing to the GAA's management committee, seeking affiliation to the association, and ultimate ratification at Congress next year.

The chairman of the European Board is Mark Scanlon, a 28-year-old Clareman who has been based in France since 1993. A financial broker based in the capital, he plays with Paris Gaels, perhaps the strongest GAA unit on the continent.

"I used to play a lot of hurling back home in Clarecastle and I missed it when I came over here," says Scanlon. "It'd be nice to get games here on a regular basis, maybe a league eventually. But we're looking to take hurling and football forward in Europe, build on what's there already."

There are six other active GAA groupings on the continent: Luxembourg, Brussels, The Hague, Dusseldorf, Brest and Lyon. The GAA has also received enquiries from Berlin, Munich, Dresden and Madrid.

"Because we haven't a regular league or championship," explains Scanlon, "we depend on each club to run a tournament. We also get games against visiting teams so it works out at about a match a month, which isn't bad."

Paris Gaels beat The Hague in a tournament cup match in Amsterdam last Saturday. They have also travelled to Brest, Guernsey, Luxembourg, Brussels and The Hague this season for tournaments. These are normally seven-a-side games or 11-a-side when they can manage it.

"It's growing and growing," says Barney Winston, chairman of Croke Park's International Dimension Workgroup, " this is not county championship standard, but I don't think it has to be. They are probably getting more enjoyment out of the games than anybody else because they're playing them for the love of playing them."

The social dimension to these tournaments is, by all accounts, huge.

"Monstrous," says Ray Tully, chairman and founder of Guernsey Gaels, "absolutely monstrous".

A county player with Sligo for four years in the late 80s, Tully missed the football when he arrived in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, in 1996. He tried playing with Jersey Gaels (who compete in the London championship) on the neighbouring island but the travelling made it impossible.

"So I decided to set up a club here. I put an advertisement in the paper and lo and behold, 10 or 12 lads turned up. The whole thing blossomed from there."

Guernsey held their tournament on the bank holiday weekend in May - it is set to become a permanent fixture in the calendar. A British dependency situated off the coast of Brittany, the Irish expatriate community is about 900 in a population of 60,000. They've pressganged a few Scots and second generation Irish, more used to rugby and soccer, to take up the code.

The travelling to play in other cities is the best part of it, says Tully. "The amount of people who will come from all over Europe to get to these tournaments would amaze you," he says.

Like Scanlon, he identifies a strong cultural element driving the network. "When you go abroad, Irish people want to assert their identity, and gaelic games are part of that."

For the Bretons who line out with Brest, says Scanlon, playing gaelic football is another way of connecting with their Celtic heritage. "There are a lot of Bretons in Paris, and all over France, and they're very interested in gaelic and hurling."

Another important factor in the upsurge, says Winston, is the televised games during summer. "They're being seen on hundreds of sites throughout Europe, Sunday after Sunday, and I think that is what is really captivating the imagination of an awful lot of people over there, rejuvenating the interest of many expats who would not have had access to anything like this previously."

It is not only a European phenomenon. A hardy bunch of expats are flying the flag in Dubai, where they trade under the rather splendid title, Naomh Abdullah's.

In the far east, a group of young Irishmen founded Cumann Lúthchleas Gael Taipei on New Year's Eve 1995 - or at least said they would. They were true to their word and in May '96 held the first-ever South-East Asia gaelic games festival, in the capital of the Philippines, Manila.

Now operating as CLG Taiwan, the annual festival has got bigger and bigger each year since.

At the Australasian finals, held in Perth in early October, teams from Australia and New Zealand were joined by Taiwan and, for the first time, a side from Singapore. The Singapore caucus has big plans for development while an embryonic organisation is up and running in Tokyo.

"Founded in April 1997," says the website for Japan GAA, "in response to the initiative of the Irish in Taiwan to promote Gaelic games in Asia, the Japan GAA hopes to create an awareness of Gaelic sports in Japan, and organise frequent GAA events."

Now the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean are also about to take their place among the nations. "They have a team there," says Winston, "and they actually fly into the United States to play games."

All pioneers, after a fashion, but not the first global exponents of the game of the gael -- not by a long shot. In 1747, an Irish Brigade at the Battle of Lafelt, near Maastricht, played hurling matches among themselves during breaks in the fighting.

In Melbourne, on July 12 1844, a hurling match between the men of Clare and Tipperary took place. It was arranged, writes the hurling historian Seamus J King, "as a counterblast to an Orange procession in the same place to which all good men who hated 'Pope and Popery, brass money and wooden shoes', were expected to give their assistance. The match attracted 500 stalwart Irishmen armed with hurleys, staves and shillelaghs. A contemporary bard described the scene.

"And first in the field were the gallant old Tips,
With strength in their arms and smiles on their lips;
While famed Garryowen poured its tribute along,
And Clare's sturdy peasants were thick in the throng."

Indeed - and not a young European among them.

tommy.conlon@sunday-times.co.uk

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