Hurling in Ramallah: How Palestinian children are getting to grips with GAA
Ramallah Hurling Club will soon have a new green and yellow playing kit — boasting human rights logos, as well as the GAA Palestine crest, which was designed by Irish artist Catherine Mangan.
A new club has joined the GAA ranks.
Young boys living in Ramallah, in the heart of the West Bank, have started hurling training and hope one day that they will get to travel to Ireland and play against teams here.
Some 20 children, with training kits and hurleys donated from Ireland, are now spending afternoons or evenings training, in a sport that they say makes them feel close to Ireland.
“I’m told this play [sport] is freedom,” one of the fathers of the children in Ramallah's GAA team said.
“We are teaching our children this idea of freedom. We want our children to understand this freedom.”
He said hurling is a new sport for Palestine, compared to handball and football which are more widely played, but he hopes that even with this small and fledgling young team, the sport's popularity can eventually grow and spread across the occupied territories.
“We are dreamers, our dream is to one day play this play [sport] in Jerusalem in the stadium,” he added.
The Ramallah Hurling Club has 24 members — 20 kids, a bainisteoir, a coach, and a projects manager.
The team will soon have a new green and yellow playing kit — boasting human rights logos, as well as the GAA Palestine crest, which was designed by Irish artist Catherine Mangan.
One of the young boys in the team, hopes that one day he can play GAA in Ireland.
“It changed something in my life,” the 11-year-old said.
Alongside training and learning something new, the sport brings joy and “fun” to the children who mainly live in the camps in the area.
With the help of Fajir Scientific, an apolitical non-profit organisation which brings free medical and surgical care to Palestinians in need, hurleys, equipment, and even training sessions were also brought in.
Clare woman Claire Liddy, a social care worker and humanitarian volunteer, who volunteers for Fajir explains how she helped bring in the hurleys.
“I am a great believer in play therapy and distraction with the children, and they are resilient.
"You could not imagine what they have to endure on a daily basis, what they are living through,” she told the .
Ms Liddy believes that the camp in Ramallah was a suitable place to carry out Fajir project.
“I always felt hospitals were very clinical. This is where you are going to reach the people, this is where you will build up relationships, build up trust.
“I could see the need in the camp, and after the volunteers from Fajir came, I asked them if any of them would like to come along and train the kids.”
They have set up a play therapy room and trauma counselling training for adult volunteers is also being carried out.
“Having a play therapy room is great, but you want professionals as well that can support the children,” she said.
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“In the camp, every single child has some form of PTSD or trauma.”
Stephen Redmond, a co-founder of GAA Palestine, said as soon as the hurleys arrived the kids were fanatic in their enthusiasm.
“It was exciting, it was new — they had never seen anything like it and they love it.
"We want to get more hurleys, more balls, more helmets — we have no helmets at the moment so we want to get them over but it’s been fantastic.”
Mr Redmond, who grew up in London during the Troubles when anti-Irish sentiment was high, explains that GAA Palestine came about because of the similarities between the experience of Ireland and Palestine.
“I saw a lot of similarities between our nation and what we've gone through in the past as a nation — you know, restrictions of movement there, and restrictions of everything. You can't escape it. So I found it was a great fit."
In the future, he hopes that this will be a “hub between Ireland and Palestine” for friendships and relationships and even commercial relationships.
Launched initially in January this year, according to Mr Redmond everyone that he had reached out to at a “grassroots level” wanted to help.
“So Ireland has been really good, and the Palestinians know that. [They] have a great affection for Ireland and everyone I’m engaged with.
“They appreciate what we are doing.”
Training at the Ramallah GAA club started in July and saw the boys aged 11 to 13 starting with warm-ups and drills.
Ms Liddy said the first training session was the first time that the kids held a hurley.
“The first session, I said let them have their fun, let them get a feel for the hurleys, for the balls,” she said.
There was only a certain amount of pitches that they shared with others and no grass was available.
Their coach, a man from Gaza, taught himself how to play hurling through the videos on the internet.
Learning different moves and plays, he taught the children how to play with the hurleys.
Some volunteers from Ireland also spent time with the coach, spending two to three days teaching him what they knew about GAA.
Since then, the boys have been enjoying the sport, according to the coach, who said he is very happy to be coaching the first GAA team in Palestine.
He says he feels close to Ireland when he teaches the game and plays it with the team.
“For me, Ireland and Palestine are one.”
Offers of support for the children have been coming in from all directions from “charity to psychotherapy to counselling,” according to Mr Redmond.
A recent post featuring one of the young boys involved attracted over 1,000 likes from GAA fans across Ireland and Mr Redmond said the boy in question “feels like a VIP.”
“He’s inspiring the next generation, he even sent me a thank you. This is a major thing — they feel recognised within the GAA as special."
“They’re young heroes, they’ve been through more than any of us, I can’t express how big it is — wait to see what happens when they go to Ireland!
“For us, it’s very humbling to see the excitement from them,” Mr Redmond added.
A letter of support sent by a school principal in Ireland was extremely touching for the children — “it showed she actually cared – it’s so big to them,” Mr Redmond said.
“They sent me messages of support and love to the principal from the kids individually — they wanted to show her respect.”
There are hopes that other teams will launch in Hebron and Bethlehem in the next few months.
A manager is already in place in Hebron and the organisation is aided by being allowed to use the excellence centre in the city.
Mr Redmond said he is hoping that the children involved in the sport will be brought over to Ireland next March.
He is also hoping further to be invited into the Palestinian school system to showcase hurling to other children.
Discussions are ongoing with the Palestinian Olympic committee as well as Perry Ogden of Sports Against Racism Ireland, among others.
However, Mr Redmond said that he is most touched by the support they’ve received from the volunteers in the GAA so far.
A long-term vision of GAA Palestine is to participate as part of an All-Ireland competition — similar to how London, New York, Warwickshire and Lancashire compete in various inter-county championships.
A post on GAA Palestine's fundraising page reads: “With a better structure and framework, the training is not a short-term hobby but a longer-term aspiration. That aspiration has now grown to creating a full Palestinian GAA Group, so children can grow through the ranks, on to become senior players one day with the dream of taking part in an All-Ireland competition just like Contae Londain or County New York!
Mr Redmond says the ultimate hope is to make it more than just a club “We are looking to create a national organisation — a governing body within the occupied territories and they will govern GAA and introduce it wherever it can.
"We want a sustainable organisation — not just a club."
https://www.gofundme.com/f/gaa-sports-kits-funds-for-palestinian-children
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