Gaelic games reveal Euro stars
Louven has a long association with Ireland as hundreds flocked there from these shores during the penal law days in Ireland to study for the priesthood in the prestigious college in the town.
It was most appropriate that on European Day, Saturday, the Irish again headed en masse to Louven, only this time to play in a very competitive and entertaining football tournament.
The head of the college’s Gaelic department is former Antrim player, Malachy Vallely, and it was his influence that secured the grounds – a not inconsiderable obstacle when trying to organise GAA games outside of Ireland.
Being the first ever European tournament hosted by the Belgium GAA, the organisers pulled out all the stops. On the previous Wednesday they launched the tournament in the European Parliament. To encourage Irish MEPs to turn up, they emailed them all and included the following sentence in the missive. “We invite you to come to the launch, where we will facilitate photos with you and constituents active in the club, which we will feed to your local media. We have club members from all corners of Ireland so there will be no shortage of photos opportunities.”
That brought the MEPs running! Successful launch in the European Parliament guaranteed.
Organising a tournament like this takes a huge amount of work, all done on a voluntary basis and when the teams arrived from Paris, The Hague, Amsterdam, Munich, Luxembourg, Brussels and Holland, all was in readiness for the games, which went on until 8.30pm.
The great thing about the GAA is players wear the jersey with pride and they love to beat their nearest neighbour – even if that nearest neighbour is a few hundred miles down the road. The needle between the Brussels men and the Hague was palpable spilling over into a good old schemozzle for a little while there was little love lost in the ladies game between Brussels and Paris.
The standard of football was quite high and the 11-a-side game coupled with a smaller pitch lent itself to many scoring opportunities. It was interesting to observe the amount of players who had no connection with Ireland but are playing Gaelic games abroad. Brussels GAA club has members from 13 different countries and the most efficient secretary of the club comes all the way from Texas.
In previous years the European County Board used to bring out referees from Ireland but due to scarce resources they decided to do it all themselves this year. Thus Willie Cashin (a Tipp man who is also chairman of the club), Tony Bass (a Dublin man who is secretary of the European County Board) and Tom McGrath refereed all 22 games between them. Tom McGrath refereed at a very high level in soccer when in Ireland. Now he is blowing the whistle for the GAA aboard.
These tournaments will continue monthly in cities around Europe with the grand finale in September when the European version of the Sam Maguire will be decided.
All the players pay for their own travel expenses and accommodation which can be quite sizeable because of the distances involved throughout Europe. But they do it all for the love of the game, pride in the club and the joy of beating the neighbour, be they 400 miles away !
Brussels celebrated victories in the ladies and men’s finals. I had the honour of presenting the cups to both captains. When I was presenting the cup to Eoin O Seanain I heard one player from The Hague observe “the Sam Maguire is not won in May”. It turned out that the comment came from a past pupil, Darren Corcoran, and what a wise observation! Incidentally, O Seanain also was man of the match in the final. While Eoin was starring in continental Europe his young brothers were starring for the club Caula Kickhams as they romped to victory in the Dublin U21 final.
The ladies’ player of the match was Ciara Farrell, a superb footballer who is the niece of the new Ulster Council chairman Aoghain O Fearghail. Connections, Connections. No one does it better than the GAA.
When all the games were over, all goalposts taken down and the field returned to its natural state all players and officials retired to the premises of their Belgian GAA sponsor – The de Valera. The establishment is run by a Cork man – Conor De Barra. He also has a pub called the Michael Collins. Now that’s Cork cuteness for you.
Yes, the GAA in Belgium is very active. They had a huge success last Saturday. They played a big part in the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Brussels and earlier were involved with FC Irlande in raising €60,000 for Haiti. I must speak to them about entering the Rose of Tralee. Judging by what I observed they’d have no shortage of contestants.
