Jack Anderson: 'The G-man' sprints into AFL territory, where Irish are thriving

When you look at all these Irishmen in the AFL you cannot help, in the week that the senior inter-county championship begins, but think of the talent drain from home to here.

THRIVING: Conor Nash of the Hawthorn Hawks. Pic: by Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

My kids used to love the BBC series Horrible Histories and that series loved the Tudors, especially Henry VIII. 

Henry famously suffered from gout and when I got the same affliction (I know, I know) one of the kids said that short fat gingers who like to give orders must be prone to it. Teenage kids are not good for your self-esteem.

Gout is how you pronounce the name of Australia’s latest teenage sports sensation - the sprinter, Gout Gout. Last month, aged 17, he set the fastest time in the world this year for the men’s 200m (20.05 seconds). Late in 2024, he broke the Australian national men's 200 metres record, when he ran 20.04 seconds in the under-18 200m final at the Australian All Schools Athletics Championships.

That was a historic run in so many ways, not least of which was that the previous record had stood for 56 years dating back to Peter Norman’s silver medal in the 200m Olympic final of 1968. Norman was the man in the middle at the subsequent medal ceremony when Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave a Black Power salute in what arguably remains the most iconic image in Olympic history.

As an aside, if Smith and Carlos were to do that on a podium today, they could be stripped of their medals under IOC political neutrality rules.

Gout has attracted huge media attention in Australia — and a $6million dollar shoe deal. Based in Queensland, he will be 24 by the time the Olympics come to Brisbane in 2032, and all going well expect the “G-man” (as the marketeers have already labelled him) to be a large part of the build-up.

As another aside, you will not be surprised that the 2032 Games is already projected to be over budget. In a recent state election, the Queensland opposition promised that it would not authorise the building of a new stadium as the centre piece for the Games and would instead refurbish existing stadia such as the Gabba. 

The opposition won the election and last month announced… the building of a new stadium for the Games. The IOC’s soft power over host governments is extraordinary, as is their revenue model of American broadcasting money, local taxpayers’ dollars and non-payment of athletes; all ensuring that the “bread and circus” Olympics roadshow is a robust as ever.

If the Paris Games is anything to go by, Ireland should do well in rowing at Brisbane though, in a very local twist, the biggest issue with the proposed rowing venue for 2032 (the Fitzroy River) is that it’s a natural crocodile habitat. The Brisbane Olympic chief, Andrew Liveris, has dismissed any fears of “crocs in the rocks” by saying “there are sharks in the ocean, and we still do surfing”.

Welcome athletes to Australia: check the path for snakes and your toilet seat for spiders; both can be deadly.

The proposed new Brisbane stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics. Last Saturday evening at an athletics meet in Melbourne, in front of a sell out crowd of 10,000 and a live free-to-air audience of 1.2 million, Gout Gout was sensationally beaten in a 200-meter race (named after Peter Norman) by Lachlan Kennedy. 

If anything, that defeat has added to the interest in the sprinter who has already trained with Noah Lyles and, inevitably, is being compared to Usain Bolt. (Gout bettered Usain Bolt’s 200m, world age-16 best of 20.13 seconds).

It’s a lot for a young man to take in but grounded by parents who fled South Sudan (via Egypt), eventually settling in Australia in 2005, he seems self-assured.

The fact that an athletics event was covered live by mainstream TV on a Saturday evening is unusual in itself for Melbourne, given that “the footy” has started. This season the AFL sold Saturday football – and its soul according to some supporters – to pay TV hence the vacuum in free-to-air TV coverage that reintroduced Australians (and their TV networks) to the joys of a top-class athletics meet.

The AFL decision, which has echoes at home in the debate surrounding GAA Go/GAA+, was made on purely commercial grounds. 

Families tend to be out and about Saturday daytime, and free to air games on Thursday nights attract a bigger, captive TV audience hence more advertising revenue.

The AFL season itself has thus far been dominated by unbeaten Hawthorn. In their round 1 win over Essendon, Meath’s Conor Nash made his 100th appearance for the club. 

He is playing exceptionally well for the Hawks and his is a remarkable story of versatility (Nash was an excellent Gaelic footballer and rugby player at home) and persistence (first signed in 2016 it really wasn’t until the post-Covid seasons, and a change in position, that he found a regular place in the team).

Nash is the eighth Irish player to reach 100 AFL games – Zach Tuohy and Jim Stynes top the list with over 500 appearances between them – while Kerry’s Mark O’Connor and Tyrone’s Conor McKenna (both on +120 games) keep racking up the appearances for Geelong and Brisbane respectively.

One other Irish player to catch the eye is Ballincollig’s Liam O’Connell who is playing well for St Kilda. 

Commentators have commended his “Irish flair” (Australian for his ability to kick a ball with his instep) and his bravery, epitomised by a game-saving, blind catch against Geelong when he held off two opponents and came down with the ball, cradling it gently like Anne Boleyn’s head, as Philip Greene used to say.

When you look at all these Irishmen in the AFL – Mayo’s Oisin Mullan is another that comes to mind – you cannot help, in the week that the senior inter-county championship begins, but think of the talent drain from home to here. And rest assured that the U20 football championship, which has also just started, will be attended by AFL scouts. 

Moreover, this is all amplified in the AFLW where there is likely to be over 40 Irish women participating in a season that will overlap with LGFA championships at home.

As someone who couldn’t make it in Ireland and had to go to Australia for a job, I can’t knock those who seek an alternative career in Oz. But at the same time you’d wonder about the recent suggestion of a revival of the International Rules series.

The talk is that such a series will “showcase” the best of both football codes, but the original meaning of showcase is a glass container in which valuable or important objects are kept so that they can be looked at without being touched or taken. 

Any International Rules series, male and female, might be a showcase for GAA inter-county talent, but it’s very definitely a shop window for AFL clubs.