Season kicks off and Seoul gaels turn to US Military for training

Week 8 (May 21th, 2014): After getting our league campaign off to the best possible start it was back to the U.S Military Base for training and some coaching with the kids this week. In Korea, it is not often that the kids get to meet members of the senior teams as we train in different places.

They have been training regularly on Saturday mornings down by the Han River with Conor, our development officer, while the adult teams commonly train in the afternoon on turf pitches elsewhere. Whether it was the lure of meeting some of the stars from the senior panel or the novelty of training on the Army Base we had our highest ever turnout with thirty kids and just as many curious parents coming along for the afternoon.

What is even more unique is that these are all local Korean kids who had, until recently, never even heard of the game before.

I started my Saturday morning by meeting my fellow committee members to discuss our plans for the months ahead. In Korea, the closest thing to a clubhouse is the Wolfhound Irish Pub so meetings often take place here, or in someone’s home over a warm cup of tea.

On Saturday, given the early start, it was the latter of the two. One of our biggest tasks will be the hosting of the North Asian Games, in July, for which, among other things; we will need to draw up a tournament budget, agree sponsorship for the event, confirm the team numbers and finalize playing schedules.

We also must organize transport to and from venues and make up player packs. More urgently, we are currently in the process of obtaining visas for our trip to China, for the All-China games, in ten days. Currently there are thirteen men and four women down to travel.

Getting a visa here usually takes about five days so we should have them by the end of this week. Once the meeting finished a few of us took a short taxi trip across the city to meet the kids and parents and help escort them on base.

Although they started thirty minutes earlier than the men, one of the highlights of the day came when we joined up with the kids and split into small groups for short, fun games. I remembered some of the kids I had met at the touch rugby event a few weeks earlier and by the end of this session I knew some of the newer ki0ds by their first name.

Links between the underage and adult structures in the club have been improving since the start of the year. This weekend juvenile members will receive their first official Seoul Gaels kit, in another important step forward for underage football in Korea. At the end of May, a coach, working for the GAA, will arrive here to help with kids coaching for one month.

It will be the last leg of his journey to four or five clubs around Asia, and it reflects the progress we, and other Asian clubs, have made, in developing underage structures in this part of the world.For the men and women, this week was also chance to get in some much needed shooting practice and improve on our kicking ahead of the trip to China.

Meanwhile, many of us continue to do our own running midweek as our season starts to pick up pace.