Gaelic football the real deal in Spain

The GAA landscape was dominated last weekend by the Division 1 football league semi-finals in Croke Park but in Madrid there was another seminal event for the association.

European GAA has been characterised by development at adult level but in Madrid a foray was made into the underage game. For the first time a competitive U12 football match consisting entirely of Spanish children from the cities of Madrid and Valencia took place.

Colm Donovan is a native of Leap in West Cork and kicked ball in his underage days with Kilmacabea. Four years ago he moved to Valencia and started working in electronics before starting a course in Bio-Medicine two years ago in a nearby university. Being immersed in GAA activity in Spain has allowed him to maintain a link to home.

“I didn’t know anything about the club initially, I was here a year before I found out they existed. The club started the year I came over.

“Most European clubs have lots of ex-pats and while ours started like that, we’d be very Spanish dominated now. For example, in our ladies team, we have 20 players and only three of them Irish. The lads team is still mainly Irish lads, but we have a few English and quite a lot of Spanish as well. It’s a great thing to be involved in.”

Donovan trains the club’s ladies team but helped out last Saturday with the underage game, assisting Valencia trainers Tom and Emma Salomonson and the Madrid trainer Keith Curran. The match was a milestone in Spanish GAA and provided further evidence of the enthusiasm the Spanish children in the two clubs have for Gaelic football.

“There’s huge interest there,” said Donovan.

“With the Madrid team two-third of them have at least one Irish parent while in Valencia we’ve got only two kids with an Irish connection, one has an Irish mom and the other has an Irish dad. The rest of the team is entirely Spanish.

“There have been different ways we got kids involved. Some of our senior club players are teachers and they would encourage the kids in their school to come along to play.

“We’ve also had situations whereby some of the senior lads would be kicking about in a park and kids would come over and ask what they are playing.

“They start showing them about the sport, the parents come then and get interested. A huge attraction for parents is that they view Gaelic Football as a way for their kids to learn English in a social setting. They’re very eager then to bring them to the club to train and play.”

The Spanish children’s roots are naturally in soccer but they have adapted excellently to Gaelic football.

“They are absolutely brilliant,” said Donovan.

“Skills like doing a solo run and a pick up, they do it very well. There was a big mix of ages last week with 20-25 kids from Madrid and about 10 from Valencia.

“The Madrid kids were bigger and older so that was to their advantage a little. But some of the older kids from Valencia weren’t able to travel and we’re going to have a return leg in Valencia last month where they’ll be able to play.”

Finance is an issue if they are going to further their underage development.

“The money situation is not great. We get a little bit of money from the European County Board but there are huge expense in jerseys, goalposts, renting equipment and the petrol costs for travelling to somewhere like Madrid for a game.

“But we hope if we can keep the kids interested and increase our numbers, it’ll make it easier to justify more investment from the GAA and we can get sponsorship.”

nFor more information see www.valenciagaa.com and www.madridgaa.com