New generation embracing the GAA in the USA

Against the backdrop of the GAA World Games in Abu Dhabi earlier this month the increasing international appeal of our national games has never been more prevalent, yet America remains the home of the GAA diaspora.

The success of this ongoing and now readdressed project in America is not one which should be judged in terms of playing standards though, or the senior intercounty performances of the New York Gaelic football team, but rather by sheer participation figures.

Dara Ó Cinnéide got his first taste of the GAA in the USA in the 1996 New York championship but his intrigue really kicked in when the late Páidí Ó Sé first told him about this “different breed” of GAA people.

In 1997 Kerry took on Cavan in the National League played in the Polo Grounds in New York to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the All-Ireland final played in the same venue.

Different breed

“There’s a comment that Páidí made years ago in ’97 before that Kerry-Cavan trip,” says the former All-Ireland winning Kerry captain. He said ‘look lads they’re a different breed, there’s a different breed of sport out here, a different breed of player out here, and a different breed of doing things out here’. You were left intrigued after he said that.”

That curiosity was added to after two separate spells playing in the New York championship, winning the title in 1999, numerous non-playing trips and by having a brother who has given so much to his GAA club first in Boston and then in Chicago over a 12 year period.

Over the past two summers he's been able to finally get to the root of this different breed; what drives them and what the future holds for them. Starting this Wednesday TG4's new series GAA USA begins with Ó Cinnéide travelling across the US to GAA clubs in Boston, Chicago New York, Milwaukee, and San Diego to give a new perspective on the Irish emigrant experience in America.

In episode one Ó Cinnéide investigates the earliest reporting of Gaelic Games in America looking back from 1840 to 1918, he finds that even in the late 19th century there was evidence of the ‘pay for play’ culture which is so synonymous with GAA in the country.

Ó Cinnéide though believes that this is a culture which is making way for a more forward thinking and participation-based approach.

“I wouldn’t want to diminish the actions of the people in the past who were doing what they thought was best for their clubs in maintaining the game . . .

“But what are you telling the boys who train there all year, ‘wait until we bring over the big boys?’ So that’s the realisation, that that isn’t the way to go . ..

“It was done with the best intentions but there was kind of a dirty element to it and it wasn’t good for the development of the game. There was also a certain amount of bravado and bragging rights involved. But they were misguided.”

Internal leagues

Today though the three-time All-Ireland winner says the continental youth games, now in their tenth year of existence, are the “biggest GAA event in the world, with the most GAA participants in one place on an annual basis”, reflect the new focus based upon soaring American participation levels.

“The big message from me is that these games that we’re so keen to internationalise at the moment, they aren’t ours anymore. We need to embrace that. “We have our All-Ireland championships, and county championships, but don’t frown upon what’s happening in other countries because the standard isn’t where we’d expect.

"Milwaukee is a great example, they just love the game of hurling with the stick and the dynamism and physicality of it all, but they hardly know who Henry Shefflin is.

It’s the game they love rather than the entity, they’re oblivious to that and they just like to go to the park and play their internal leagues and that in itself is to just be admired. Grandparents wanting to impose an Irishness upon their kids and grandkids who are then impressing upon their Puerto Rican and Latino friends that these are brilliant games.”

A story of a people and their national games thousands of miles from home, a story of isolation, of nationalist gun-running disguised within Kerry GAA tours, a sport of splits, infighting, bribes, and back-handers. It begins on TG4 on Wednesday from 9.30pm.