THE GAA has formed an unlikely relationship with Glasgow Rangers football club as part of its efforts to promote Gaelic games overseas.
Rangers is working with the GAA’s games development officers in Scotland as they seek to turn Gaelic football into a successful export industry.
The soccer club has an extensive network of community workers who have granted access to Rangers heartlands to the GAA’s development officers. As a result, boys and girls in areas of Glasgow which are Rangers strongholds are now being introduced to Gaelic games.
“It is a way for Rangers to help get rid of sectarianism and it is opening up a whole new area to the GAA,” said John Gormley, who has been president of the Provincial Council of Britain GAA for the past three years.
“It would have been unthinkable a few years ago but it is happening and it is working.”
A Co Meath primary school, St Michael’s CBS in Trim, has become the first schools Gaelic football team from Ireland to attend a Rangers league match.
The school, which was taking part in an international school exchange supported by Glasgow city council, the club and an anti-sectarian group, were joined by children from schools in Glasgow.
The move by Rangers to collaborate with the GAA marks the latest effort by the club to rid itself of a sectarian image which is the product of 130 years of bitter rivalry with the other “Old Firm” club in Glasgow, Celtic. Tensions between the Protestant/unionist Rangers and Catholic/nationalist Celtic have divided Glasgow for over 130 years.
Recently, controversy has erupted again over Rangers fans’ singing of a song about the Famine, containing the lyrics “The famine’s over now/Why don’t you go home”. The club has urged fans not to sing the song, and one fan has been found guilty of a breach of the peace for doing so, but the fan groups have rejected claims that it is racist.
Mr Gormley, who has just finished a three-year term as provincial president, said his staff were thrilled when Rangers agreed to help. Developments in Glasgow mirrored progress made elsewhere in the UK in introducing Gaelic football and hurling to non-Irish communities.
“In Cardiff, one school has replaced rugby with Gaelic football as its primary sport. The work of the games development administrators is opening the GAA up to a whole new generation of players,” said Mr Gormley, who is originally from Leitrim and now lives in Luton. Glasgow is already home to a number of GAA clubs, including Glaschu Gaels and Tír Conaill Harps.