Irish-Americans in Connecticut are reviving a 60-year-old Gaelic football programme, and in this American newspaper article William Weirexplains to his US readers just what the great game entails
GAELIC FOOTBALL once had a bigger presence in Connecticut, when most of the Irish-American population here was either directly from Ireland or still had someone in the family who was.
But, as younger generations became further removed from their Irish origins, interest in the sport waned. Gaelic football, also known as Irish football, was their great-grandparents’ game.
“It kind of phased out,” says Packy Lillis, president of the New Haven Gaelic Football and Hurling Club. But, five years ago, Lillis and old Gaelic football teammate Mike Faherty decided to get the football programme going again. The first year, 25 kids signed up. Now there are more than 100 in the programme. There are five age divisions – from age eight and younger to 16 and younger. It’s safer than rugby, but it can be a rough sport.
The game is an odd cross between volleyball (passing requires striking the ball with a fist to teammates), football (one point awarded for kicking or punching the ball over the crossbar) and soccer (3 points for kicking it into the net). You can run down the field with the ball only if you bounce it against the ground (but not twice in a row) or bounce it against your foot (as many times as you like). You can pick up the ball only by scooping it up with your foot. There are 15 players on each side.
The Gaelic football programme started in the New Haven area in 1949. Lillis, one of the programme’s 10 coaches, played during the 1980s and acquired his love for the game from his “right off the boat” parents. Most of his teammates were Irish-American like him.
The league’s roster today boasts some distinctly non-Irish names. Play and practice take place at the Irish American Community Centre in East Haven, a town known for its large Italian-American population.
“You don’t have to be Irish to play Irish football,” says Lillis, standing on the sidelines at the community centre’s field, where the teams are conducting drills in preparation for a Saturday match.
“In the early ’80s, when I was playing, we were New England champs,” says Lillis. His team played others from Hartford, Stamford and out of state – mostly in New England.
Lillis’s team eventually earned an opportunity to play in Ireland. There, it did well enough to play in Croke Park in Dublin, considered near-sacred ground in Gaelic football. Lillis says his goal was to get the players in the new programme to play there as well. For now, they’ve been raising money with dinners, raffles and concerts to get to San Francisco, where the national Continental Youth Championship will be held in July and August.
For a programme that started just five years ago, it’s had considerable success. Two of the veteran players, Teddy Shay and James Mackey, both 14, earned spots on the New York all-star team, which will play in a tournament in Ireland this month.
“I just like the speed of the game,” Mackey says.
Player Aly Wheway, 15, says she likes the emphasis on teamwork. Last year, she and teammate Cassie Fitzgerald made it onto the regional all-star team for girls. They played in an international tournament in Ireland, losing in the final.
“Everyone has to [work with their teammates] to make it happen,” says Wheway.
Buoyed by their success with Gaelic football, club officials are taking on another sport, this one even scarcer around these parts: hurling. It’s an exhausting sport that requires a good deal of skill, particularly the ability to bounce a ball on a stick down a field and smack it into, or over, the goal. The league’s season begins this summer.
LA Times-Washington Post News Service