Americans try to beat Irish at their own game

Sunday, April 18th was unusually gloomy in New York, with charcoal skies and a dampness in the air. As the evening lights went on around the Bronx though, the bar at Gaelic Park continued to heave with revellers, who spilled onto the enclosure behind the pitch clutching beer bottles. The talk was of the unlikely draw the city gaelic team had fashioned against a Defence Forces squad dripping with glamour names, and of what the emigrants just might do in Castlebar at the end of May.

Monday loomed early, but the bottle caps kept popping and the conversation grew more wistful, with the names of those legends who had roamed Gaelic Park recounted and the possibilities for the game in New York stoked with warm, beery words. All the time, commuters stared blankly from the windows of the subway trains which clanked monotonously overhead.

Since that night, the New York squad have ran themselves into the ground on a thrice-weekly basis. The turn-out was sometimes eclectic; work dictates all other schedules in the city, but on most spring evenings about 20 could be found at Van Courtland Park, an intense and curious looking bunch who seemed at odds amongst the gentle pageantry of softball players and frisbee throwers and the roller-bladers who circled the path spanning the stretch of green.

"Sometimes just making it there was tough, fighting traffic and what have you," says Leslie McGettigan, a selector with the New York team. "And the ground there gets really hard in the spring, I mean it's OK just to kick around on, but if a lad hit the ground, your heart was in your mouth. It was like concrete the past two weeks."

They have spent the past week in Westport preparing for their inaugural championship clash against Mayo. The time span has been specifically designed to acclimatise though; no leave was given for quick trips home, they see their beds often and early and when they aren't training, they rest. On Tuesday evening, the team went down to Corofin and subdued an under-strength side (the Galway players were absent) and they all confess to enjoying the royal treatment in Mayo.

But their preparation has been long. For example, they have had a lean fitness schedule since the New Year, spurred on by the immensity of what lay ahead in May. The prospect of just being there.

"I really don't think I can express what it means to us," offers Danny Sullivan, one of the few American-born athletes on the team.

"You are so aware of the championship as an Irish-American kid growing up in New York. To be part of it is something, and what we have to do is prove that we can compete. There is no fear among us. We believe we have the players."

Sullivan clocks up the hours with the NYPD, patrolling the precinct close to Yankee stadium. Some days find him inhaling exhaust fumes on the main arteries around the ground, other afternoons, he stands in uniform watching David Cone throw curve balls.

"I think the whole city became Yankee fans after last year," he says.

"Yeah, it was good to see them play - I got to see all the home games for the World Series, which was special."

Sullivan grew up firing a baseball and shooting hoops - he is an oddity in that he is a New Yorker with a passion for the Boston Celtics - and he went on to play Division Three college ball in the city, no mean achievement. But there was always this other sport loitering in the background.

"I'll tell ya, I was always gonna be a gaelic footballer," he laughs.

"It wasn't a choice thing, my Dad just put a ball in my hands. I don't remember ever not playing the game."

There was a strong under-age set-up in the city in the 1970s and he thrived on this, his interest in the game sealed with summer stays in Bantry, his father's home town, and to Westport, near where his mother grew up. This evening, he'll have a fair few relatives in the crowd.

"You know, if we get running early, the New York support will become really evident," predicts McGettigan.

"It's astonishing the number of calls we've had from people who may have played at some stage, or knew the lads, or just spent some time around Gaelic Park. And there's maybe 600 people coming over, as well as friends and family."

But will they pay the entrance fee just to gape at the wonder of a New York team on home soil and then sit back to watch them get whipped? How do the visitors envisage their first 70 minutes?

"We will be hoping to at least run them close," says McGettigan.

"We wanna win," offers Sullivan.

"There are some things we are concerned about," admits McGettigan.

"The pitch is going to be 10 to 15 yards wider than Gaelic Park. And while we have really worked on discipline, New York has a traditional name for rough football and I hope that doesn't slant the way we are seen, because we do have good football players."

McGettigan's brother Paul was heavily involved with the Corofin team that won the All-Ireland club champions the season before last and he has been well versed on Mayo.

"I suppose the big fear would be there half-back line, they really are so inventive from there when they start running at you. James Horan is one we'll be paying special attention to as well. I mean, yeah, Mayo have superb players, they've touched levels most counties only dream about. But Jesus, we've come 3,000 miles for this game and put in I dunno how many hours. Whatever happens, I don't think we'll freeze."

The fact that they have arrived at this point at least is perhaps why it matters so much. In the mid-1980s, when McGettigan left Letterkenny, the idea of an American side in the championship was the stuff of fantasy.

So tomorrow at around 2.00 p.m New York time, they'll sip in the bars around Queens and Brooklyn and watch the images beamed in by Setanta. Hell, they might even be half fearful of a humiliation, but at least the sight of guys they might well work with on Monday morning singing the anthem, competing in Mayo is indicative of more certain times. It is a sign that the old chasm which distanced Ireland from urban Irish-America in more ways than just miles is at last disappearing.

"I remember when I came out there first, there was always this antagonism between Irish-Americans and those who would come out here new," says McGettigan.

"That's gone now, it's as if everyone just realised it's all the one heritage or background or whatever that we're coming from. This team is built around that."

And by the time the Monday Game replays the highlights from Castlebar, McGettigan will be back pulling pints in Fagan's, his bar in Yonkers, reliving the tales. Maybe the pictures will make for grim viewing. Maybe New York will astonish even themselves. But when the dust settles, at least they can look back and say that they were there.