The South African Gaels footballers have been visiting Ireland this week, taking on several Irish club sides, between Dublin and Belfast, while immersing themselves in the culture of their adopted game.
On Tuesday night the Gaels faced Ballyboden St. Enda’s Junior B side, narrowly losing to a late goal from the hosts, with the final score 2-09 to 3-08 and the visitors’ defeat largely down to poor finishing.
The Gaels side is made up largely of South African and Zimbabwean players, with a smattering of Irish ex-pats.
The tour proved a fine advertising vehicle to display the potential reach of Gaelic games on a global scale, as it showed how the game's appeal can stretch beyond ex-pats and into communities with no previous ties to Gaelic games. South African Gaels’ manager Paul Carpenter – and Englishman who encountered Gaelic football himself as an ex-pat, living in Singapore – said of the natural fit between the South African players and the sport: “I knew that the South African boys would have a natural ability to play the sport. The interaction and the speed of the game, the hand-eye coordination; they really just take to it.
"If we can, as an international community, come together to create competition to give other countries outside of Ireland something to play for then there is great potential to go forward," Carpenter said.
Gaels’ captain Steve Mavenga told Grassrootsgaa.ie about the benefits his side had reaped from their trip to Ireland, including a training session with Dublin legend Brian Mullins.
“The game was very intense. We have learned a lot in Ireland. In the last quarter the lads from Ballyboden started to step it up a level which was tough for us. It was clear that we were getting a bit tired near the end so that is something we have to work on.”
“Overall we did very well. We took everything we learned in Ireland on board. We have been taught to keep composure and keep the structure of the game at all times, thanks to coaching from Brian Mullins,” Mavinga said.
You can read the full match report from Grassrootsgaa.ie here, and below you can watch the video footage of one the lesser seen, but definitely more eye-catching, GAA warm downs.
Photo credit: Eoin Glennon
Video credit: Shane Dawson
