GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 15 - December 5, 2014 | Page 7

BY DENIS O’BRIEN

For those who are sceptical of the current and potential growth of Gaelic
sports around the world, take a look at
the efforts and progress being made in
one of the youngest GAA global growth
areas - the country of South Africa.
Up to the past decade, and more particularly in the past five years, the spread of
Gaelic sports was left to the Irish diaspora. One hundred and fifty years of Gaelic
football and hurling played by Irish diaspora, based and sustained by Irish
immigrants, with sporadic first generation players in places like New York and
London - a minority still exist in both at
adult grades - but little or nothing in the
way of non-Irish participation.

On the attack in the Presidential Blitz game in November in Pretoria, South. (Photo
courtesy of SA Gaels)

Given that the ethos of the Gaelic
Athletic Association (GAA) in Ireland puts local club and
community at the core of the association, it is rather surprising that 150 years later, the sports of the GAA are not
more embedded within global communities and global
sporting entertainment.
Local too often meant Ireland only. Irish emigrants meanwhile didn’t practice that inherited ethos abroad in any
meaningful way. The concept of the games played internationally was for the realm of romance where Irish immigrants brought the local sporting piece of home with them,

and that largely was it and still is for many. And, GAA authorities for generations viewed GAA abroad in such terms.
Because of the enclosed nature of Irish diaspora GAA global
regions and their competitions, they were not really taken
seriously by the authorities in Ireland, bar sporadic limited
efforts at international promotion to the US. Perhaps, there
is an element of that still about.
Today, there are many Irish immigrants who are taking the
sports beyond Irish cultural boundaries, but, if one were to
be truthful about it, it is local communities themselves who

7