GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 29 – July 4, 2015 | Page 10

“We became more and more players and we started to
talk to the ‘sports bureau’ or ‘Sports Council’ of our university. The Sports Council ‘UniSport’ liked our idea and
wanted to support the ‘exotic’ sport of hurling and made
us part of their sports program in the summer of 2014,”
explained Feldmann.
CLUB STATUS

This was a very important development for the young
club as they now could get access to the sports facilities
at the university, but above all they could recruit more
and more players because now they were an official university sports club and published on the list of UniSport
and open to all on the 25,000 student campus.
At the beginning of 2015, the club became an official
GAA club of the European County Board, known as
Darmstadt GAA with Jacob Feldmann as chairperson.
Today the club trains twice a week at the TU Darmstadt
university sports fields with more than 20 players at sessions and everyone, German.
A local Irish pub became the
sponsor of the fledging club to
help with extra expenses and
buying jerseys. And so last Saturday, June 27th in Dresden,
the Darmstadt GAA University
Hurling Club took to the field a
team to play their first ever hurling match. The occasion a true
baptism of fire for the first timers
in that it was the third and penultimate round of the European Hurling Championship and
playing against mostly Irish born
player teams and newer ones
with a mix of Irish and local.

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The GAA scene in Germany in comparison to the Holland, Belgium, France and Spain has been rather subdued in that GAA clubs, mostly Gaelic football, like Munich Colmcilles formed in 2001 and Frankfurt Sarsfields
in 2008 have led the way. One would have expected a
greater degree of GAA club spread with Irish immigrants to the European economic powerhouse that is
Germany. However, just in the past 3-4 years new GAA
clubs have sprung up in Dusseldorf GFC (2012), Dresden GAA (2012),Cologne Celtics (2013), Augsburg
GAA, Bavaria, with Berlin Hurling and Darmstadt GAA
taking root in 2014.
Now with 8 GAA clubs, Germany has already surpassed
the likes of Holland and Belgium in terms of numbers
and the future could be very bright.
HISTORY AND FIRST TOURNAMENT

On Saturday in Dresden 10, the 3rd round of the European Hurling Championship saw 6 teams in action from
7 clubs. Reigning champions Belgium and Sweden’s Viking Gaels were the visiting teams alongside hosts Dres-

Darmstadt (blue & white) in action against Berlin/Cologne in their first ever match at the
Dresden Tournament and came away with a victory. Photo courtesy of Jacob Feldmann.