Argentines find Gaelic football similar to rugby but not as much contact

I’m player-coach of Argentina’s Men’s Gaelic football team, and I’m from Dunamaggin, Co Kilkenny. I moved to Buenos Aires seven years ago with my Argentine partner Victoria. When I arrived here I Googled ‘Hurling in Argentina’ and the first thing to come up was the Hurling Club. So I said I must get out there and take a look around. I went for the St Patrick’s Day party and they announced they were doing summer camps with George O’Connor and so I helped out with getting Gaelic games going again here in Argentina.

As the club of the Irish community in Argentina, the Hurling Club has a big hurling history from when all the Irish came over in the 19th century. It stopped though in 1945 when they couldn’t import the hurleys but they have got it going again in recent years.

The GAA was great sending out coaches for our summer camps. Now we keep it going on our own but the GAA still helps out sending out equipment and stuff. Without their help I don’t know if it would be possible. At first we started teaching hurling and football to the youngsters but we got invited to ‘The Gathering’ hurling festival so we started hurling with the adults as well. Then when we got word of the World Games so we started football with the adults.

The reaction I get from Argentines after they see Gaelic Games is ‘what an amazing sport, I want to play it’. They find it similar to rugby but not as much contact, so we get a lot of former rugby players and a couple of the club’s hockey players as well.

The 13 players going to the games were chosen from a panel of 40 players and only two of us are born in Ireland. The rest are all Argentines. I’d describe our level as special juniors. They are well able and very fit. They are skilful. I’d like to see us play against my old team in Dunamaggin. I’m sure we’d give them a good old game. I round up as many Irish over here as possible and I organise a monthly Ireland versus Argentina match and often enough the Argentine players win. They are improving a lot.

Hopefully now this will help Gaelic become even stronger in Argentina. I am fairly confident we will do well. I’ve seen so much improvement from lads who had never touched a Gaelic football before in their lives. I’m also looking forward to it myself because there will be a few people at it from my town there. It is going to be a ball.