Mark Gottsche is asked how to pronounce his surname (like “Gotcha”) and so begins one of the most fantastically uncanny stories of the 2013 football championship. From Alzenau to Oranmore to Ruislip the GAA really does know no bounds.
It’s not just that Gottsche is in Croke Park to collect the GAA/GPA player of the month for May, the first London footballer to win one, and entirely deserved after his man-of-the match performance in that shock Connacht quarter-final win over Sligo.
These awards are voted on by the intercounty playing body itself, don’t forget, and Gottsche’s performance at midfield that sunny afternoon in Ruislip – chipping in with 0-4 in the one-point win – was truly exceptional. It also marked London’s first win in the Connacht championship in 36 years, and set up a very interesting semi-final against Leitrim on June 23rd (the team London last beat, back in 1977).
More interesting still is Gottsche’s journey from Alzenau in Germany to London footballer: his father was German, and Gottsche himself was born there, spending his first five years in Alzenau, a small town outside Frankfurt.
"My father is German, but he would have spent a lot of his teenage years in Ireland," he says, taking up the story. "His family moved to Cavan initially and then Galway. When he was in his early 20s he met my mother and they got married and moved back to Germany. He worked as a consultant for hotels around Germany, and in 1993 he got a job lecturing in GMIT in hotel management and we settled there."
Brief flirt
So growing up in Galway, Gottsche inevitably fell into Gaelic football, playing underage, minor and under-21 for the county – while also enjoying a brief flirt with the senior team in 2008. "I played one National League game, Liam Sammon's first year, came on as a sub against Kildare, in Newbridge. Looking back I was probably too young at the time. Maybe a bit naïve. I was 19, maybe not prepared for the demands of intercounty football.
“But it just didn’t work out. I was in for a little bit in 2009 as well, at the start of the year, then that fell away. I had some problems with injury, but that’s not the reason really. It just didn’t work out. It’s hard to know, if I went back to Galway now. You never know.”
Interesting too that London have now gone further into the Connacht championship than London.
Gottsche did know that he wanted to work in sport, which thus took him to London.
“I’m there two and a half years, at this stage. I did a MA in sports management in Jordanstown, and always wanted to work in a sports field. I didn’t think I would get a job in Ireland. Then ironically enough I ended up working for the GAA in London. I started off working for William Hill, just to tide me over, then I got a job as a development officer for London GAA, coaching in schools and all that, since last August.”
Interestingly, again, that means working in some London schools with no GAA background whatsoever. “It’s pretty widespread. We have about 14 or 15 underage clubs in London and every club has three defined feeder schools. I remember coaching a Polish kid last year and he couldn’t understand how they didn’t have Gaelic football in Poland. He said, ‘this is the best game ever, way better than soccer’.”
Gottsche sees his future in London, at least for the next three years, and sees further progress too under manager Paul Coggins: “His passion for the game is infectious. He lives, eats and breathes it. I don’t know how he holds down a full-time job with all the work he does. He doesn’t ask for much. He just wants 100 per cent commitment. He’s not asking for the impossible.”
