The packed, claustrophobic train thunders out of New York’s rapid, sweaty, intense underground and into open air, transporting its many occupants away from Manhattan’s tourist-dense surroundings and into the multicultural borough of The Bronx. Past the window flash blocks of flats, basketball courts, baseball fields, shops, houses, cluttered streets. And Gaelic Park, home of New York GAA.
As I enter through the gates of the stadium I am informed by a lady with an American accent that I’ve missed “the game”. “The game”, it turns out, was St Barnabas v Monaghan in the New York Senior Football Championship. Something of a thriller, I learn from a St Barnabas clubman (a New York-born policeman with a father who hurled for Galway), who proudly informs me that his club charged back to win by three points over a favoured Monaghan side featuring Galway hurler Johnny Glynn and Down star Donal O’Hare.
Irish accents mingle with American. A table of St Barnabas clubmen exchange banter and pass cans of beer around a table outside the Park’s clubhouse, native players joking with the Irishmen who are over for a summer of hopping ball, working and living. There are men from Mayo, from Offaly. Two Roscommon men chat about Tyrone’s win in the Ulster final and shrug off my casual jibe about their home county’s near-miss against their adopted one earlier in the summer.
One might as well be standing chatting outside a clubhouse bar in any county in Ireland. There is a clear bond between those gathered at the table; these are people who love Ireland, who love Irishness, regardless of which side of the water they hail from. One US-born St Barnabas clubman walks past and I notice a tattoo he bears, US and Irish flags crossing and symbolising his deep affinity with both aspects of his identity.
The crowds for the senior games are nowhere near what they were in the 70s and 80s, I am told, when Gaelic Park would be filled on a Sunday with Irish people; they would come, perhaps, to remember home, to show their children the sport they themselves grew up playing, to give the youths an insight into their parents’ heritage. But there is clearly still a passionate community here within the New York GAA scene. A community determined to preserve the strength and legitimacy of their competitions. Attempts are being made to clamp down on the number of Irish ‘summer players’ lining out for teams in the championship, but there remain rumblings of discontent. A couple of punters say that one team in particular has invested significant funding to bring players from Ireland over; this threatens to make a “farce” of the competition, I am told.
Another red sky at night over GP pic.twitter.com/1f6F46RoPG
— Newyorkgaa (@NewYorkGAA) July 6, 2016
A gaggle of younger men trail past with kit bags and seat themselves at separate sets of benches-two under-21 football championship semi-finals are set to be played this evening. Two managers-one from each side of the Atlantic-make familiar pre-match enquiries of their charges (“Is Patrick coming tonight? Were you talking to him?”), voices filled with anxiety as positions are re-calculated and tactics wiped clean based on who has showed up. Players in the under-21 competition must be resident in the States, and so young men who are thoroughly Irish in appearance-there is a solid distribution of red hair and freckles-cast their gaze over each other and discuss potentially dangerous opponents in New York brogues, the occasional Irish phrase or lilt making its way into conversation.
The two under-21 matches feature some fine passages of play and displays of skill; long-range shooting, fielding, kick-passing and tackling of a standard that would please even Pat Spillane are evident throughout. The action is covered over the tannoy system by an individual clearly influenced somewhat by the careers of the two Michaels, O’Hehir and Ó Muircheartaigh:
Elton John once sang a song, ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’...well, the players will be grateful that the Sun has indeed gone down tonight, on this beautiful evening in Gaelic Park-the home of GAA.
As the evening passes and the matches come to a close, a man sporting a Dublin jersey refuses to acknowledge his county’s 'favourites' tag for Sam Maguire this year. He has a son playing in an under-21 game this evening, and has lived in New York for thirty years.
Maybe one day he will walk through the gates of Croke Park with his son to watch his beloved Dubs take the field. Maybe he’ll take his son to the Hill and they’ll join thousands to roar encouragement at the Sky Blue jerseys, rejoicing in every Dublin score and jeering opposition free-takers with equal relish. Or maybe he never will. Maybe he and his son’s mutual experience and love of gaelic football will come through TV screens and in the surrounds of Gaelic Park, New York.
As I watch him sip his beer and silently and contentedly observe the game, I get the impression that, either way, the two of them will have shared something unique, something precious.
