Victoria and South Australia under-12 boys at the Australasia Féile in Adelaide, March 2023.
By John Harrington
Underage Gaelic games in Australasia continue to go from strength to strength.
That will be very obvious this weekend when around 300 young players aged from U-10 to U-17 participate in the second ever Australasia Féile which takes place in Pat O’Hara Reserve in North Perth over the course of Saturday and Sunday.
Gaelic games have a long and rich history in Australasia, but by and large it was written by Irish migrants.
This chapter of youth development is something different because most of the boys and girls who will play in Perth this weekend have no links to Ireland at all.
“We can't rely on Irish people coming over to keep our games going, we have to draw in Australasian kids,” says Australasia GAA Youth Officer, Tom Murphy.
“A lot of them will have parents or grandparents from Ireland but the majority will have heard about Gaelic football from a friend or classmate and so they come along too.
“A lot of these kids might play AFL and the skills in Gaelic football are quite transferable to AFL and vice versa. The kicking is a little bit different but the catching, running, being able to read the game, is all very transferable.
“The non-tackle element of Gaelic football appeals to a lot of Australian parents because there's less risk of their kids being injured.
“In the last five years in particular the whole underage development has really grown and thrived and we have more players getting involved.
"Because it's growing there's a lot more collaboration going on and Féile will mean we can all get together and, aside from the games, we can chat about what works in the various different parts of Australia and in that way swap ideas and learn from one another."
Western Australia under-12 girls at the Australasia Féile in Adelaide, March 2023.
The first youth Gaelic games club in Australasia was the Gaelic Games Junior Academy of Western Australia in North Perth which was founded in 2012.
Since then other youth Gaelic games clubs such as Na Fianna Catalpa (Perth), Young Melbourne, Naarm Gaels, Peninsula Gaels, Geelong Gaels (all Melbourne), and Brisbane Youths (Brisbane) have formed and are now thriving.
The growth in youth participation has been accelerated by some productive links with the school system in Australia and New Zealand.
Victoria under-12 girls and boys at the Australasia Féile in Adelaide, March 2023.
“We started off in 2017 under the Catholic Schools umbrella,” says Murphy. “We ran a couple of football carnivals just to get the kids involved and that was great.
“We followed on then at an Australasian level with ACHPER which is the state council for PE teachers, first in Western Australia and then this was replicated across all of Australia and also New Zealand where we bought in PE teachers and made a presentation to them about Gaelic football because Gaelic football is actually on the curriculum for schools in Australia.
“We were aware that Gaelic football is being played a lot and taught a lot in schools but we had no actual official link in terms of being able to go to the GAA or the Australian Government for funding and say we have 10,000 kids across three or four states playing Gaelic football once a week or once a month.
“Obviously then with Féile and the advertisement and promotion we got from that, including sending teams back to Ireland to take part in Irish Féile, the interest from the schools has grown exponentially.
“And also the kids who are playing in Féile and in the junior academies are also going back to their own schools and saying this is what I did on Sunday morning and it's great and now we're travelling to Perth for Féile or we have an opportunity to go to Ireland.
“So it's great that we can offer those opportunities when we go to schools and talk to the teachers about what Gaelic football is and what we can offer teachers as we bring more and more schools into the fold.”
Victoria (navy) and South Australia under-17 boys at the Australasia Féile in Adelaide, March 2023.
With more and more young players coming up through the ranks the challenge for Australasia GAA is to give them the opportunity to complete the player pathway.
The creation of an U20 grade at club-level is planned to help young players bridge the gap to the senior grade, and Murphy is hopeful that Australasian adult club teams will in time become less and less reliant on Irish migrants.
“There's no point having underage clubs who are thriving at the moment if we can't keep them involved and either feed them into the existing senior clubs or develop an adult team for that underage club,” he says.
“For example, Na Fianna Catalpa have an underage section and they also have a senior section and they feed the youth into the senior and so do Young Melbourne.
“The Junior Academy in Perth are looking into setting up a senior section and Brisbane Youths will be trying to do the same. It's all about keeping them involved. If we could keep them involved and playing it would be a great outlet because a lot of these kids won't make it in a professional sport in Australia.
Western Australia (yellow) and Victoria under-14 boys compete for a ball at the Australasia Féile in Adelaide, March 2023.
“This is a way of keeping them involved in sport as adults and also offer them the opportunity to play in League and State Championships around Australia and New Zealand, go to the Australasian Championships, and also have the opportunity to the World Games and not just play Gaelic football but be immersed in Irish culture for a week.
“It's also important to develop the player pathway to keep our girls involved because we all know how important it is to keep female participation in sport because there can be a big drop-off rate. It's also great to keep the boys and girls involved from youth right up to adult because they have a great sense of camaraderie and they develop many life skills as well as mental and physical fitness.
“We want to future proof the GAA in Australasia so we're not relying on Irish people coming over. We want to have a conveyor belt of talent always coming through.”
The Australasian Féile games will be livestreamed on the Australasia Gaelic Games YouTube channel and Facebook page on Saturday and Sunday. There will also be updates over the weekend on the Australasia Gaelic Games Instagram page.
The programme for the weekend can be viewed and downloaded below.