Earlier this year East Belfast GAA launched an ambitious three-year strategic plan.
By John Harrington
The genesis of East Belfast GAA club is a well-known story by now but still no less remarkable for the telling.
In May 2020 Dave McGreevy and Richard Maguire had the idea they’d like to set up a new GAA club in East Belfast with an inclusive ethos that welcomed “all ages, genders, and backgrounds”, and so tweeted out the notion to test the waters.
East Belfast has long been a predominantly protestant, unionist, and in some parts loyalist area of Belfast and hadn’t been home to a GAA club for half a century, but the tweet went viral and within two months East Belfast GAA were up and running with an astonishing 400 playing members.
Kimberly Robertson was one of the first to answer to call and her life has never been the same ever since.
A native of Boston, she had moved to Belfast to do a summer programme at Queen’s University which eventually became a master’s degree where she met her future husband, a native of East Belfast.
She’d played field hockey and ice hockey back in Boston and so when she spotted the tweet it sparked the thought that maybe she’d like to try her hand at camogie.
Within weeks she wasn’t just playing the game, she was also the club’s inaugural camogie secretary.
“From the very start it was just a really great experience,” says Robertson.
“My husband's a rugby referee so I had always been around the rugby club and his friends and I really liked the idea of adult sports social clubs because it's not really a thing that exists in America.
“And I always really wanted something that was mine. I was obviously very welcome at the rugby club but I wanted something that was just for me. And this just sounded perfect.
“It was a great opportunity for me to meet lots of new people from all different areas and all different walks of life.
“I think what brought us together is the fact that this was something new and exciting. You knew right from the start that it was going to be something special, that you were really embarking on quite a journey.
“A lot of that could have been we'd been cooped up in the house for a few months because of Covid and this was the only game in town, but I definitely think there was this sense that there was that we were building something really important and really groundbreaking, and then building it together, which was interesting. There hadn't been a GAA club in East Belfast for, you know, 50 years or so.
“I think by the time we came along, people were ready. People were ready for something different. They were ready for a change. They were ready to kind of move past the barriers and blockades that had been imaginary, really,
“I think it came about at the right time and the right people got involved and we were able to launch it and it went into the stratosphere. I don't think any of us ever expected it would grow as fast as it did.”
East Belfast GAA club founders, David McGreevy and Richard Maguire.
Robertson played a huge role in that upward trajectory. Brimming with enthusiasm and a can-do attitude, she quickly became one of the driving forces at committee level in the club.
Vice-Chairperson of the club by the end of their first season in 2020, two years later she was elected club chairperson and has brought huge energy and vision to the role.
“I enjoy it because it enables me to work with all of the codes, not just camogie,” she says. “I've gotten to know our hurlers, footballers, and ladies footballers really well.
“During the summer I'm out for a match or training every night during the week, and then this past February, I offered to help out at the underage hurling coaching on a Tuesday night and I've been coaching them ever since.
“Honestly, they are they are the biggest reason why I do this. Some of them have never played before and they come out twice a week and give everything they've got in every single training session.
“To watch them and how they've developed as players and watch them succeed…to me that's better than winning any trophy or any championship. The highlight of my GAA career has been watching these boys fall in love with hurling.”
You ask her what East Belfast GAA club means to her and she estimates that it’s about 85% of her personality right now.
She has thrown herself into it wholeheartedly and that heart is often worn on her sleeve, which means at times she finds the negativity that comes the club’s way difficult to take at times.
From the get-go, East Belfast GAA club have promoted inclusivity in all sorts of ways. Their crest has the word ‘Together’ in Irish, English and Ulster-Scots and also features the Samson and Goliath cranes of Harland & Wolff, the red hand of Ulster, the thistle, and the shamrock so they’re overtly a club for all of East Belfast.
East Belfast GAA's crest testifies to the club's inclusivity.
Yet, for a minority who prefer to dwell in darker sectarian times, the presence of a GAA club in East Belfast is a red rag to a bull and they haven’t been shy about making their hostility clear in a variety of ways.
“When you invest so much of your time and energy and emotions into making our wee club not just succeed, but thrive, it’s tough to take the negativity from people that don't understand it,” says Robertson.
“I see some comments when people say stuff like, 'Oh, she's just a Yank, she doesn't know anything’. That’s really irritating because I'm well-versed in the history of Northern Ireland. I have a masters degree in Irish studies where I did the politics of commemoration focusing on the loyalist community in East Belfast.
“I chose to live here because I love East Belfast, I love Belfast, and I love Northern Ireland. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. So, when I see negativity or posts that are quite threatening about something that I have invested my entire heart, soul, mental wellbeing, everything into, there’s a bit of sadness.
“Sometimes you feel these people are so close minded, but then you have to remember the environment that a lot of these people grew up in, where it was very much pitted against each other.
“Coming from America it's baffling to me, or it was baffling to me, that sports were ring-fenced due to the community you grew up in.
“That you wouldn't have played Gaelic if you were from a unionist background. You wouldn't have played rugby if you were from a nationalist background. To me, sports are for everyone. You play whatever sport you want.
“The GAA is open to everybody and it is frustrating when you see people say I'm excluded because I'm a unionist. No, you're not, you're not excluded. And then they always come out with the GAA Constitution, and the Constitution says you have to be a nationalist. No, it doesn't. It absolutely does not.
“But, you know, maybe we as an organization can do better. Should we be updating the Constitution? Because I think it says the basic aim of the Association is to promote Gaelic Games in a 32 county Ireland, but our games are played globally now.
“Why can't we change that to say, promote our games on a global scale? I think that's far more representative of what the GAA is and what the GAA has to offer.
“So I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding, and there’s a lot of fear of the unknown and a lot of misconceptions.”
East Belfast GAA club chairperson, Kimberly Robertson.
Intimidation from those who don’t want them in their community is unfortuntately something that East Belfast GAA have had to routinely endure.
It started with graffiti and scattered broken glass at the Henry Jones playing fields where the club is based, and over time became much more sinister.
Goal-nets were burned, bomb-threats were made, a screwdriver was sellotaped to a female member’s car, and pipe-bombs were planted beneath another member’s car.
“I think the hardest thing for me was back in May when there was a hoax pipe bomb found on our pitch and it was found by one of our under 14 coaches while the girls were getting ready to play a match,” says Robertson.
“It was a Sunday morning and I was sitting on my sofa drinking my coffee, still in my pyjamas, and I got a text message from the coach with a photo of the device and the message with it said, 'we just found this by the nets, advice appreciated'.
“He rings me and the first words out of my mouth were ‘call the police’. I said I'll be right there and my husband had to drive because I was so shaken up.
“I've always said, come after the adults. We can handle it. The adults can handle it, but don't do dare go after our kids.
“Keeping our kids safe is always our number one priority, and, thankfully, I don't think it sank in with them how dangerous that could be.
“But it's becoming normal that we're disrupted by security alerts and bomb threats, and it's just normalized hatred that's allowed to be promoted on social media and even in the news media here in Northern Ireland.
“It's allowed to be asked, ‘should the GAA exist in East Belfast?’ Well, we're quite sick and tired of having to justify our reason to exist.
“Clearly, there's a desire for GAA in East Belfast, otherwise we wouldn't have this huge membership. Even if a lot of us aren't originally from East Belfast, we've all made East Belfast our home. This is home for 90% of our club members.
“We live in East Belfast, or just outside. So, to hear the hear people say we're not from East Belfast and we don't represent East Belfast...well I would counter that by saying well you don't represent the East Belfast I know and love. There's space here for everyone. We can always coexist peacefully.
The East Belfast camogie team that won the 2022 Down Junior Championship.
“We're very proud to be in East Belfast and represent East Belfast. We want to be a force for good in this neighbourhood. We want to be a place where anybody can find a home. We genuinely, genuinely do not care where you're from, where you go to church, where you went to school, who go out with on the weekend. We don't care.
“If you want to be a part of us, we want you. We want to be a safe space for people. We want to be a place where you can step outside your comfort zone if you want, because it's safe with us.
“I think it's very important for us to make sure we have a stable, secure home in East Belfast, where we can continue to offer programmes, offer sport, offer community engagement. I think the sky is the limit when it comes to things that we'll be able to do and what we want to do.
“It would take four lifetimes to do half the things that I would love this club to do. And I think step by step we're getting there.”
One huge step forward was taken last year when Belfast City Council reallocated space at the Henry Jones playing fields for a full-sized GAA pitch with goalposts.
The first match played there was an in-house game amongst the men’s Gaelic footballers, and as Robertson watched it she couldn’t help but shed a tear because it felt like such a milestone in the club’s young history.
There will be many more in the coming years and if you want a sense of just how ambitious they are as a club you should read their three-year strategic plan which you can download at the bottom of this article.
The East Belfast senior men's footballers.
The big dream is to have a permanent home of their own in the not-too-distant future, and they’re actively looking for 15 acres of land to make it a reality.
“Yes, having a place of our own is probably our number one priority, a place that we that we can secure, that we can make sure that we are safe there,” says Robertson.
“We hopefully don't have to worry about any threats or devices or destruction or damage to our pitches like we've seen on the council pitch.
“So, yeah, I think that's our number one priority is a home of our own, including a clubhouse we can socialize together. I think that's one of the hardest parts about not having our own grounds, is that any socializing we do is generally out at pubs and you don't ever get the whole club together.
“The only time you can get the club together is on an awards night, and that's only once a year. We have a club barbecue in the summer and have an award night in the winter. And, you know, that's kind of the only time that there's opportunities for the whole club to get together.
“I try to go in as many matches as I can, but I've been up and down the county, and I've been probably to almost every single GAA club County Down and I'm always baffled by the amount of people that come to a junior football match.
“I think when we have our own grounds, it's going to be something that we'll be able to have. And that's just really inspiring to me.”
A new generation of young East Belfast GAA footballers, hurlers, and camógs are the future of the club.
Those who don’t want East Belfast GAA club to become a pillar of what is an increasingly diverse community might as well try to hold back the tide with their fingers.
Through deed, the club has proven their word that they want to be a force for positivity and inclusivity in East Belfast and many doubters have already been won over along the way.
They’re a remarkable overnight success story, and the chapters they ink in the coming years should make for good reading too.
“This is 100% the best thing I've ever been a part of,” says Robertson. “It's the like-minded people that have come together because they believe in our ethos of inclusivity and our ethos of togetherness.
“And when you encounter a group of people that have the same sort of values and morals that you have, and you have the same end goal, it's, you know, the sky is the limit with how far you can go.
“I think we've exceeded all of our expectations from the early days. Things moved very, very quickly, and decisions had to be made very quickly.
“You're starting now to see the kids in the club showing up to the senior matches, even if they don't have training themselves.
“And when you see everything we've worked for and everything we've built in the past four years, you start seeing the kids buying into it and dreaming of when they're going to be playing for the senior squad.
“It makes every minute of hard work worth it.”