Gianni Goretti is spreading the hurling gospel in Rome 

By John Harrington

As a gifted hurling coach, the late, great Lester Ryan passed on his deep knowledge and pure love of the game to countless young people through his various roles with Leinster GAA and his club Clara.

It’s no surprise then to hear that, four years after his tragic death, the former Kilkenny star is directly responsible for the flowering of hurling even further afield, in Rome, Italy.

The story begins in 2020 when the Covid-19 lockdown persuaded Lester’s daughter, Niamh, to move home to Gowran for a couple of months and bring her Italian boyfriend, Gianni Goretti, with her.

By this time Niamh had already persuaded Gianni to try his hand at Gaelic football.

He joined Na Fianna in Dublin in late 2018 and after his first full campaign with the club’s Junior Division 10 team in 2019, he was crowned the team’s most improved player at their end of season awards.

He’d admired hurling from a distance too, but it was that lockdown in the spring of 2020 that turned him from a spectator to a participant.

He had the good fortune to be locked down with one of the best hurling coaches in the country, and Lester was more than happy to take him under his wing and teach him as many skills of the game as he could in the Ryan back-garden.

“It really was that lockdown with Niamh's father that got me hooked,” Goretti told GAA.ie “Even just pucking in the garden, there's a great pleasure to it.

“There's that feeling when you're striking the ball right and that got me hooked and made me want to do it again and again.

“Lester knew exactly how to take the me through the steps. He started easy and then it got a bit more intense. It was all just pucks though, we never had any whacks at each other!

“When we left Ireland to go to move to Italy, Lester said to Niamh to make sure that Gianni neve plays hurling. He saw how much I was getting into it and enjoying it, but he felt maybe that maybe I might get injured playing it.

“He was probably saying it in a playful way but I think he saw it before we did that I was getting hooked on hurling!"

Tragically, a few short weeks later after Gianni and Niamh moved to Tuscany, Lester was killed in a collision with a tractor while cycling his bike.

Lester's love for hurling was his legacy to Gianni. He and Niamh would regularly go for puck arounds in a local park, and when they moved to Rome after a couple of years in Tuscany they quickly joined the GAA club there, Rome Hibernia.

It was a Gaelic football only club at the time, but now they also play hurling and camogie thanks in no small part to their new club hurling officer, Gianni Goretti.

“I was playing football again here for a year and you would get Irish people joining us and sometimes you'd get lads from Tipperary or Kilkenny or other counties that don't play that much football and they'd come to the football training because it's still GAA and is an opportunity to meet Irish people, but they really want to play hurling,” says Goretti.

“So, we said let’s see if we can get it going and we got a few hurls and helmets. Some through the Gaelic Games Europe grant, some through donations from some of our players who would bring two or three of their hurls.

“They'd strap it to their suitcase and bring them here to Rome and over time we collected a bit of gear and started to build it from there.

“Last year when we went to a couple of hurling tournaments and that was my first time playing a hurling match. Just pucking the ball around is very different to having people with hurls in their hands running at you and trying to chop your shins!

“But it was so exciting and so beautiful to play or try to play at least. Even something like the pleasure of pucking the ball properly, doing a perfect hand-pass, or scoring a point or a goal overcomes the underlying fear you might have when you play because it's still extremely physical in a sporting way.”

Thanks in no small part to the combined efforts of both Niamh and Gianni on and off the pitch, Rome Hibernia have gone from strength to strength in the past couple of years with a steady uptick of membership.

Niamh’s organisational ability has now also been harnessed by Gaelic Games Europe, who appointed her as their Irish Language and Culture Officer at their recent convention.

As for Gianni, he’s determined to pass the love for hurling he developed pucking a ball in the garden with Lester on to as many people as he can in Rome.

“That’s the plan,” he says. “We feel like it will be a slow and gradual process because Gaelic football is a lot easier to pick up. One, because it is an easier game compared to hurling, and, two, because you need a lot less gear for football than you do for hurling.

“You need hurls, sliotars, helmets, and to play in a field where you have a net behind if possible so you don't lose all your sliotars after 10 minutes.

“And for beginners the learning curve is so steep in terms of the skills of the game. We're hoping to slowly build the fundamental skills and then have little games such as ground hurling games or possession games to get people hooked on the sport.

“Already after a few sessions people are going on YouTube to watch some highlights and see what an incredible game it is. The sport is so beautiful that you don't need to hype it too much because it hypes itself and when you're playing it's so enjoyable.

“It's obviously a difficult sport to pick up and there's so much going on but, at the same time, for me that's the beauty of it in the sense that it's so skilful and so physical at the same time, it's so technical and tactical, it's just a very fascinating and beautiful game.

“We just need to give people the opportunity to play the game and hopefully over time the numbers will grow.

“Whenever I try to explain hurling or football to Italian people one of the key points I always want to mention is that it's an amateur sport, not a professional sport.

“I think that's what gives it the beauty and the passion that it has. It's really driven by the passion for the game or helping out at training or in the clubhouse. It's not for money, you do it for the pride of the parish and the beauty of the game.

“For me, that's what I love the most about the GAA and keeps me so attached to it.”

For more information on Rome Hibernia GAA go HERE.