O’Tooles GAA club on Dublin’s north side was the scene for Europe’s latest cultural integration initiative this week. Students from  the business studies degree course at Esam University in Paris, France finished a ten week sporting programme that introduced them to Gaelic games and saw them playing Hurling and Gaelic Football. O’Tooles Chairman Andy Cunningham said that the French University originally approached O’Tooles to see if they could facilitate some sporting activites for the students who are on a 3 month exchange programme in Dublin. The club games development officer, Niall Williams designed a hybrid programme to immerse the students in GAA games while ensuring they enjoyed themselves and had a good work out. The programme started with the students watching highlights video from last years all Ireland hurling and football finals.

When Melanie Gay from Paris first saw video , her first thoughts were that “ it looked difficult and violent”. Although it took her a few weeks to get the hang of it, she really enjoyed playing gealic games and in fact ended up preferring hurling.

Over ten weeks, the programme introduced the students to the basic skills and rules of Gaelic games. The students quickly progressed from playing on the club hurling wall to playing competitive games against each other.The students ages ranged from 18- 23 with an even mixture of ladies and men and all games were mixed. Nathias Azevedo from Leon loves sport and thought that GAA games were very physical and said ” you have to be intelligent to use your hands and feet at the same time”. He preferred Gaelic football because he found hurling too technical. As soon as he first saw it on TV he really wanted to play it and is looking forward to teaching it to some of his friends when he gets home. Claudine Girot from Paris said she really enjoyed the whole experience  and couldn’t believe that the players at the top level were unpaid.

Andy Cunningham felt that this was a great opportunity  to showcase the O’Tooles  facility and help promote Gaelic games which are an integral part of the Irish Culture. “We hope that this programme will continue to go from strength to strength in future years and hopefully we can add other nationalities as the years go on” he said.

Niall Williams felt that the programme was a great success and says the feedback suggested that most of the participants really enjoyed the Gaelic games experience. He also remarked how some of the more talented soccer players from the cohort could probably get a run on some of the club’s junior teams with a bit of coaching. It wouldn’t be the first time a french soccer player handled the ball joked Williams.

 

Taken from the Northside People, July 2013