Luxembourg GAA – rebuilding on solid foundations

This week, JOE visits Luxembourg GAA – a club trying to pull free of a recession of its own.

By Dave Barrett

It's October 2010. Luxembourg’s Gaelic footballers have just finished their final game of the Budapest Pan-Euro Championship round in Budapest. The faces of the players tell the story; disappointed, despondent and disgusted.

Hurling, football and camogie championships had been annexed in style in the preceding years and that makes it all the harder. Corkman Tadhg Dunne (pictured above, right), from the Blarney club, was there for all those successes and felt it more than most.

"It was disappointing but you couldn’t question the effort of the lads," Tadhg says.

"Budapest wouldn’t be the easiest or cheapest places to get to so numbers were tight but the real issue was that the standard of the championship has exploded. Stockholm and Budapest had some really good players and The Hague, Belgium and Paris were, as usual, very strong."

Banking sector busts club

When banking was booming, Luxembourg GAA reaped the reward. Jobs for young Irish graduates were plentiful and many set up shop there after graduation. Each summer they would be further supplemented by a sprinkling of undergraduate students on work placements. Championships followed and the future was bright.

Then the boom went bust and the club was hit hard.

The impact was very visible within the club. “Recruitment in the financial services industry had practically dried up and the lure of Australia attracted a lot of Irish ex-pats based in Lux”, explains Tadgh, who works for JP Morgan.

You get knocked down, but you get up again...

Picking yourself up when you have been knocked is one of the great challenges life can throw at us. The energy and will can so easily be drained that it would be easy to raise the white flag and surrender. Tadgh recently married a Carlow girl, Lizzy Murphy, and his plan would have been to step back as he settled into married life.

A call to arms was needed and one of the club’s longest serving players was the only man to lead the charge. “With Brendan O’Callaghan deciding to step down after years of service I was nominated at the AGM," Tadgh says.

"I’ve gotten an awful lot out of GAA; great memories and friendships. Knowing that I had the support of Damien Higgins and Eoin Mullins as selectors and especially my wife (despite a baby on the way!) made it an easy decision."

The return on his investment has been instant. Luxembourg reclaimed their home tournament title at the beginning of April. Victory came against current European champions Den Haag. It was especially satisfying given their home record – 10 wins in the last 11 years. ”It was a major goal for the year. Losing to Belgium last year hurt too much and we wanted to restore some pride. The reaction at the final whistle showed what the trophy means to people in Luxembourg.”

Fending off the lure of other codes is an ongoing challenge...

Of course, one swallow doesn’t make a summer in Tadgh's eyes but the signs are much better than they were this time last year and the club have worked hard at generating interest. “We’re off to a great start but we’re not getting carried away. Eamonn Fitzmaurice came over in February to run a coaching session and we recruited an outside fitness trainer to help us out.”

Fending off the lure of other codes is an ongoing challenge, according to Tadgh. “Soccer and rugby teams are the biggest threat. We need to try and match the same standard of training and facilities they offer. We also need to sell our product better and the European board has a big challenge to make it more player friendly in terms of cost and time.”

Hurling hurting

Luxembourg is one of the very few dual clubs and keeping both codes competitive, off such a tight player base, is difficult. Ballincollig native and club hurling trainer Damien Higgins explains how hard it can be to strike the right balance.

"The thing you have to be really sensitive about in Europe is that you no longer live in a parish where the club is central to the community," Damien says.

"While the game is a passion to many, it’s a pass-time or route to a social scene for others. Balancing the time you demand from club members in terms of training and tournaments is tough.

"A dual player will be training 3 times a week and attend eleven tournaments. The shorter hurling season (four tournaments from May to July) means it is often the code sacrificed by players."

 

Team Luxembourg

Damien knows keeping the game alive is going to be a constant struggle. “There are four established hurling teams on the continent that you could count on to travel to tournaments and they are all within driving distance (just about in Zurich’s case!). It is difficult to see other clubs matching that consistency in terms of attendance.”

Travel and cost is the main stumbling block for the further development of hurling in Europe according to Damien.

“Geography is a big issue. When a tournament is held in a location requiring most clubs to fly, you see how fragile the competition actually is and one poorly attended tournament out of four can devalue the whole competition. But how do you encourage new teams to come on board when they already face the struggles of the established clubs and more again if they are requiring long haul journeys to every venue?”

Solid foundations

The club was founded in 1978 and that they are showing such rapid signs of recovery has a lot to do with the solid foundations which they can fall back on, both in the club and city. The club has worked hard to cultivate this.

“We now produce a quarterly newsletter which is sent to all members and distributed to the wider Irish community in the city and have rolled out our new website (www.luxgaa.lu) thanks to clubman Donal Shivnan” explains Tadgh.

Current chairperson Henry Abbot, founding member Eoghan O’Hannrachain and stalwart Cathal Davey have also been very active off the pitch with the excellent publication of the club’s history – an achievement to be particularly proud of.

A season can be turned on its head from one month to the next in Europe...

The club also receive continued support from one of their main sponsors, ‘The Black Stuff’ Irish Pub. Owners Phil and Cathy McKenna have a strong link to the football tournament and it is they who supply the splendid trophy for the competition.

"The Black Stuff is a de-facto club house for us and we hold most of our social events there," Tadgh says. "The trophy is based on the Sam Maguire and is made from solid silver. Phil and Cathy ensure that it is never too far from their view and that’s probably the greatest motivation to keep winning it. You don’t want to disappoint them!"

A season can be turned on its head from one month to the next in Europe due to the unpredictability of player movements. That cannot be controlled but what can be controlled are the foundations from which you build your club. In Luxembourg, those foundations are dug deep.

Dave writes a regular blog about playing GAA in Europe. You can find it through the following link - www.keepingitlit.com.