A
sweatshirt hood drawn over his head, his hands shoved in the sweatshirt’s pockets,
Brendan Tunney scans the ragged practice field at Bishop Kearney High School.
It’s a cold, gray, windy day in late May as the Rochester Erin’s Isle Gaelic
football team takes to the pitch for another practice. Tunney, the squad’s
founder, coach, and spiritual leader, describes the sport to the uninitiated.
“It
has the finesse of soccer but the toughness of rugby,” the native Dubliner
says. “Basically, it’s a rougher type of soccer.”
As Tunney talks, punted balls fly overhead. Groups of guys
play keep-away and practice the sport’s signature toe-tapping ball maneuver.
Men thump shoulders and work the ball around, some of them congealing into a
patchwork defense in front of rusty, net-less goalposts. A sense of chaotic
glee falls over the pitch. The boys are at play.
Tunney
watches it all. He’s tall and muscular, the type of guy you’d expect from a
sport that shares a close kinship with the unrestrained madness of
Australian-rules football. Standing next to him, however, is short, wiry,
bespectacled Rich Baker, who looks like he’d be chewed up by the game.
After
a recent one-day tournament in Cleveland, Baker returned with a charley horse
so deep he could barely walk for two days. But Baker says he’s getting better
at mixing it up, especially because he came in as an experienced rugby player.
“I
don’t have a problem with the roughness,” Baker says. “It’s not for the
weak-hearted, but it’s certainly not rugby. It has a different type of
physicality.”
Speed
is vital, which plays right into Baker’s hands. “When it gets going at a good
clip,” he says, “it makes soccer look slow.”
Baker isn’t
the only one who’s fallen in love with the sport. After only two years, Erin’s Isle has
enlisted dozens of players ranging in age from 16 to 42. The team has so far
posted a record of 2-2 this season and has several tournaments on its schedule,
including what is thought to be the first-ever Gaelic football tourney in
central New York, at the Great American Irish Festival near Utica on July 30.
While
Erin’s Isle is relatively young, Gaelic football has been a national passion in
Ireland since the mid-18th century. With its formation in 1884, the Gaelic
Athletic Association brought the sport under an Ireland-wide organization, one
that eventually grew to include clubs in New York City. As traditional Irish
sports blossomed across the US, the North American County Board of the GAA was
created; today, the NACB includes dozens of affiliated men’s football clubs and
roughly 20 women’s teams.
One
of those affiliated squads is Erin’s Isle, the first Gaelic football team in
the Rochester area for more than three decades. It all started with the
Rochester Harps, a squad founded in the early 1960s that lasted for about 10
years.
One
of that unit’s members, 68-year-old Paschal O’Connor, who now serves as manager
for Erin’s Isle, picked up the game in his native Ireland and was thrilled to
discover he could keep playing here with the Harps. He’s glad Tunney and others
have revived the Gaelic football tradition in Rochester. “They’ve come a long
way,” O’Connor says of Erin’s Isle. “As far as catching on, they’re doing an
excellent job.”
In
fact, the team has attracted so much attention, says recruiter Ron Wieszczyk,
plans are being made for a second men’s team. A women’s team and a youth squad
are also in the works.
It
also helps that the Rochester gang almost always follows matches with rounds of
Guinness and baskets of wings at places like Shamrock Jack’s. Such camaraderie,
say local enthusiasts, is a trademark of the sport. “There’s a
leave-it-on-the-field attitude,” Baker says.
Adds
Tunney: “We like having a place and friends to go to when you have a hard week.
Whatever hassles you’re going through in life, you can come here.”
Rochester
Erin’s Isle plays Saturday, July 16, against the Albany Harps at Bishop Kearney, 125 Kings
Highway in Irondequoit, at 6 p.m. rochestererinsisle.org, nagaa.org, gaa.ie,
greatamericanirishfestival.com
How
it’s played
Gaelic
football is played by teams of 13 or 15 on a pitch roughly 137 meters by 82
meters with a ball slightly smaller than a soccer ball. Players may carry the
ball up to four steps before it must be bounced once, tapped from toe to hand,
kicked, or passed via hand punch or slap. Scoring occurs through an H-style
goalpost, with one point given for a score over the crossbar, and three for
passing under the bar. Physical contact is allowed, but only
shoulder-to-shoulder, with no body tackling.
This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2005.
