Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)THE home of bull fighting and flamenco is embracing an unlikely first this weekend as a new Gaelic football team goes into battle.
The Irish sport is one of the world’s most dangerous and the Andalucian team, Eire Óg Seville, will have to be well-prepared for their first games on the Costa del Sol this Saturday.
Consisting of Spanish and English players as well as Irish, the expat team will face the Madrid Gaels, Barcelona Harps and Marbella Costa Gaels in the Iberian GAA league.
Hosting the one-day tournament the village of Ojen is shaping up for a brutal and exciting spectacle.
Players of the 14th century fifteen-a-side sport use their hands and feet hit a round ball into a net or over posts similar to rugby.
Six teams will be split over two groups with the top two progressing to the semi-finals and then the final.
Eire Og Seville’s green and red boys will need to get past Spanish heavyweights from Madrid and Valencia to reach the semis.
Basically, this is directed at the writer of this piece of misguided information and the Editor for allowing it. First of all, being Irish myself and a participant in the “Éire Óg Sevilla” Gaelic Football team, I was suprised at the way our sport has been described in your column.
We are trying to introduce the sport to the locals here in Seville and are glad of any coverage we can get. Listening to Radio Marca this morning they were speaking about the rise of the sport here in Spain and only spoke of it in a positive way.
There is no way anyone can describe the sport as been “brutal” and “one of the world’s most dangerous” , unless they went to youtube (or just made it up) and searched for a video of the sport and then the most seen videos would pop-up in first and second place, the contreversial ones. Typical, thats what people want to see and read.
In actual fact, the game of Gaelic Football is a tough sport with great rivalry on the field, but once the players are off the field it all changes to a bit of banter and “craic”. There are much less injuries than the football that is played in Spain or England or Rugby and if a fight does break out(which is not very typical nowadays), the players get very tough sanctions.
Fair enough, if you want to get the readers eye its a good way of getting them interested, but you should be careful of the way you describe ones culture(it is part of our culture) as people do get offended.
Apart from that, have a great St. Patricks Day and who knows, maybe some day soon we´ll get a fair write up.
Slán agus croi follain agus gob fliuch! (goodbye and a healthy heart and a wet mouth to you).
fair comment kevin…. but at times it does look like a bit of a bun fight!