Cairns Chieftains quickly making their mark

By John Harrington

The city of Cairns in Australia is best known to most Irish people as the final destination of an east coast adventure in Oz.

It’s a party town in tropical north of the country that lots of Irish have passed through but where few have settled down in.

Some have made it their home though and the Irish community there now has a real focal point in the shape of Cairns Chieftains GAA club which has gone from strength to strength after humble beginnings.

It was founded in December 2022 when seven players showed up to Watson's Oval for the club’s inaugural training session.

A year later they just about cobbled together nine players for the club’s first competitive appearance at the Australasia Regional Games in Geelong.

Fast-forward just two years to the 2025 Australasia Regional Games which will be hosted in Cairns by the Chieftains on Saturday, November 15, and the club is in a very different place.

They hope to field two men’s Gaelic football teams, two women’s LGFA teams, and a hurling team at the Regional Games, and a recently established youth wing of the club is also now thriving.

Cairns Chieftains secretary, Sean Garvey, a native of Kilcar in Donegal, was one of those seven ‘originals’ who took part in that first ever training session and has been a driving force behind the club’s impressive growth since.

“It was a very tough year and a half at the start,” he recalls. “It was banging head against the wall stuff at times.

“You'd have only two people showing up for training but you just keep clocking away until you finally crack that.

“We had a good influx then about 18 months ago, in April/May.

“We used to have 46 down training on a Wednesday evening religiously, during that dry season. And that's what you're relying on. You're relying on your social media, relying on word of mouth.

“Once you build a bigger profile then it gets easier. You're not chasing people to come down, you're not going to the pubs trying to recruit a few people. It just starts to grow organically then.”

Garvey first moved to Australia in 2012 and lived, worked, and played Gaelic football in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney before settling down in Cairns three and a half years ago.

At the time that made him something of an anomaly - Irish people tend to pass through Cairns rather than stay - but that’s started to change now which has been fortuitous timing for Cairns Chieftains.

“Cairns is always a bit of a party town,” says Garvey. “People don't last long. You kind of get sucked in and spat out within two, three, four months. And there was a few Irish around, but nothing really consistent.

“That’s starting to change now because Irish are coming here to work to get the Australian visa extension, especially now that they’ve opened up the hospitality visa work to Irish.

“It used to be just South Americans and Americans and some Asian countries that could get extensions for the hospitality visa work, but now they've opened it up to Irish and there's a bigger influx of Irish coming north of the Tropic of Capricorn to do hospitality work.

“We also have professionals, teachers and nurses, construction workers. A lot of traffic control. So pretty much just visa extension work where they're getting their three to six months work done and getting another year.

“We’re starting to filter in few Aussies now as well, so that'll be key, to get more locals involved.

“We've started social media marketing now and we're getting messages from an hour an 40 minutes away in Tully asking can we come up to train.

“You have Australian-born people with Irish ancestry willing to travel three and a half hours for a training session. It's pretty crazy.”

Inspired by the success of Cairns Chieftains, two more GAA club have been established in North Queensland in the past two years, Townsville Wolfhounds and Four Mile GAA club in Port Douglas.

Since the start of the 2025/26 season, North Queensland GAA teams have registered 163 adult players and that number is set to continue growing thanks to mutually beneficial relationships with local AFL clubs.

Cairns Chieftains have partnered with North Cairns Tigers, Four Mile GAA have partnered with Douglas Crocs, and Townsville Wolfhounds have partnered with Hermit Park Tigers.

This has allowed the GAA clubs to use the AFL facilities and led to a cross-pollination of players with the Irish trying their hand at AFL and more and more AFL players transferring their skills to Gaelic football.

“It's something for them to do in the off-season, something to do to keep active,” says Garvey. “They like the fact that you can have a shot on goals. It's just a little bit different.

“Shooting for goals is more soccer-like for them whereas with the AFL it's about getting the posts. I think that's the biggest appeal, where you're working it towards the net.

“There’s a good crossover now. Last year we I think we had four or five players that also played AFL but now we have 15. There's that connection going both ways now. We'll send a few that way and they'll send a few our way. Anything to help each other out really.

“Last year we had the North Queensland Championship and it was just ourselves and Townsville that were playing at that stage but we had involvement from three AFL clubs as well so we were able to make a full one day competition out of it with over 120 players involved.”

Cairns Chieftains, Townsville Wolfhounds, and Four Mile will be joined at the Australasia Regionals in Cairns on Saturday, November 15^th by Flinders O’Neills, Geelong Gaels, Gold Coast Gaels, Na Fianna Catalpa, and Young Melbourne for what should be a great day of sport.

It’ll be a nice milestone to mark just how far Gaelic games have come in North Queensland in a very short period of time.

And while it will be a much be a social occasion as a sporting one, there will be no holding back once the ball is thrown in.

“Competition is what drives people, it’s healthy for the sport, and ourselves and Townsville have quite a strong rivalry at the moment,” says Garvey.

“In the last 18 months we've grinded out two draws and won a couple by a point and our men’s team hasn’t actually been beaten in any competition. I'd say we'll be fairly tested now at the regionals though.”

Whatever happens at the regionals, the future looks very bright for Cairns Chieftains who are now also busily building up a vibrant youth academy so the club has solid foundations to build on going forward.

“There was 21 kids at training last night, and that only started last year,” says Garvey.

“A lot of the families coming down now with Irish-born parents are lending a hand. We're running a coaching course as well towards the end of this year so hopefully that will push things on some more.

“I don't really look back too much, you're always looking forward. But when I do get time to recap, it's massive how far it's all come.”

For more information on the 2025 Australasia Gaelic Games Tournament in Cairns on November 15, go HERE.