The Berlin GAA team that won the 2019 European Senior Football Championship and will now play Kenagh of Longford in the first round of the AIB Leinster Junior Football Championship.
By John Harrington
If you’re in the habit of perusing GAA club fixtures around the country, then one in particular will surely catch your eye next week.
On Saturday, October 26, Berlin GAA will play Kenagh St Dominic's in the first round of the Leinster Junior Football Championships at the GAA Centre of Excellence in Abbottstown.
It’s tempting to view to view the fixture as a contest of contrasts.
Kenagh, the archetypal deep-rooted rural GAA club from Longford against Berlin GAA, a club founded five years ago with no fixed abode in the German capital and drawing its membership from a kaleidoscope of counties and countries.
Berlin GAA might be a good example of the modern phenomenon of GAA clubs putting down roots on rocky soil outside of Ireland and quickly blossoming, but, when you really get to the essence of it, you realise that their story and the story of all the quickly multiplying ‘new’ clubs like them outside of Ireland is the oldest and purest GAA narrative of them all.
Most GAA clubs in Ireland are now so long established that we have no real appreciation for the effort it took to get them up and running in the first place.
The early set-backs that might have sunk the whole enterprise had a few die-hards simply refused to quit.
The milestone victories, big and small, on the pitch and off it, that fostered the unity and spirit now taken for granted.
The sense of purpose you get from creating and building something really special from scratch.
So, in a way, a club like Berlin is a GAA time-capsule. The sparks that led to a sporting bushfire in Ireland in the late 1800s and early 1900s are now being struck all over again on foreign soil.
The Berlin GAA men and ladies football teams celebrating after being crowned Europe Central-East Champions in 2019.
For those fanning the flames like Berlin GAA footballer and club PRO, Arthur Sullivan, it has given him a whole new appreciation of what the GAA is all about.
“I've just learned so much in seeing how a team evolves and how a spirit can grow,” Sullivan told GAA.ie.
“And how a team like ours can go from essentially being non-competitive to being very competitive through improving things from the ground up.
“I thought I knew some things about the GAA when I lived at home, but it was a real eye-opener getting involved on such an intense level to try to improve a club with loads of other people and seeing what needs to be done and what team spirit really means and what standards really mean.
“This might sound funny considering we're still essentially just a junior club, but to go from where we've come from has involved an awful lot of growth.
“You learn so much about the GAA from seeing how much needs to be done to come from the bottom up and what is actually possible when things come together and people are willing to work together.”
In the history of every GAA club there’s usually a visionary who gets the whole enterprise off the ground, quite often through sheer perseverance.
Berlin GAA club-founder, Christopher Hennessy, died at the age of just 40.
For Berlin GAA, that person was Kerry native Christopher Hennessy. The tragedy is that he never got to see how impressively it blossomed after he planted the seed, because the 40-year-old died from cancer less than a year after the club was formed.
“Chris started bringing his young German-born son down to Tempelhof for a kick-around and was always pushing to try to get lads to come to training and get it going,” said Sullivan.
“He finally got an Official GAA club set up, but tragically died shortly afterwards.
“Luckily, another guy from Cavan called Anthony McDermott who was good friends with Chris, he was on the scene when Chris died and drove it on then very well for the next year and just kept it going when it could have easily fizzled out.
“That just kept the flame alive and once the flame is lit, even if it's flickering, it just gives people who want to play a chance to come in and you benefit from that. That's really what happened here. Bit by bit, more and more came and it just grew and grew and grew.
“Now there's such a grá for it now that it would take an awful lot to take us out.”
The reality for a club like Berlin is that it takes a good deal of hard work and sacrifice to keep the thing going.
They have no pitch or club-house of their own, no sponsor, and there are all sorts of logistical challenges that have to be overcome on a daily basis.
They train together on patchy pitches at the old, now closed, Tempelhof airport, and have to make do with soccer goals that have wavin pipes taped to them as uprights.
Berlin GAA club-members train with improvised soccer-goals at Tempelhof Airport.
Rather than dismay them, the adversity they have to overcome to play the sports they love has fostered a really vibrant spirit and sense of purpose.
Former Tipperary coach and Hurling Development Committee Chairman, Paudie O’Neill, has developed close ties with the club and is always impressed by the energy and can-do attitude of everyone involved when he takes them for coaching sessions.
“Yeah, that’s what really struck me from the outset,” he said.
“When you get to the periphery of Tempelhof you can't drive any further and most of them don't drive.
“So, you have the spectacle of players arriving by bicycle carrying the gear, carrying the bag of hurleys, and carrying the bag of footballs, the cones, and whatever else.
“It's totally different to the Irish context where players in most clubs have everything laid out for them. The players literally bring the club with them to the training.
“They have no facilities. They part their bikes under trees and get togged out under trees. The other really important feature of it is on a Saturday they'll train for 45 minutes, the lads and girls all playing together.
“They'll have a rest and then they'll go play hurling/camogie for another 45 minutes. So it's really the one club, four codes model.
“There’s a great sense of community about them. They’re a marvellously tightly connected group within a multi-cultural city.
“The way they look after each other on the field and off the field, with jobs and accommodation if someone is in difficulties is fantastic.”
Paudie O'Neill in full flow at a Berlin GAA training session.
Sullivan has sometimes found himself wondering how good their football team would be if they lived together in a community at home in Ireland where they could train on a good pitch, eat home-cooked meals, and have to expend less energy on all the logistics of running a club themselves as players.
His initial thought was they’d be significantly better, but the more he listened to his gut the more he realised that it’s the hardships they’re faced with in Berlin that has given them such a strong team-spirit.
Since the club has formed it has welcomed players of all abilities with open arms and the social aspect of playing gaelic football and hurling for fun has always been a big part of Berlin’s ethos.
As more people have joined the club, though, standards have inevitably risen and the level the men’s football team have reached this year bears witness to that.
Until this year they had never even taken part in the 15-a-side European Senior Football Championship, contenting themselves instead with competing in the 11-a-side regional tournaments.
The 15-a-side competition has traditionally been the preserve of the longer established Benelux clubs, but this year Berlin felt they were sufficiently strong to enter it for the first time.
Their 21-man panel included 10 non-Irish players and defeated Luxembourg in the semi-final before overcoming Belgium GAA in a hard-fought Final.
Since then, they’ve put a lot of effort into preparing for the challenge of playing Kenagh in the first round of the AIB Leinster Junior Football Championship.
The Berlin GAA football team that won the European Senior Championship included five Australians (pictured) and five other non-Irish players on the panel.
Sullivan’s father attended the Longford Final and provided Arthur with an in-depth dossier on their opponents, while their preparations for the match have also been helped by training on a rugby pitch with a decent surface.
A twinning arrangement with Ballyboden St. Enda’s, Paudie O’Neill’s club in Dublin, means they’re now sorted for accommodation for the trip to Ireland and will be able to use Ballyboden’s facilities for a team-meeting and activation session before the match.
Kenagh have former Longford senior footballers Shane Doyle and Rory Connor in their ranks and are favourites, but, make no mistake, Berlin are flying in to win this match, not just take part.
“I'm sure Kenagh are looking at the draw and laughing when they see they're playing Berlin and will be wondering what sort of shower will be sent over to us,” said Sullivan.
“We're definitely treating it like a match that we can win. It's not just a trip away and ‘isn't this a great bit of craic’, not at all. We’re approaching like it a proper Championship match.
“No club from Europe has ever won this match. And, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think there are many examples of an Irish championship club match that has been won by an overseas club.
“So, it's a real slice of history we're chasing and that's what we're treating it as. An opportunity to try to do something that hasn't been done before.
“Just make a statement on behalf of not just ourselves, but all overseas GAA clubs. People might think they're only having a laugh and it's a social thing.
“But we want to show we can actually have a good team as well that's more than capable of playing at that level if we get the opportunity.”
- Berlin GAA are currently raffling tickets for an all-expenses three-night trip to the Christmas markets in Berlin to help fundraise for their trip to Ireland and the numerous costs of running the club in general. You can purchase tickets HERE
Iraqi refugee brothers Ahmed and Amjad Alsamaraie have taken up hurling with Berlin GAA.
Here we speak with the brothers at the famous Brandenburg Gate in the German capital and spoke to Berlin GAA PRO Arthur Sullivan.
GAA President Aogán Ó Fearghaíl and Irish Ambassador to Germany Michael Collins also contribute to the report. They were attending the European Hurling and Camogie Finals in Dresden.
