The victorious Budapest men's Gaelic Football team after winning the European Collegiate Games Cup.
By John Harrington
New ground was broken two weeks ago in Leuven, Belgium, with the staging of the first every European Collegiate Games.
It was fitting that the local University, KU Leuven, and its affiliated GAA club, The Earls of Leuven, should be the ones to ink this piece of Gaelic Games history.
Leuven has long had significant links with Ireland and Irish culture going back to the 17th century when many Irish went there to study for the priesthood at what became known as the Irish College because it was prohibited to do so in Ireland.
The historical ties between the city and Ireland have been strong ever since, and there’s still a vibrant community of Irish students there completing degrees in subjects such as International Politics, Engineering, and Teaching.
The victorious Groningen Gaels women's team.
The University’s GAA Club, Earls of Leuven, was established in 2015 and two of its founding members, Club Chairperson Alan Fitzgerald and Vice-Chairperson James Campbell, came up with the idea to host Europe’s first ever Collegiate Gaelic Football tournament.
“All the Irish evacuated Leuven at the beginning of Covid and the club was in danger of going under,” Fitzgerald told GAA.ie
“Then when the first semester started after Covid we just got a big influx of students and we said we'd keep this going. Looking around social media we saw there were similar patterns all around Europe.
“In the seven years our club has being going we never saw as many student teams popping up so we said we have to do something here, this is the best time for it.
“Students were hungry to be travelling around so we just said let's organise this in Leuven.”
The inaugural European Collegiate Games was hosted by The Earls of Leuven GAA club.
Both Fitzgerald and Campbell first travelled to Leuven to study themselves, and ended up staying a lot longer than planned.
Campbell now works as a tour guide in Brussels and Bruges, while Fitzgerald combines some freelance IT work with working in Thomas Stapleton’s Irish Pub.
It was here that the club held their first ever AGM in November 2015, and it remains a rich recruitment ground for The Earls of Leuven who now have a membership of around 60.
“There's only one Irish pub in the town and about 50,000 students and the Irish people naturally gravitate to the pub and there's a great group of them who are good at the socialising and getting other nationalities involved with the club,” says Fitzgerald.
“People naturally buy into it. It's the same reason Irish pubs do so well around the world, Irish sports have the exact same appeal. People get involved because they just want to meet other people and have fun. And Irish people are a bit easier to get on with than most.
“A lot of the international students that join the club have arrived alone and have no friends when they get here so they go to the Irish pub to meet people and when they come to the bar I tell them I won't give them a drink until they come training!”
Action from the Leuven v Warsaw women's match.
The inaugural European Collegiate Games featured eight mens teams and six women’s teams from Leuven, Maastricht, Groningen, Warsaw, Budapest, and Nottingham.
Budapest won the Men’s Cup and Groningen won the Women’s Cup, but the most important success was the tournament itself.
“It went great, which was slightly shocking because we have about 50/60 people in the club and none of them have ever played in Europe for any event but all the organisation went off without a hitch all things considered," says Fitzgerald.
“So many volunteers put in a trojan effort to make it happen, especially our club vice-chairperson James Campbell, Secretary Ryan McAleer, and Treasurer Koen Jans.
“We’ll be hosting a competitive round of the Benelux League on May 21st, so this was the perfect warm-up event for us.”
Such were the positive vibes after the inaugural European Collegiate Games that Fitzgerald hopes it becomes an annual event in the Gaelic Games Europe playing calendar.
“Absolutely, the feedback was phenomenal, everyone loved it. Leuven is particularly good for this type of thing because it's perfectly safe. It's very small, it's the size of Galway city and it's entirely a student campus.
“It's the perfect place to have visiting teams coming because it's very accessible, and we have that relationship with the University so it's ticking all the boxes and we're looking forward to opening it up next year and putting out an open invitation to every student player in Europe. We have the pitches for it, so why not?"
