By John Harrington

When Steven Owens landed in Montreal in 2011, Gaelic Games in the East Candian city was at a very low ebb.

But the Tyrone native is what you might conservatively describe as a GAA fanatic, and along with some like-minded souls he quickly breathed new life into the scene.

Over the course of the seven years what was once a small group of 20-30 GAA players has mushroomed into 200 who participate in well-run leagues and represent Montreal Shamrocks at various tournaments throughout Eastern Canada and the United States.

“A few us landed and all we wanted to do was kick a bit of ball to be honest and it's just exploded really over the last few years,” said Owens, now Chairperson of the Eastern Division of Canada GAA.

“We have now what we now call the Montreal Super Leagues which has 12 different teams in Montreal whether it be ladies football or men's football or co-ed hurling/camogie which it is now, though we intend to split that up.

“Our Ladies Championship Final was last Saturday and of the two teams that played, there was only one Irish person on the pitch and that was the referee. That Ladies League is only going three years.”

In some ways GAA in Montreal and Eastern Canada has been a victim of its own success because it became difficult to cater for the growing numbers of players with sufficiently qualified coaches and referees.

The growth in playing numbers had been accelerated by funding secured from the Global Games Development Fund which is co-funded by the GAA and the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade through the Emigrant Support Programme.

Now, further funding from the Global Games Development Fund has allowed them to sufficiently train both coaches and referees to cater for the growth of the games in Eastern Canada.

“A bunch of us trained first of all in foundation and then a foundation tutor sent the tutors around Eastern Canada backed by the Games Development Fund grant to get all the clubs foundation coaching,” said Owens.

“And then this year the next step up was to get all the foundation coaches up to level 1. We just had an Eastern Canadian Championship and you can see that the clubs there like Halifax and Quebec City, the standard of football has just gone through the roof.

“The boys and girls will tell you themselves that's because of the coaching. They now know where to get information from learning.gaa.ie and places like that and are now tapping into the resources that they didn't know where available, as well as what they were taught on their courses.

“And then again with the Leagues topped up over the years, especially with the Ladies leagues topping up, we had massive success here in Montreal with the new leagues. We had 50 to 60 full fixtures in the summer whereas five years ago we had nothing.

“And, of course, when you have that number of games things start to get competitive and the refereeing wasn't up to scratch. People didn't know their rules, it was causing all sorts of headaches.

“That was part of this year's Games Development Fund grant as well, get the boys over from the Ulster Council, get everyone trained up and get the referee tutors in place.

“So if there are any problems we have people qualified to go into clubs and iron out any problems and it's working.”

The Montreal Shamrocks GAA club has gone from strength to strength in recent years and have ambitious plans for further growth.

This year, with help once more from the Global Games Development Fund, they made a big push to begin coaching Gaelic Games in schools in the City.

“It's a big challenge here in Montreal because of the language,” said Owens.

“The majority of schools in Montrel are French-speaking. But there is an English school board and this year again with the help of the Ulster Council and St. Mary's College in Belfast we had people come in and set up a programme.

“We identified five schools that were willing to take us and we put in a couple of coaches into those schools for one day a week. That was a programme that lasted about ten weeks, just before break for the summer.

“It went very well because we introduced Gaelic Sports to around two and a half thousand kids in Montreal.

“Over the summer that developed into a lot of kids joining our summer programme. Our ambition this year was to get kids to the CYC, the Continental Youth Championships, and we did. We got 10 kids down there whereas in previous years we would have had none so that was mission accomplished for us.

“It's a work in progress and a big challenge because of the language and our next step would be to follow the Ottowa model. They have a different situation over there where they have a catholic school board which doesn't exist in Quebec. They got Gaelic Sports into the curriculum in Ottowa and employ a girl from Tyrone as a full-time development officer to go into the schools, so that's where we're headed in the next couple of years.”

Montreal have led the way in Eastern Canada in terms of growing the popularity of Gaelic Games outside of the ex-pat community, and now others are following in their path.

Owens sees only further consolidation and growth of Gaelic Games in the area in the coming years.

“In Montreal we led the way with our Super League model. You'll see a growth now in PEI (Prince Edward Island). They've gone from around 10 players a couple of years ago to 40 this year.

“In Quebec City they've gone from very low numbers up to around 30 or 40 and they're all non-Irish. Some of them don't even speak English.

“It's definitely a smaller rate of growth in the outer reaches of Canada, but they're starting to follow the Montreal model so we would expect similar growth from them in the next five to ten years.

“To be honest when we started this stuff back five or six years ago I never imagined it would even get this far.

“Right now Montreal doesn't have a set of regulation Gaelic Posts in the City. So because we've become an actual sporting force in the city, our next objective is to get land and get the city on board and get some Gaelic Grounds in the city and just watch the sports grow as they have been growing over the last five or six years with both youth and adult games across all codes.”

• Applications are now open for the Global Games Development Fund. See below for details.