By John Harrington

GAA clubs have sprung up in many far-flung places around the world in recent years, but perhaps none so unlikely as Lulea in Swedish Lapland which is located just 150 kilometres from the arctic circle.

Lulea Gaels were established last year and from the very start have been a roaring success in terms of participation numbers and engagement with their local community.

Their genesis came about thanks to the involvement of Irish contractor John Sisk and Sons in the building of a data centre in Lulea.

With other Irish companies like Mercury Engineering, Modubuild, Jones Engineering, Crown Roofing, and Konfloor also involved in the project, an influx of Irish engineers, electricians, and project managers arrived in the 50,000 population city in 2020.

Some of them, such as Lulea Gaels club chairperson, Warren Judge, had previously played with the Malmo GAA club because John Sisk were also involved in a building project there, and quickly realised there was great potential to establish the most northerly GAA club in the World.

After a year of plotting and planning they made it happen in 2021 and immediately hit the ground running.

“It was always something we wanted to do when we came up here,” Judge told GAA.ie “Obviously we're very far north and there's a lot of travel involved so a lot of stuff to be booked and managed and corralling people here and there for training.

“The first year we were up here it was probably too soon in so far as we didn't really have the numbers. We knew by the second year of the project, last year, would be the year this would really kick into gear.

“We had the numbers and we had bigger Irish contractors coming on board and a lot of electricians and pipe-fitters and new guys from home, apprentices, that were coming out. They made up a lot of the numbers then.

“We had the plan in place and were ready to hit the ground running because a few of us had played in Malmo when we had a project there.

“Because we had that connection it was easy to find out where you go for this or that. Because in Sweden you have the Swedish GAA committee, then the Nordic GAA Committee, and that all feeds into the European Committee, so it was good to have those connections for sure.”

There’s one obvious challenge to play Gaelic football 150 kilometres from the Arctic Circle – the weather.

When Lulea Gaels began training last March the conditions weren’t exactly the most hospitable.

“The challenge up here is that all the outdoor sports would have the indoor facilities booked up at that time of the year so we had to train outside,” says Judge, a native of Ballina in Mayo.

“We eventually found a patch of astro-turf maybe 30 metres by 15 metres in Lulea that was part of a playground. We started training there with large mounds of snow either side of a small clearing we had made in the grass.

“If the ball went astray you had to get a bit cold and wet to get it back. What we did then was a few of us one Saturday grabbed a couple of shovels and cleared it and the sun did the rest then as the weather improved.

“We eventually moved to an astro-turf soccer pitch later on in the year and that suited us better. Numbers were high and initially when we were training on the smaller facility what we used to do was half the group would go for a run and the other half would stay and do ball drills and then we'd swap.

“That was quite difficult because we had a training session at one stage where we had 48 people. I think most senior clubs at home would be proud of those numbers. it was a challenge because Gaelic football is not a known sport up here.

“You might think we could get a rugby field, but that's almost equally unknown up here in these parts. We did struggle at the start but we found our feet with that soccer pitch and drove on from there.”

Not surprisingly, the sight of dozens of men and women playing Gaelic football in snowy surroundings caused a bit of a stir in the Swedish city among the bemused locals.

“We had a camera on us one evening,” says Judge. “A local Swedish woman was out for a walk and it was one of the early sessions where there are mounds of snow around the side of the pitch and she stopped and was filming us.

“She was so interested in the game that she was videoing the game and sending it to her family. We took about 20 minutes explaining what the guys on the pitch were doing and explaining the rules and it was just an interesting conversation that stuck with me because it's not something you'd ever have at home because every town you pass through you see a busy GAA pitch no matter what day of the week it is.

“Locally definitely we spread the word. We tried to garner as much attention outside of the project as we could. It was particularly the ladies team that grew an awful lot outside of the project and it grew with people who had never even heard of Gaelic games before we came to Lulea. That was really good.”

Lulea Gaels have made a significant effort to connect with their local community rather than just keep their club as a closed-shop for those involved in the data centre project.

Their blue and gold club colours mimic those of the local Lulea municipality and, rather than have a jersey sponsor, they’ve instead emblazed the name of a local school on their team jersies.

Many players, particularly on the women’s team, have been recruited from the local population, and other nations such as Brazil, Australia, Canada, and Denmark are also represented.

For the locals involved it’s a chance to play a sport they had never even heard of previously, and some of them have shown a real natural aptitude.

“One of the local girls played a very high level of ice-hockey up here and she really shone through,” says Judge.

“She was obviously very much into sport and even put a couple of men straight in training sessions with some hefty hits that wouldn't be amiss on an ice-hockey rink.”

For the Irish workers in Lulea, the chance to be involved with a GAA club brought huge mental health as well as physical health benefits.

Moving abroad to work and dealing with the homesickness that often goes along with that can be difficult to cope with for many, and Lulea Gaels has helped make their corner of Northern Sweden feel like a home from home.

“Even now as we speak if you go down to our Health, Wellbeing, and Community boards on the site, Lulea Gaels are all over it amongst other sports,” says Judge.

“There’s maybe 800 people on the site at the moment and it's funny how much the Gaelic games has created a good camaraderie among those who work for different companies and may never have any interaction with each other from day to day, but you could be walking into site in the morning and walking up the middle of Lulea in the evening and you'll see a familiar face and it nearly gives you a bit of draw back to home.

“There's guys that have the same interest as you and there's obviously a good social side to it as well. We train hard and we socialise hard as you can imagine. There's great camaraderie from the journeys we've been on.

“What I found particularly amusing was at the couple of the larger training sessions I was noticing more and more people with Mayo gear on them.

“Before you knew it we figured we had 10 to 12 guys who were all from within an hour of each other in Mayo but didn't really know each other but knew friends of friends. That was a good conversation starter and obviously there's plenty of banter then when Mayo are rallying the troops in Croke Park.”

Lulea Gaels won the first Swedish Championship tournament they competed in last year and were competitive in the other three they took part in.

With the shadow of Covid-19 retreating, this year they’ll also be able to compete in the Nordic Championship.

That’ll mean more logistical challenges for Judge and his fellow club members, but they’ll take on the challenge with a heart and a half.

“It's been a labour of love, to a degree,” he says.

“There's a lot of work that goes into it. Particularly when you're based in Lulea and you're trying to travel to Stockholm, Malmo, Gavle, to Gotenburg, just that whole side of it.

“It's definitely been very rewarding. Sometimes people would come to you and ask is there training tonight and say that they're loving it.

“Be under no illusion, it can be hard coming here to work, I have a young family at home that I say, 'See you in three weeks' to on a Sunday and head off.

“So having the outlet to be able to do something that you're passionate about that you'd be doing at home if you were at home is definitely something rewarding.

“As Irish people the majority of us grew up playing Gaelic games and it's a community thing so being able to introduce something like that to a community that has never had the opportunity to have what we had has been massively fulfilling too.”

The data centre project in Lulea should be completed in another year, but Judge is hopeful that the GAA club will remain viable when he and the other Irish people involved in it have moved on.

“Yeah, the big question is when the project finishes can Lulea Gaels remain with a cohort of people who live locally?” he says.

“We really hope it can. We could hopefully introduce kids into the thing and have underage training sessions a couple of times a week or link in with the school that we're already involved with.

“I know from speaking to the local ladies here who have been playing with us and are very passionate about it, they're hell-bent on keeping this alive long after we're gone.

“That to me would be a huge success if they could.”