Home is where the heart is.
There’s only around 6.6 million people living on the island of Ireland. A lot of them aren’t interested in sport. More of them aren’t interested in the GAA.
6.6 million on a little piece of land no longer than 486km encircled by the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The state of Texas dwarfs this whole place from Antrim to Kerry and, still, the effect of Ireland can be seen, heard and felt all over the world.
All you’d have to do is take even a fleeting glance at an ongoing feature being compiled by Conor Heneghan, Around the World in 80 Clubs. From the UAE to Barcelona to Slovakia, Asia and beyond, these people aren’t messing around on pub teams just to keep themselves occupied – these are proper clubs where empires are being built and lives are beginning to revolve around just like you’d see in Ireland. People need clubs like that and so do the hundreds and hundreds who will follow them in the coming months and leave these shores.
There’s a live inter-county transfer list on the GAA website where you can watch as it’s updated every day with information on players who are transferring from county to county. It’s only inter-county transfers – the more controversial ones within each county aren’t available to nosey at – but it’s fascinating just seeing the migration in black and white.
You can see rural places being hit as men come from down the country to link up with Dublin clubs and you can see them flocking to London in their numbers and further abroad.
What’s incredible though is the sheer volume of young men who are heading off abroad and joining clubs all over the globe.
Of course, there are plenty of players coming back too and settling back in with their clubs once more but it is staggering looking at how many are off to pastures new outside of Ireland.
In fact, if you take a breakdown of the numbers from just January and February, you’ll really see the scale of it.
Number of GAA players transferring to clubs in countries outside of Ireland (Jan/Feb 2018)
Australia – 219
London – 69
USA – 46
Rest of England – 40
Canada – 26
Belgium – 8
Spain – 7
Scotland – 5
Netherlands – 5
Switzerland – 3
New Zealand – 2
Germany – 1
France – 1
In total, 432 GAA men transferred to clubs outside of Ireland in the first two months of the year. 109 of those made the trip across the water to England with 221 going to the other side of the world in Australia and New Zealand.
Clubs are losing more and more young players but, as that happens, clubs are gaining them in new homes. New homes with the GAA still very much at the heart.
And these are just the numbers of the lads who bothered to transfer legally.
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