You gotta restart somewhere. Next Sunday, after a break of 1,071 days, the New York Gaelic football team will play in competition again. The pandemic threw everyone’s cards up into the air and now, finally, theirs will be the last one to flutter back down. Every county team, club team, school team and makey-uppy Division 6B team in the GAA has had some sort of game by now. Everyone except New York.
They last kicked a ball in anger on May 5th, 2019, when Mayo gave them a pasting in that summer's Connacht Championship opener. Once Covid hit, New York were never going to play in 2020, and even by the time the 2021 championship got up and running, trans-Atlantic flights were still five months away. They were there but not there, the championship's vestigial limb.
London missed 2020 and 2021 as well but they have at least got a league campaign behind them. Two(ish), in fact, if you count their aborted 2020 NFL campaign. Put it this way: London have had 12 games since New York last togged out. Sligo, the visitors to Gaelic Park in the Bronx next weekend, have had 19. New York have always started from the back of the grid. This time around, they barely have tyres on the car.
"There isn't half enough coffee in the world," laughs Joan Henchy, chairperson of the New York county board. "I would swap my job for the presidency right now! I have lists upon lists and notes everywhere and a million things to get done. But it's great to have a game back. It'll be fabulous on the day."
We lost an awful lot of boys during the pandemic and after it. They either went home or they went somewhere else or they just drifted away altogether
Job one, gather up something resembling a team. In normal times, the turnover of New York’s playing personnel was always fairly vigorous anyway. Throw in the mirror-hall abnormality of a pandemic and the panel now is essentially unrecognisable from the one that lined out in 2019.
On St Patrick’s weekend, Galway club Salthill-Knocknacarra came over to Gaelic Park for a game. New York manager Johnny McGeeney used it to give 38 different players a go, changing the whole team at half-time and running subs in and out during the game. Of those 38, only four remained from the Mayo game in 2019.
“I would imagine on the day, there will only be four or five lads who have represented New York before,” McGeeney says. “We lost an awful lot of boys during the pandemic and after it. They either went home or they went somewhere else or they just drifted away altogether and didn’t come in to try out for the team when the time came.
“We left it open to everybody. We held try-outs and we said that everyone was welcome to come and see could they play. We didn’t handpick anybody. So we’ve had 40 lads there for 26 spots, basically because it’s the only way we’re able to play games against ourselves on a Sunday morning. There’s no other way of doing it. It has all been A v B games. But even at that, I think we only had 22 able to play last weekend because we have had a load of injuries.
“The thing with trying to put a team together in New York in the winter is that it’s basically just too cold. You can’t actually play football. There’s snow on the ground everywhere you go. We were basically a running club for two months. With Covid, we don’t have the calibre of footballers that would have been out here in previous years. We have good lads. We have no stand-outs but we have really good lads.”
If there was ever such a thing as a typical New York footballer, that too has changed in the past three years. The only names likely to ring out to anyone this side of the pond are Adrian Varley, winner of Connacht titles with Galway in 2016 and 2018, and Johnny Glynn, the totemic full forward for the Galway hurlers when they won the 2017 All-Ireland. In fact, anything up to half the team that lines out against Sligo will be American born and bred.
"Our captain Jamie Boyle is Irish-American," says McGeeney. "I'd say on the day we'll have seven starters who are American-born. That's not a sign of how weak we are, they'll be there on merit. The team that plays will be the boys who have bought into it. If you train, you play, that's the way I always look at it. The boys who have put the hours in are the ones who get their chance."
Job two, get the documentation in order. To play senior intercounty, you have to have played club championship. Historically, New York have sorted this out by playing a round of the club championship around now, giving everyone plenty of time to be eligible for the Connacht game in May. But the All-Ireland is a month earlier now so Henchy had to inform all her clubs that the preliminary round of their championship would go ahead in March. It was basically still winter.
I don't care if they drive a pile into the middle of the pitch, there are certain things that can't stop and that's one of them
“I had all of the scheduling people and all of the divisions going nuts at me,” Henchy says. “’Why are we doing it this early, sure nobody’s ready?’ And I was going, ‘Lads, have ye forgotten the rules?’ Ah, it was fine. We always have a preliminary round before the first round proper. Instead of having a draw to see who plays who, we play a prelim round and that determines it all. So we played that and got everyone registered. One more thing off the list.”
Job three, get the venue sorted. The upgrading of Gaelic Park is a project that often seems to have been in motion since the Reagan administration. Larry McCarthy spent a good portion of his five years as chairman wading through bureaucratic swamps and Henchy has done the same in her two years in charge. You’ll never guess when the breakthrough came.
“Two weeks out from the game, the construction company rings and says, ‘Right Joan, we’re ready to go!’ Perfect timing. We’ve waited so long, through dealings with the NTA, the DFA, Croke Park – I’m telling you right now, I ain’t telling anyone they can’t start the job. I don’t care if they drive a pile into the middle of the pitch, there are certain things that can’t stop and that’s one of them.
“Realistically, we’re a good four years waiting to get started. It looked like it was good to go around two years ago and then Covid happened. So we’re just so relieved to get start on it. It’s all good. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, getting the financial side of it sorted and everything else. But it’s good. We have people coming in from all over the States to go to the game and plenty coming over from home as well.
“From our perspective, it’s just a relief to be back. We’re delighted to be back. The competition means an awful lot to a lot of people out here, even just in terms of the diaspora. And obviously, from a New York football point of view, it means a lot to be back in the championship.”
As for how it will all shake out, they have a fair idea of what's what. Salthill-Knocknacarra didn't bring any of their Galway seniors or under-20s to that game a few weeks back and still had enough to edge them by a point. In the middle of the last decade, New York ran Roscommon to a point and only fell to Leitrim after extra-time. Nobody is suggesting that kind of drama this time around.
“We’re not stupid,” says McGeeney. “We’ll be trying to keep it respectable. We have a long way to go and we just haven’t had the games. so if we can keep it respectable, we’ll be happy.
“That’s not downplaying it at all. I’m probably a realist more than anything. Of course it’s an achievement to keep the thing going. I know that. I’m not going to be happy to go out and get beat by 15 points. But I’m realistic too. Some day we will have the players to pull off a result. You’ve just got to roll with it until that day comes. It might not be in my time, it might not be in the next manager’s time. But one day it will.”
Look, these lads aren't over in New York to play football. They're here to make a better life for themselves
Presuming next Sunday is not the day, it won’t be the end of their year – New York will play in the inaugural Tailteann Cup later in the summer. They’ll come in at the preliminary quarter-final stage and there won’t be a more enthusiastic team in the competition. After three years of drought, being guaranteed two games is a drink straight from the hose.
Whatever happens, they'll keep trucking. Next Sunday will bring a crowd to the Bronx from Boston and Philly and Chicago and Sligo and a hundred other points on the map. The result will matter and at the same time it won't. To be there will be the thing. To be still at it, despite everything.
“It’s a disaster at times,” laughs McGeeney. “But look, these lads aren’t over in New York to play football. They’re here to make a better life for themselves. In the meantime, they can play a wee bit of football and have a bit of a connection and keep the whole thing going.”
Covid took a chunk out of everything and though there were a million things that were more important, three years is a long road back.
Nearly there.
