A 40-STRONG travelling party of young female Australian Rules footballers was at Naomh Éanna in Glengormley last week to face the club’s U16 and U18 girls in challenge games.
The Australian Wanderers, a girls team of teenage Aussie Rules footballers were on an 18-day tour of Ireland and Britain.
They had been playing in the south of Ireland, but the call went out to clubs in Ulster and Belfast specifically if there were any who would like to take on the tourists and Naomh Éanna were only too happy to help.
Wanderers Australia provide international team sports and educational experiences for individual athletes and students, putting together teams in juniors and opens/adults across a number of sports such as netball, hockey, AFL, cricket and football where players play in a team according to their level.
The Aussies used their stay in Belfast as an opportunity to visit the Giant’s Causeway and north coast before returning south to play Lucan and Skerries and then onto London for some sightseeing and the Somme in France.
“I ended up coordinating it with them, initially through an intermediary, but then the group themselves,” explained Mark Mooney who helped organise the day from the Naomh Éanna side.
“It’s a connection we’d like to maintain and perhaps in the future we could host them fully. But it was a great experience for the girls to get the opportunity to play and Australian team and also, the Gaelscoil Éanna pupils came out to watch.”
Action from the U16 game
Despite the wet conditions last Thursday, the visitors and hosts served up two excellent games that comprised of three quarters of Gaelic football rules, minus soloing to help out the visitors, whilst the final quarter saw the AFL ‘Sherrin’ ball in use to tip the balance a little.
The U16 game ended honours even, but the travelling Australians enjoyed a victory in the minor clash that followed.
It wasn’t just all about football, however, as the club laid food afterwards in the clubhouse with traditional music and presentations, allowing both sets of players to mingle and get to know one another.
“They were all mixing in the clubrooms afterwards, swapping social media details and all of that before the jerseys began to be swapped over,” Mark added.
“We presented them with club booklets and our chairman, Paul McKeown, handed over a club jersey and they returned the favour with some of their own gear, so it turned out to be a great day.”
