Ahmad gets warm welcome
Rosslare club reaches out to Direct Provision residents
GAA CLUBS in County Wexford are stepping up to the mark to try to help asylum seekers to integrate into the local community, with Tara Rocks and St. Mary’s (Rosslare) opening their doors and their hearts to those in Direct Provision.
One resident in the centre in Rosslare, Ahmad Rezi Yousefi, is already feeling the benefit of their welcoming approach, having been put in touch with the club through Wexford Local Development.
Ahmad, who is originally from Afghanistan, previously played for Kingscourt Stars in Cavan when he resided there, and the 28-year-old was keen to continue his involvement in the game, with the Tagoat-based club only too happy to give him the opportunity.
Ahmad left his home country for Peterborough when he was just sixteen16 and built up a solid grounding in sport in England, playing for Netherton Football Club for nine years and Peterborough Northern Star for one season.
When he relocated to Cavan a couple of years ago, he continued to play soccer by signing for Kingscourt Harps, while also diversifying, dipping his toes into Gaelic football waters with Kingscourt Stars.
It’s an education he will continue with St. Mary’s, but he admitted tackling hurling at this stage of his life would be a bridge too far.
‘The reason I found football easy to pick up is because I played soccer for many years. If I had been put in Wexford from the beginning I would probably have tried hurling.
‘Looking at it on TV, I can’t even see the hurl. I’m thinking “what are they doing, are they just running around for no reason?”,’ he said.
It’s clear that Ahmad, who studied medical science and is now trying to get into studying business and law, wants to give back whatever he can to the community and is really embracing any opportunities that will be afforded to him through the GAA.
‘It’s fantastic. It’s a beautiful game to be part of. I really appreciate that St. Mary’s gave me the opportunity to train with them and be part of the club. I really want to help out with the club and give something back as a volunteer,’ he said.
‘With the lockdown I couldn’t do anything but hopefully soon with things easing up I’ll be able to show my appreciation. I see what the GAA do and the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes and the amount of time that volunteers give. It’s a great way to bring the community together.’
Given the constraints brought on by the Covid-19 crisis, Ahmad had only taken part in one training session at the time of talking, readily admitting that he found the going tough, so he is working hard on improving his fitness levels ahead of the championship throw-in.
‘I had one training session and that didn’t go very well. It was the first session back and I was all over the place. Two runs up the hill and I was done. I was lying flat for half an hour.
‘When I was on the floor the lads were saying “see you next week” and I said “maybe not, I’m going back to Cavan”,’ he laughed.
Ahmad’s introduction to the St. Mary’s training regime may have been a trying experience, but he is still champing at the bit to get a taste of the action with his new club.
‘They’re concentrating on hurling at the moment so I’m kind of waiting for the Gaelic football to start. I’m looking forward to even being on the sideline and having that experience. I’m going for a run every day and trying to get fitter.
‘Hopefully I’ll get to play. I was joking with the lads that I’ve come from a county that are in Division 2. The lads kept their fitness levels up but everything for me dropped as soon as I left Cavan to come to Rosslare.
‘There was no training after that so it was tough enough on the first night,’ said Ahmad, who has also trained with local soccer club Rosslare Port.
Ahmad’s appreciation shines through as he thanks Emily O’Rourke and Jenny Kirwan from Wexford Local Development, Larry Morrissey from St. Mary’s, and the GAA community as a whole for welcoming him with open arms.
‘It gives you more optimism and some freedom and allows you to connect, which is fantastic. I just want to thank the GAA family for all the opportunities and for allowing me to be part of it,’ he said.
Larry Morrissey was Ahmad’s first point of contact at St. Mary’s after the club’s Coiste na nOg Chairman had got in touch with Wexford Local Development to see how they could reach out to the people living in Direct Provision, and he explained how it came about.
‘I just love to see young lads hurling. I was passing by the centre so I threw in a few balls and hurls for the children to play with. I rang Emily O’Rourke and asked her is there anything we can do with them.
‘She said “actually there’s a lad called Ahmad down there and he played before”. I said “grand, I’ll get in contact with him”. She gave me his number so I met up with him, brought him training with us.
‘He’s a lovely fella. The lads all interacted with him and made him feel welcome. They were all really friendly to him, which is nice to see,’ he said.
‘Then I met with Emily, she came up to the clubhouse. I showed her around because she had never seen our facilities. I said to her “surely there’s something we can do together with the people that are down there?”.
‘At the minute we’re only putting a plan together with her. We’re looking at things like giving some of them free gym membership and they might cut some grass for us or do some work around the place. A lot of them might not have their work permits yet. They’re bored and they’re wanting stuff to do,’ he said.
While nothing is set in stone yet, Larry is hopeful that an agreement will be reached that will be mutually beneficial for the club and the residents of the Direct Provision centre.
‘What we want to do is work with them. We have a big facility that’s empty from eight or nine o’clock in the morning until four or half four in the evening. Emily was talking about maybe setting up a mother-toddler group because we have an open recreation area that could be used.
‘We’re at the early stages of interacting but I’d be very confident in saying to you that we will definitely make something happen with them, and the committee are very in favour of it,’ he said.
Larry is keen to see St. Mary’s to be looked upon as a community hub, rather than just a GAA club in the traditional sense, and wants to attract new blood from all walks of life to bring everybody together to sing off of the same hymn sheet.
‘The big problem in our parish for a number of years has been interaction with the community. My main objective is to make the club the central focal point of the parish. In most parishes you’ve got the school and the church and everything is focused around that.
‘We’re so spread out, you’ve got Tagoat,
Rosslare Strand, Kilrane and Rosslare Harbour all in the one parish. Trying to get a central focal point is not easy.
‘It’s been a fair challenge to try to get people to pull together, to realise we’re all the one group of people. We want to unite the parish and involve people as much as we can,’ he said.
The lockdown may have temporarily put the brakes on any prospective link-up with the Direct Provision centre, but now with the country getting back to some sort of normality, Larry said they hope to welcome the residents into the club soon, giving them a well-deserved boost in their new surroundings.
‘We’re officially open again and the inside of the building will be re-opened on the 20th, which will allow us to hold a barbecue. Emily was saying she could organise a bus and they could all come up and see the place. It won’t be just for them, it would be an open day for the whole parish.
‘When you hear of their stories it’s genuinely shocking and people just don’t realise that. You couldn’t believe what some of these people have gone through to end up in an old hotel in Rosslare Harbour.
‘There isn’t any community centre, there isn’t any swimming pools. They haven’t been given the opportunity to meet people. Really, the only way of integrating into the community is through organisations in the parish, and I don’t want St. Mary’s Rosslare to be seen as a non-inclusive club.
‘We got to a county Under-12 final a few years ago and we had five different nationalities on the panel. We wouldn’t have had an Under-12 team if we hadn’t had those players,’ he said.
In the north of the county, Tara Rocks Chairman Jim Higgins echoes those sentiments, having welcomed asylum seekers from the Direct Provision centre in Courtown into the club last November, after liaising with John Kelly of Wexford Local Development.
‘John told us some of the stories and we thought everyone deserves a chance. We felt they deserve to be included, to be able to get out of the hotel and do something a little bit different. We had a chat and said to John, come out to us for a bit of a day for games,’ he said.
The Gorey District club organised a fun day for families in the hope of connecting locals with the Direct Provision centre residents, and it proved to be a roaring success, as well as opening minds to what their visitors have been through.
‘A bus came up one day and they stayed for three or four hours. We put on a bit of food for them. We brought them to our hall upstairs and had games up there. We played soccer rather than GAA because it’s a kind of an international sport.
‘We all integrated well together, adults, kids. We brought down our own kids as well. It wasn’t just a case of bringing up the people in Direct Provision, we integrated. There was friendships formed as well.
‘We sat down over a cup of tea. Even from my own point of view, listening to some of the personal stories, they were harrowing. It definitely changed my view of people in Direct Provision. They really deserve a chance. It’s a hard place to be.
‘They all had a different story to tell. It was a humbling experience. As a community we got much more from it than we gave to be honest. It was a great experience and it’s something we’ll do again.
‘To sit down and listen to them and hear their stories. Some had been to different countries before they got here.
The realisation that that could be me or you. It could be our kids. You think to yourself “this could be us”. I hope they got as much from it as we did.
‘They did say the Courtown hotel was exceptionally good. That had nothing but good things to say about the centre here and the people running it. Their feeling was if you had to be in a Direct Provision centre, Courtown was good,’ he said.
Now that the country is gradually opening up again, Jim said Tara Rocks are keen to build on that initial step and want to continue to weave a more tightknit community for all, something he believes Irish people should be acutely aware of.
‘We would definitely hope to do it again. The whole Covid thing kind of put a stop to everything. The big thing is helping people to change perceptions. It’s not that long since we had famine and mass emigration from this country, with people going all over the world.
‘It’s not that far away from families being put on boats to England, America and Australia, with half of them dying before they got there, and I’m sure they had to put up with terrible conditions when they did get there. It’s not that far removed from any of us as Irish people,’ he said.
Down the line, Jim would love to see players of all nationalities lining out for Tara Rocks, but for now it’s simply about offering the hand of friendship and seeing where that will lead them.
‘We’re involved in the community as much as being a GAA club. It would be a lovely bonus if some of them wanted to play sport. I suppose for them, the problem is that they never know where they’re going to be. The fear they live in is that they could be told tomorrow morning “you’re moving on”.
‘They’re really happy in Courtown. They all just want to work. The people I spoke to, their professions ranged from an accountant, an architect, a landscape designer. They’re professional people. It was humbling to talk to them and probably different to what I was expecting.
‘I don’t really know what I was expecting. The day went really, really well. They were appreciative and grateful for what was done and it’s definitely something we’ll do again and try to forge a link going forward.
‘When you’re doing something like this, it’s really important that you include your own community in it, that you’re not just having a day out for the refugees. The last thing they needed is more stuff done for them.
‘They’re not allowed to do much stuff for themselves so I think that’s one thing they liked when they came up. It wasn’t about us standing there looking at them playing football, we all got involved and we mixed,’ he said.