GAA misses a trick with opening week

THE whole thing is impossibly romantic. The little patch of Ireland on the other side of the world. The immigrant’s story at the heart of the immigrant nation.

Sunday was a day for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free to showcase what they’ve made of themselves in the new world. To show that as much as they’re American now, they’ve retained that sense of Irishness.

In Gaelic Park in the Bronx last Sunday afternoon (evening Irish time) New York took on Leitrim in the Connacht Senior Football Championship. Just because it happens every year doesn’t make that any less remarkable. It’s a fantastic story for what it says about us here in Ireland and for what it says about the Irish in America, about the ties that bind one side of the world to the other.

It’s just a shame more wasn’t made of it. It’s a shame frankly that the game wasn’t marketed more heavily or that it wasn’t shown live on RTÉ last Sunday evening. RTÉ missed a trick there – it would have drawn an audience and not just because there was a real chance New York could win this time around – and the GAA missed a trick in not encouraging or even subsidising RTÉ to broadcast the game live (obviously it would be more expensive to do so than a game in Pairc Uí Chaoimh).

Instead the championship is underway – there was another game in Ruislip on Sunday that could have been packaged as part of an exiles special – while barely making a splash. It’s a strange way to go about promoting your flagship competition.

It shows a lack of imagination. There were two American born players on the New York team last Sunday, that’s pretty damn interesting if you ask us. Perhaps the GAA needs to be a little more American in its approach – if you’ve got it, flaunt it.