They want to be a part of it...
New York ready to embrace the inclusivity of the Tailteann Cup
NEW YORK’S hope this evening is that the legacy of the pandemic will not be the sound of a team creaking with inactivity, but one speaking with a local accent. Three years after they were last in action, New York will be back on the Gaelic Park pitch with a team that, in many ways, will go some way to reflecting how a GAA community has coped with almost three years of Covid-forced isolation.
The measure of that, however, will hardly be reflected in the result. In recent times, the Exiles have put the kind of squeeze on Connacht visitors that saw Roscommon scrape past them by a point in 2016, with Leitrim nerves stretched to a period of extra time 24 months later.
New York’s harsh winter meant the club scene only stirred last month and that was out of necessity to get a round of championship played in order to ensure the eligibility for those who tog out today.
As a result, a Sligo team that have shown an appetite for running up big scores this spring could get a run on them.
But, if they do, New York are no longer in this for the quick summer sprint but for the long haul and will not be fazed.
Tony McEntee may well be the more recognisable of the two Armagh managers in opposing dugouts today, but it is his Culloville neighbour Johnny McGeeney who has broken the mould.
For the past two years, he has led his club St Barnabas to back-toback New York senior championships, but his biggest trick is that he has done so with an Americanborn team.
They may have been assisted by the stalling of incoming player traffic, but ultimately Barnabas’ triumph was rooted in putting sustainability ahead of short-term success whereas, in the past, others leaned on patronage to ensure money wins as well as talks.
‘Money runs out, you know,’ explains McGeeney. ‘I never understood the money part of it to be honest because, at the end of the day, all you are winning is a championship. It is different for the American-born because they are playing with a team, with a group, they grew up with and they know no different.
‘Listen, if anyone comes out, we will get them their flights and we will get them a job. If they fall in our lap and they ask to come out, then 100 per cent they are welcome but we try and stick with the IrishAmericans.’
It is precisely because of McGeeney’s investment in developing young, home-grown talent that, five years ago, the chairperson of the New York Board Joan Henchy asked him to head up the county’s development squads.
Three years ago, his New York team won a championship for native-born players in Croke Park and he will compete in the same competition layer this summer after being appointed New York’s junior manager. And, when they could not fill the senior job, well, there was only man to go to.
It is not that today’s team will be made up exclusively of Irish Americans – Tipperary’s Munster SFC winner Alan Campbell, Galway’s Adrian Varley and Johnny Glynn will all feature – but at least half the team that will start will be home-grown. And from this point that number is only going to get bigger.
When McGeeney finished up playing for New York, he saw no attraction in getting into management.
But when persuaded to get in on the ground floor by coaching kids, he was immediately smitten by a culture so different to the one he had been used to as a youngster.
‘I was never involved with Irish teams as a manager or coach so I have always been involved with American teams.
‘I got an eye-opener when I went to the Féile seven or eight years ago and it was all “yes, coach, thanks, coach, can I do this, coach?”.
‘It is just respect they were brought up with or something that is drilled into them at school level. It is second to none. You see Jamie Boyle, who will captain us against Sligo, in all the years I have been working with him I don’t think I have ever heard him say a bad word, an insult of any shape or form come out of his mouth. It is just, “yes, coach, no problem, coach”.
W
hen I was playing football, I would have been yapping all the time, we all were, giving it straight back to whoever was coaching us. ‘That is just the Irish way,’ says McGeeney.
Of course, the payback for seeking to grow their own puts an obvious cap on the quality of players produced because they won’t get regular exposure to the level of competition in Ireland.
And there is also the reality that in New York, the value of the GAA is in the identity and connectivity it facilitates, however things are changing for the better in the new post-pandemic world on the competitive front.
McGeeney started out this year with 60 players – junior and senior squads train together – and their inclusion in a very real way in both of those championships could have a transformative impact.
While at home, there are some sniffy attitudes towards the inaugural playing of the Tailteann Cup, for New York – who will enter it at the quarter-final stage – it represents genuine inclusion.
‘It is massive. This is something we have been looking for for years, a path to going home and competing. I think this year is probably one year too early for us because of how the pandemic has impacted, but next year we will be much stronger with lads coming in from Ireland and our home-grown players having another year under their belts.
‘But it is massive for our community, it is massive for the county board and we have to go now and prove that we belong at least in the Tailteann Cup.’
In the not-too-distant past, New York would not have been able to avail of such a pathway because of the numbers of undocumented who would have been precluded from travelling home. That situation has eased for all kinds of reasons, but primarily because New York teams are now largely made up of firstgeneration Americans.
‘I would say 98 per cent of our players would be able to travel home and play now, which is massive because I would say when I came over 14 years ago that only 20 per cent would have been able to,’ suggests McGeeney, who views a bright future for the Exiles.
‘I was listening to a podcast this week and they were talking about Roscommon having an easy path to the Connacht final because they play Sligo in the semi-final.
‘I suppose it is not a disrespect, just down to what has happened down the years that people say things like that. Fair enough, but over the next couple of years we will try and stop that.’