A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME

Gaelic football finds its footing in Essex County

By Adrianna Donat

The Essex Shillelaghs GAA welcome new players of all experience levels, giving children the chance to learn Gaelic football in a fun, supportive environment. Photo by Richard Morris.

If you have wondered about the lawn signs around town advertising Gaelic football, you are not alone. The signs promote a sport that looks a little like soccer – until someone picks up the ball. Then it resembles basketball – until that player punts it downfield. There is a hint of American football, too, although nobody is wearing pads and tackling is not allowed.

Welcome to Gaelic football, a fast, fluid Irish game that the Essex Shillelaghs Gaelic Athletic Association is building locally, one hand pass, “solo” and strategically placed QR code at a time.

Gaelic football lawn signs are a common sight in our towns.

The practices and local games take place in West Orange, but this is very much a regional enterprise. Club chairman Jim McGuire lives in Maplewood. Other organizers and players come from South Orange and surrounding towns. Non-West Orange residents are welcome, too. Now in its third year, the club has grown to nearly 100 active players across its youth, women’s and men’s programs.

McGuire’s simplest explanation of the game is that it falls somewhere “between soccer and rugby.” A standard team has 15 players, although local recreational games are often played seven on seven. Players score three points by kicking the ball into a net and one by sending it over the crossbar. They can catch the round ball, kick it or pass it by punching it from one hand – but they cannot throw it.

Caroline Corrigan O’Hare and her daughter Siobhan are among the many families discovering that Gaelic football offers opportunities for both children and adults.

Players also cannot simply bend down and pick the ball off the ground. They must lift it with a foot. Once they have it, they may run four steps before bouncing it or dropping it to the foot and tapping it back into their hands, a move called a solo. If that sounds like a lot to remember while someone is trying to swat the ball away from you, it is. That is also part of the fun.

“It’s very fluid. It’s very dynamic. It’s very exciting,” McGuire says. Unlike sports in which some players rarely touch the ball, nearly everyone in Gaelic football has an opportunity to catch, carry and advance it.

There is contact, but no conventional tackling. Shoulder-to-shoulder checks are allowed at higher levels, while the younger players concentrate on skills and play. The equipment list is refreshingly short: cleats. Goalkeepers may wear gloves. Parents accustomed to buying several hundred dollars’ worth of protective gear may need a moment to absorb this information.

Practices begin with warmups and drills in kicking, hand passing and soloing, followed by scrimmages. McGuire says most children begin to understand the game after only a session or two. Because almost everyone here is learning, newcomers are not walking into a program in which every other child has been playing since preschool.

Members of the Essex Shillelaghs’ Shi-Ladies celebrate at the team’s launch party. Among those pictured are West Orange resident Kendall Blue (left), as well as the Foley sisters (right), South Orange residents.

The skills also transfer well to other sports. McGuire’s son initially resisted playing for the Brooklyn Shamrocks, then returned with friends, fell in love with the game and eventually became team captain. McGuire later saw the benefits on the basketball court and football field, particularly when his son competed for a ball in the air.

Those “50-50 balls” happen constantly in Gaelic football, McGuire says, teaching players to track the ball, time a leap and secure it while other players are doing exactly the same thing. It is useful training for soccer, basketball and football – and a respectable answer to the child who claims one more sport could not possibly help with the others.

The Essex program began with children and attracted close to 90 registrations in its first year. Organizers then added a women’s team and recently a men’s program. The current youth program serves ages 5 through 16 and includes coed recreational play, Gaelic for Girls and travel opportunities through the New York GAA region. The women’s “Shi-Ladies” welcome players 17 and older for recreational and competitive play, while the men’s program includes training and a recreational Pub League.

Essex Shillelaghs GAA Chair and Maplewood resident Jim McGuire takes the field during the Irish Sports Expo, where the club’s men’s team competed against Jersey Shore GAA. Photo by Charles Vollmer

The age range is part of the appeal. McGuire says the men have included players from their early 20s through about age 65. The women’s average age at one point was 44, including some women in their 20s. As McGuire cheerfully acknowledged, the older players may “pay the price the next day,” but they are still on the field.

At a recent Irish Sports Expo, the Essex men played the Jersey Shore GAA in a match billed – with admirable confidence – as the Garden State Championship. Essex won. The women also compete through the New York Ladies Gaelic Football Association, while youth travel teams play in places including Yonkers, Queens and Rockland County. One Essex youth player was selected for a New York Féile team and traveled to Ireland – proof that a child can begin as a curious local newcomer and find a path into a much larger sporting world.

The club’s growth has been helped enormously by the West Orange Recreation Department, which incorporated Gaelic football into its offerings and provides access to Stagg and Minish fields. Maplewood and South Orange residents register as nonresidents directly through the Essex Shillelaghs, paying a modestly higher fee. For families accustomed to fighting for field space and juggling overlapping schedules, the arrangement may sound almost suspiciously civilized.

In fact, practical family scheduling helped shape the women’s program. Kendall Blue first brought her two young children, who had no Irish background but quickly loved the game. When McGuire suggested that Blue join the women’s team, she said – as he remembers it – that she might do it if the adults and children practiced on the same night. So the club arranged exactly that, placing the groups on neighboring fields. Other mothers followed.

Caroline Corrigan O’Hare describes a similar experience. “It’s really become an O’Hare affair for us,” she said. “My husband coaches, I play on the women’s team and our girls, 10 and 12, are out there too. So it’s something we all can participate in.”

O’Hare, who has since joined the board, says the club brings together different generations and skill levels while giving families a way to be active, connected and part of a team.

That may be the most important thing to understand about the Essex Shillelaghs: Irish heritage is celebrated but not required. The club’s leaders want Gaelic football to be seen not as an unfamiliar ethnic sport but simply as another good game – one that children can begin young and continue playing well into adulthood.

They are exploring school-based programs and would eventually like to add hurling, another traditional Irish game. For now, however, they are still introducing neighbors to the sport through clinics, games, parades and those highly effective lawn signs. At one West Orange St. Patrick’s Day parade, players carried footballs and demonstrated skills with children along the route. People stepped forward to scan the signs’ QR codes as the group marched past: old-school marketing meeting a centuries-old game by way of a smartphone.

So the next time you see a Gaelic football sign in Maplewood or South Orange, take a closer look. You may find a new sport for your child, yourself or – if the family schedule is properly engineered – everybody at once. The field may be in West Orange, but the team is increasingly at home throughout SOMA.

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One of Adrianna Donat’s favorite parts of writing for Matters Magazine is discovering something new about the community she loves. She’s also a Realtor with Pollock Properties Group, helping people find homes – and new adventures – in SOMA.