During those rare and highly seasonal discussions in GAA circles involving New York and London, there is always an unspoken and generally uncomfortable calculation being made during conversation. How much effort do we need to make here? How much does anyone care about how they’re doing?
It’s awkward stuff when no GAA community in Ireland has been left untouched or enriched by their connections to the enclaves of Gaelic games across the world. It’s even more awkward when you start to really drill into what’s required for international players to get anywhere near elite intercounty level when playing abroad.
Players don’t travel with hurling or football in mind and emigrating is a decision made for every other reason apart from sport. But the most basic needs and entitlements in London, New York and everywhere else are the same as anyone at home: appropriate, enjoyable competition. Look at the rising participation numbers across the globe, the GAA have gotten plenty right on that front. This makes it even stranger that they haven’t seriously grasped the issues dragging down their most visible international involvement of all.
Last weekend New York and London got clubbed by a combined total of 42 points against Mayo and Galway in the Connacht football championship, almost a year to the day since New York beat Leitrim, who beat New York only by a point in 2018. In 2022 New York ran Sligo to four points. Even that 15-point tanking from Mayo last Sunday was six points better than the beating doled out by Mayo in 2019.
The situation in London is more acute. It’s 11 years since they made a Connacht final and only a few years since they had a proper run at promotion from Division Four, but these beatings aren’t helping. Galway scored five goals last Sunday, sympathetic eyewitnesses reckoned they could have scored ten.
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The solution seems simple and reinforces the idea that what happens abroad has much more of an impact here than anyone cares about. Based on those results, seeding the Connacht championship goes beyond sorting a pile of problems within that competition to fixing a few issues with the football championship itself.
First off, seeding the top three teams in Connacht and drawing the bottom two, New York and London, against each other to deliver a fourth semi-finalist at least gives the winners some sense of momentum before they take on a much bigger gun. It also helps to solve the annoying anomaly that leaves teams in the middle reaches of Division Two and those promoted from Division Three waiting until mid-season to see if they’re playing Sam Maguire or Tailteann Cup football.
As it stands, any Division Three or Four team making a provincial final effectively bump off the lowest-placed team in the top 16. Galway, Mayo and Roscommon ending up on one side of the Connacht draw meant that Sligo emerged in a Connacht final having beaten London and New York and were duly hammered by Galway, while Meath were dropped into the Tailteann Cup. Seeding the draw still gives the lower-ranked teams a strong shot at a Connacht final, but also respects the importance of the league and ensures teams are making a provincial final entirely on merit instead of a lucky draw.
The questions about where the international teams fit into the championship will also get sharper as the years go on without a proper plan. If the provincial championships are eventually flipped to the spring and the All-Ireland championships become a predominantly league-based affair, what is the fairest possible pathway for the international teams?
There has been idle talk of grouping the international teams together as part of a future league-based championship, if the depth was there, with the winners being fed into the Tailteann Cup. New York and London also toyed with the idea of an annual match before but it went nowhere.
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London are full participants in the National League and Tailteann Cup, with New York parachuting in at the knockout stage. Retain that system and it won’t be long before New York get cut adrift by everyone else, which would be a pity when the work being done around the world is delivering playing numbers potentially capable of creating more viable intercounty teams.
This year US GAA play in the All-Ireland junior football championship with a scatter of recognisable names and hopes of doing well. They’re already talking about making the Tailteann Cup in time. In the same way New York is linked to Connacht, US GAA is connected to the Munster championship. Raise their game to make the Tailteann Cup and Munster could offer fertile ground for them. That ambition fermenting abroad must be matched at home, especially when creating a better path for them will make a better championship for everyone.