While Gaelic football may sound like a sport designed to ward off vampires, a fledgling footy club is growing in Greater Victoria.
Langford residents Nicky Brown and Rhianedd Gwilym were introduced to the sport during Van Isle Rovers Gaelic Athletic Club’s “bring a friend day” and fell in love with the sport, with Gwilym later inviting her colleague Molly McClellan along to play as well.
The Rovers started in 2019 and are the only team on the Island, meaning frequent ferry trips to Vancouver where there are several clubs stocked full of Irishmen who have grown up playing the sport, versus a team comprised largely of newbies. But despite their inexperience Van Isle fared well, losing narrowly in the semi-finals of the Division 3 Gaelic football championships.
“They don’t beat you up for it if you do something wrong, just in the future let’s practise doing this,” said Gwilym. “It’s a good craic.”
Around half of the players at the club are Canadian and new to the sport, a unique selling point to Heather Mahardy, one of the club’s founders.
“Most of the Vancouver teams only have one or two Canadian players per team, just because there’s such a big Irish population in Vancouver, they don’t really have to do much outside recruiting to get players. Whereas there’s a really small Irish population on the Island, so a big thing that makes our club unique is that we spend a lot of time trying to teach new people to play the game.”
Gaelic football is a cross between handball, soccer and volleyball, with a dash of rugby thrown in. Players run with a spherical ball, having to bounce or kick it every four steps and pass the ball using their forearms like volleyball. The aim is to punt the ball into a soccer net, which scores three points, or over the crossbar, which scores one.
“It’s a real leveler as well because it’s such a weird sport – I played rugby, there’s soccer, there’s basketball players, volleyball and handball players, there’s a skill for everybody in it,” said Brown.
Brown, Gwilym and McLellan all plan on sticking with the sport, with McLellan set to participate in a charity game in Vancouver on Sept. 30.
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