The unique Irish past grows as the Victoria Club competes with larger mainland teams
While Gaelic football sounds like a sport to ward off vampires, a fledgling football club is emerging in Greater Victoria.
Langford residents Nicky Brown and Rhianedd Gwilym learned about and fell in love with the sport during the Van Isle Rovers Gaelic Athletic Club’s Bring a Friends Day. Gwilym later invited her colleague Molly McClellan 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 full of Irish people who have grown up in the sport, as opposed to a team made up mostly of newcomers. However, despite their inexperience, Van Isle performed well, narrowly losing in the semi-finals of the Division 3 Gaelic Football Championship.
“They don’t beat you up for doing something wrong, let’s just practice that in the future,” Gwilym said. “It’s a good mood.”
About half of the club’s players are Canadian and new to the sport, a unique selling proposition for Heather Mahardy, one of the club’s founders.
“Most Vancouver teams only have one or two Canadian players per team, just because Vancouver has such a large Irish population, they don’t really have to do much outside of recruiting to get players. Whilst there is a very small Irish population on the island, what makes our club unique is the fact that we spend a lot of time teaching new people the game.”
Gaelic football is a mix of handball, soccer and volleyball, with a touch of rugby. Players run with a spherical ball, have to bounce or kick it every four steps, and pass the ball with their forearms like in volleyball. The aim is to shoot the ball into a soccer net, which scores three points, or over the bar, which scores a goal.
“It’s also a real leveler because it’s such a weird sport – I’ve played rugby, there’s football, there’s basketball players, there’s volleyball and handball players, there’s something for everyone,” Brown said.
Brown, Gwilym and McLellan all plan to stay in the sport, with McLellan attending a benefit game in Vancouver on September 30th.
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