Since its foundation 10 years ago, the European GAA Board has been making phenomenal progressive in expanding the scope of Gaelic sports in Europe as club numbers have skyrocketed by a whopping 80% alone in the last five years.
The Europe GAA Convention was held recently in Stockholm, Sweden, and for the first time ever, GAA supporters across the continent and indeed around the world, had a birds eye view of proceedings as the AGM was streamed live over the Internet.
Among many of the topics discussed at this year’s convention was the exciting new games development pilot scheme announced for Brittany. With some 15 clubs, France has the largest number across the 17 country GAA landscape with Le Bretagne region in particular seeing amazing growth in football clubs of late.
In an effort to support games in Brittany, Europe GAA secured funding of EUR 15,000 from both Croke Park and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs towards building cultural and sporting relationships through the development of Gaelic sports in French GAA clubs, youth programs and schools.
Delegates heard also of how careful planning and organisation was needed to further nurture participation on the Continent in all four GAA codes of football, hurling , camogie and ladies football.
Europe GAA have very ambitious plans for 2011 as we could see the very first European Gaelic Football Championship final round being held in Ireland next year. Here to tell us about that and the many issues discussed at Convention is the re-elected European GAA Chairman, Willie Cashin.
Great to hear about the hard work being done in Europe ! Keep up the good work !
Will do.