THE sight of over half a dozen Galway men togged for Mayo in the New York intermediate club football final last summer gave fresh impetus to the establishment of a new Galway GAA Club in the Big Apple.

The plan by a group of exiles in the US was to launch the Galway Football and Hurling Club New York to coincide with the visit of Pádraig Joyce’s Galway to Gaelic Park for their Connacht Championship opener in 2020, but Covid-19 put the kybosh on that.

The dream then regained momentum after up to eight Galwegians – among them Damien Varley (Cortoon Shamrocks), James Kilgariff (Dunmore MacHales), Johnny Duane (St James’), Eamon Brannigan (St Michael’s), and Adrian Varley (Cortoon Shamrocks) – lined-out in the green and red of Mayo at the home of GAA in New York on Sunday, August 27.

“Afterwards, there was a big push (to set up the club),” said Patrick Cunningham, a Cortoon club man from Fear More outside Tuam who has spent the guts of the past decade stateside.

The inaugural Annual General Meeting of the new club was held last October, in Tara Bar and Grill, a sports bar in Yonkers.

“That was a roaring success,” said Cunningham who was elected PRO, social media manager and County Board delegate of the new club.

“There is a hunger there for people to get involved in a Galway New York team,” he added. The club is open to all, and many of its 120-plus members are American born, but it has a distinctive Galway flavour.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play