Heston Gaels Gunned Down

Months ago, Heston Gaels contacted us about playing a challenge in Brussels. Delighted with their initiative, we gratefully accepted their request. The timing was set to be the weekend before the last round in Maastricht. With a trip to London planned the preceding week to play Tir Chonnail Gaels, we couldn’t have planned the run-in to the last round of the Pan-E Championship/Shield better.

London fell through and the fact this weekend was a bank holiday in Belgium nearly put the Heston Gaels fixture in jeopardy. As I was back in Ireland, I’d basically washed my hands of it and left it in Colin’s hands. With fellas dropping in and out, he emailed me during the week questioning the value of bothering to organise such games. Luckily for everyone though, his fuse remains alot longer than mine.

With the panels for next week in the process of being finalised, guys were genuinely playing for their places. In my absences, ‘chief advisors’ Eoin and Collins were to run the rule over lads. Amusingly, the first thing that was said by both of them in the texts I received on Saturday was that the other was brutal. Other comments were a bit away from being aligned too. I was hoping Colin Byrne would share the same opinions as one of them but he had a slightly different take on things too.

The game itself was won by a point (preserving our unbeaten record in P50) and I’ve no doubt served its purpose. Fellas like Keary and Colin needed game time after injury, as did Griff who had just returned. New lads like Paddy also got his first chance to impress.

I don’t think there are too many other clubs in Europe so active in seeking challenge games and maybe they are right. People keep themselves busier at weekends on the continent and the current G.A.A. diet is ample to satisfy their hunger. However, we feel that to compete with other sports, especially FC Irlande, we need to offer a fairly full calendar of fixtures, so we persist.

That basically concludes our main preparations for next Saturday. The panels need to be finalised tomorrow and hopefully the rest of the arrangements will go smoothly in the coming days.