For the second year in a row, Basel GAA competed at the European feile u15 Gaelic football tournament which was organised by Gaelic Games Europe (GGE / European GAA County Board) along with the hosts of this year, Kelto Vigo GAA in Galicia, Spain.
We arrived in Santiago de Compostella on the Friday night to a huge storm, and it rained that whole evening and next morning. We all wondered how that might impact the games, as it felt both wet and cold, more like typical Irish weather than Spanish!
Our first game against the 3rd seeded Galician team Xelmirez, fortunately started just as the rain stopped, however it left for a greasy ball skidding around on the astro turf pitch! Basel got straight into the game, and we stuck to our game plan using short kicks outs to retain the possession with the aim to move the ball and to build a scoring advantage with an overlapping player. This was a tight game all the way through, however thanks to some quick thinking by James Dreher who pounced on two goal opportunities in the second half, we came away with the win 4:10 v 2:6. This set us up well for the rest of the pool games.
Our second game was against a very experienced and well drilled Brussels outfit who have a strong tradition in this competition, having won the inaugural event in 2022. They played a high pressing game which made it very difficult for us to win our own possession and break up the field. We lost this game but took a lot of learnings with us into our other games. Brussels would go on to the final and become the overall winner of the feile tournament.
Our final pool game was against Boqueixon the reigning Galician champions. We played with great vigour and determination and were up on the scoreboard at half time. However, we conceded a few goals straight after half time which proved too difficult for us to recover from and so missed out on the cup semi-final with a final score 1:10 v 4:5. Boqueixon were a strong team and liked to play long ball into their forwards to win and score which worked well for them. They qualified for the feile final coming up short against a strong Brussels outfit.
Although our Basel players were disappointed, by coming 3rd in our pool group we automatically qualified for the shield semi-final. We showed great character and determination to turn our fortunes around with only a 15-minute break, to prepare ourselves mentally for the next challenge. We managed to do this successfully in our game against the GGE team, whom had a combination of players from different other clubs around Europe. Using good teamwork and retaining the ball control, we won this game which brought us into the shield final against Vannes, France.
The shield final against Vannes was a very entertaining and evenly matched game, where fitness played an important role, this being our 5th game of the day. All our players gave 100% effort in what was a low scoring affair, dominated by both defences. There were limited chances created in this game and certainly a controversy in the second half was a foul on Naoise Ryan as he was going through on goal. In the end we lost by 2 points, in what was a evenly balanced game of Gaelic football.
It was a roller coaster of a day with the weather playing its part as the sun came out after midday. It was a most beautiful setting for a football game, with a quite amazing sea view. It was tough on the emotions of our players, coaches, and travelling supporters who all went through the highs and lows in each of the five games. We are proud that we made a positive contribution to the event and added greatly to the atmosphere on the day.
Special congratulations to the feile group for representing themselves, their families and Basel GAA in such a sporting manner. We can now look forward to building on this great experience very soon at the Benelux Youth Gaelic football tournament in Luxembourg on Saturday 18th May. Our feile panel for 2024 includes:
Naoise Ryan (Captain)
Michael Cassidy (Vice Captain)
Killian McCarthy
Aoife McCarthy
Daniel Morrissey
Nieves McGarvey
Eabha Ryan
Tim Fahey
Louis Dreher
James Dreher
Aidan Smith
Rory Gallagher
Many thanks to our coaches Tom Kendrick, Shane O’Neill and Niall Ryan for the planning and preparation of the team so well, including kicking off fitness training back in December 2023 as well as mid-week trainings in April! A special word of thanks to our assistant coaches and sparring partners Donnchadh McCarthy, Odhran Curran and Javier McGarvey.
Finally big thanks to Martin Morrissey for keeping us all informed of the logistics, flights, hotels, bus, directions, event day set up, jerseys etc and of course to our fantastic travelling supporters, who are simply the best in Europe!
A few impressions of the action (credit to http://keltoivigo.es/)
There was also some TV coverage in Spanish – have a look.
The Basel GAA Feile team 2024:
Row above: Shane O’Neill, Javier McGarvey, Nieves McGarvey, Eabha Ryan, Naoise Ryan, Michael Cassidy, Odhran Curran, James Dreher, Cillian McCarthy, Donnchadh McCarthy
Row below: Tom Kendrick, Aoife McCarthy, Louis Dreher, Tim Fahey, Daniel Morrissey, Aidan Smith, Niall Ryan
Basel GAA 