The original article featured on The 42.ie (Emma Duffy)

Marla Candon tells the team’s story as all roads lead to Maastricht in Holland for Sunday’s showdown against Monaghan side Castleblaney.

THERE WAS, INDEED, a real sense this was a massive achievement.

Craobh Rua of Belgium, or Belgium GAA, booked an unlikely All-Ireland ladies club football junior championship quarter-final spot after a 2-6 to 0-8 victory away to Leeds outfit Hugh O’Neills two weeks ago.

Next up is a showdown against Ulster champions Castleblaney Faughs of Monaghan in Maastricht, Holland, on Sunday morning.

“People can’t get over it,” chairperson, current captain and star forward Marla Candon beams. “And I think Leeds got a fierce auld shock as well!”

Belgium GAA is one of two clubs in the country, and one of the biggest in Europe, competing across men’s and ladies Gaelic football, along with hurling and camogie.

Candon hails from Roscommon. A former inter-county player with the Rossies and captain of Dublin club heavyweights Foxrock-Cabinteely — along with the 2007 TG4 Underdogs — Candon was seconded to Belgium for work, and is the assistant deputy director of The European School in Brussels. 

A latecomer to Gaelic football — “I only picked it up at the age of 24 or 25,” she explains, recalling her early days teaching in Hollypark — basketball is her first sport. Like several involved with the club. More on that shortly.

Speaking to a Leeds player after the preliminary clash, the pair discovered they had played against one another in the ’07 All-Ireland junior club semi-final, Candon for Fox-Cab, her opponent for Latton of Monaghan.

“What is it now? Jesus, 15 years later,” she grins.

“When I left in 2015 and came to Belgium, my last game for Foxrock-Cabinteely was a senior All-Ireland semi-final against Donaghmoyne. I suppose I left football at the top level. Coming over here, I was well in my late 30s at that stage, so it was nice to step away from… although I missed it, it was very intense with work so I couldn’t give as much time as I wanted to to football.

“Playing football in this way allowed me to travel and meet new people, but it also allowed for someone who is supremely mad about sport and loves to play at a high level to kind of gracefully bow out or find another level.

“And then to have another challenge in bringing others on. Now, in the real twilight of my career, to be in a position where we’re in an All-Ireland quarter-final is just phenomenal… phenomenal.”

A tweet went around after that monumental victory in England saying it was ground-breaking — the first-ever win by a European ladies football side in the All-Ireland club championships.

Turns out it wasn’t, but the height of the achievement remains.

“We had won a preliminary round before, apparently in 2014, according to Anay Rios, who’s been on the team for a number of years,” Candon explains.

“She predates me, she’s a Spanish girl. But in my lifetime, we’ve played Birmingham, Glasgow and then another London team. Twice, we travelled to the UK. And once, we had a team come over to us and we’ve never never got any further.

“There’s been an appetite for competition after the two years of Covid. We’re unbeaten in all the tournaments we go to, but girls aren’t used to playing 15-a-side. Against Leeds, it was like, ‘There’s no expectations here. Just go and enjoy yourselves and try to be better than your marker.’ The result was not expected. But at the same time, the capabilities are there. It was brilliant.

“The Irish on the team know how important it is, and the non-Irish went to huge lengths as well to be part of it. The efforts that the team have gone to is just phenomenal. They’ve spent a lot of money to be involved, and all the travel. Ah, it’s just brilliant.”

Belgium GAA generally play nine-a-side, with Longford man Cosmos Gilmore at the helm. “Cosmos is superb, and he adapted a style of play for us for 9s, but it was evident even in the way we play in 15s – support play and running off the shoulder. His handprint is on the team, and he’s part of the reason we’ve done so well this season.”

Of the 19 players that featured in Leeds, just eight are Irish. Roscommon, Kerry, Mayo, Cavan, Meath, Kildare, and Laois were all represented. Where else? Belgium, of course, and then there’s Greece, France, Spain, Denmark, South Africa, Spain, Australia and Sweden. Multicultural, to say the very least.

“Anyone who has an adventurous spirit gets involved… it brings people together,” Candon smiles, explaining how most of her team-mates are all-rounders.

A lot of Candon’s team-mates have a background in basketball, like herself, while others have played soccer, rugby, and Aussie Rules; they have the skills and athleticism from a range of other sports and are adaptable. Others may have family in Ireland or other links. It’s a case of learning the rules, and going form there.

Candon tells some amazing stories: how Greek-Belgian goalkeeper Elena Postanzi had to go on a wild goose chase back to Athens to renew her passport before the trip to Leeds; how main scoring forward Clara Lambert is Danish, but often mistaken for being Irish because of her accent; how the aforementioned Rios — christened The Spanish Gooch by Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh – has been there since day dot and is “an encyclopaedia” of Gaelic football.

Then there’s the six-hour round-trips for games, the scraping together of players at times.

The commitment. The sacrifice. The will and desire.

“It’s really a club effort,” she nods.

And always has been.

Belgium GAA was established in 2003, with Dubliner Barbara Wynne one of the founding members. In the early 2000s, Wynne would have went to The Hague to play her football, Candon reveals, mentioning several other ’originals’ who ultimately came together to form one of the cornerstones of the Irish ex-pat community in Belgium.

The article originally features on Sky Sports, RTÉ, Her Sport, and The Independent (Daragh Small)

She was once nicknamed ‘the Spanish Gooch’ by Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh.

She stands 165cm tall, speaks multiple languages, hails from Andalucia and Sunday’s currentaccount.ie All-Ireland Junior Club quarter-final will mean that bit more for Anay Rios.

The diminutive Spaniard has seen it all and done it all across Europe, but playing in an All-Ireland semi-final is the new dream now and she could move step closer with a win in Maastricht.

Monaghan’s Castleblayney Faughs stand in the way of Belgium’s Craobh Rua and an unprecedented slot in the final four but it won’t be for the want of trying for Rios and her committed teammates, who fight climate change by sending their CO2 emissions compensation money to BOS+ after every away day, in order to plant trees.

“I’m very nervous and excited at the same time. We are the underdogs but I am incredibly proud and happy to be part of this team and I’m confident we will show our best football,” said Rios.

“I am convinced that, regardless of the result, we will be better footballers for playing this match.”

Rios is from a town in the mountains of the province of Cadiz in the south of Spain – and she has played football for Gibraltar, La Coruna, and Sevilla.

But even before she picked up a Gaelic football, she had tried her hand at hurdle running, soccer, rugby, and handball, the latter of which she went on to represent PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

“It was kind of a high-level team. Of course, my position changed because, in Spain, I was playing in the middle and there the average size of my players was 180cm so I went to the wing.

“It’s better to be somewhat small and mobile if you’re on the wings.

“It was very, very competitive playing for them. And also they have been playing together since they were young. So when I was there in my early 20s, and then trying to take the position of some people, it was not always easy.”

Rios’ linguistic expertise and her job in the European Commission ensured she travelled throughout Europe and further afield. Her soccer career took shape when she was working in Russia.

Her path was slowly taking her towards Ladies football and through an Irish national, who was captain of her soccer team, she learned about Gaelic games.

Belgium GAA had been set up in 2003 and five years later Rios was there to witness the formation of their new Ladies football team. Barbara Wynne was the central figure behind all of this, and the Dublin native linked up with the likes of long-serving player Caragh O’Connor on St Patrick’s Day in 2008 to bring the plan to fruition.

“They decided to do an exhibition match and they called people that could be available,” said Rios.

“And one person said to me, ‘oh why don’t you come along?’. So I played the game. The first half, I didn’t like it, because they wouldn’t pass me the ball. So in the second half, I decided to just run after the ball.

“I was diving for the ball because I didn’t know the rules, obviously it was my first match ever. But when I finished, the referee told me, ‘oh, you could be a real player if you learn the rules’.

“And then also Barbara Wynne approached me and told me, ‘look, I’m thinking about creating a team for girls because Belgium GAA was created already but only for hurlers’.

“She asked me if I would like to try and to play and I said, ‘well, I had a lot of fun today so why not?’”

It was the start of something special for a team and club that would go on to dominate the European landscape in Ladies football.

They have won 12 continental crowns since and have had representatives from 21 countries across the globe.

This year they got to this stage thanks to a brilliant victory over British champions Hugh O’Neill’s in Leeds two weeks ago.

And the team led by Rios, who is also joint manager, and Longford man, a former Galway U-20 All-Ireland winning coach Cosmos Gilmore, has a unique backstory.

Given their location in the administrative centre of the European Union, it has led to many interesting subplots, such as good luck messages on Twitter this week from their Honorary President, MEP Seán Kelly.

The team trains at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the home of Celtic Rugby Club in Brussels, a base that actually works out well for the team considering the connected nature of the relatively small city.

“I had the opportunity of meeting an amazing, a lovely man and also a great coach that was Éamonn Ryan.”

Their home pitch is too small for tomorrow’s fixture but Maastricht will be their adopted home, with special supporters’ buses chartered for the trip across the border.

Rios has played across the backline and midfield for Belgium but will likely line out up front against Castleblayney.

Her story has brought her to Ireland too, from weddings in Kerry and Down to birthdays on Clare Island, holidays in Donegal and Galway, foraging blueberries in Wicklow to even canvassing in Cork.

She loves Ireland and has even attempted to add Gaeilge to her language repertoire, while she has other unusual threads that tie her to the country and the game.

“I once had to mark Anna Geary when she was playing for Luxembourg,” said Rios.

“I remember when they were telling me, ‘Anay, that’s the one you’re going to mark’. And I was like she’s on fire in this tournament’. She was really on fire.

“Like I saw her afterwards playing camogie too but playing football, she was absolutely brilliant, brilliant. We had our fights on the field but at the end she was very nice. She was a nice girl and very competitive.”

Rios gets emotional when she remembers another Cork great, the late former Ladies football supremo, Éamonn Ryan [pictured above].

“I had the opportunity of meeting an amazing, a lovely man and also a great coach that was Éamonn Ryan. I get emotional here because he’s not with us anymore.

“We invited him to come to Belgium. I cannot remember now, it was maybe through David Barrett, who is from Cork and also I think it’s a family friend.

“I learned a lot from Éamonn, not just sports wise when he was giving the training session, but he actually stayed in my house so I really had a few days knowing the person and he was just amazing.

“And also the way he was speaking about his players. He had so much admiration for all of them. So it was great that it was mutual because I am sure they have a lot of admiration for him but he was really like, you know, really devoted to them and we loved that.”

Another great of the Gaelic games holds a fond place in Rios’ heart, and that is Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, who has commentated on a couple of Belgium games in the past.

She jokes that when she kicked a wide during a game against Paris Gaels, Ó Muircheartaigh gave one of his brilliant lines: ‘The Spanish Gooch kicks for the point but the ball goes to Spain’.

Hopefully, tomorrow, Rios and her teammates can find their range instead.

Original Article by The Irish Times here (Mary Hannigan)

Ulster champions may feel like they are taking on the United Nations when they face Brussels-based Craobh Rua in All-Ireland JFC quarter-final in Maastricht

Safe to say, this fixture stood out in the list issued by the Ladies Gaelic Football Association earlier this week:

“All-Ireland Junior Club Championship – quarter-final: Craobh Rua (Belgium) v Castleblayney Faughs (Monaghan), 11am CET/10am GMT, Maastricht, Holland.”

Blayney v Belgium, then, is one of the year’s quirkier sporting contests, and while the bulk of the Monaghan players come from in or around the town, the list of home places of some of the Belgian panel will make them feel like they’re taking on the United Nations.

Deep breath: Kiltimagh, Johannesburg, Newbridge, Andalucía, Roosky, Nantes, Killeshandra, Adelaide, Maynooth, Copenhagen, Kilrush, Athens, Dungourney, Gothenburg, Lucan, São Paulo, Ballina, Maryland . . . . even the mighty Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh could struggle, over the course of a mere 60 minutes, to squeeze in the biographical details of that group.

He would, though, no doubt, point out that half of those places are not Gaelic football strongholds.

But there has been a distinct international flavour to Belgium GAA – or Craobh Rua, the ‘Red Branch’ – since the club was founded in 2003, a women’s section added to the set-up five years later when Dubliner Barbara Wynne tired of having to travel to the Netherlands to get her fix of Gaelic football.

From the off, they attracted an array of nationalities, many of them team-mates of Belgian-based Irish women in other sports, like basketball, soccer, netball and handball, all of them intrigued by this peculiar spectacle that seemed to be a hybrid of all those codes.

“Most of them are just natural at sport, so they adapted really quickly,” says Belgium midfielder Jenny Moore, a former Kildare minor footballer who now works in the European Parliament.

“Although some of them were double-hopping at the start, so it took time to get the hang of it,” she laughs.

Now, she says, there are few more committed to the cause than the ‘non-Irish’, seven of whom were in the starting line-up for the victory over British champions Hugh O’Neills in Leeds the weekend before last, the result that earned them this meeting with the Ulster champions.

An example of that commitment? Look no further than the team’s Greek goalkeeper Elena Postantzi.

“When we found out that we had to go to the UK to play Hugh O’Neills, Elena realised that her passport had expired,” says Moore.

“There was no appointment available in the Greek embassy in Brussels until April, so her only option was to fly to Greece to get it renewed, so she flew from Lille to Athens on a red-eye flight. Their passport office runs on a first-come-first-served basis, so her father started queuing for her early in the morning. She got her passport and flew back to Brussels via Crete on the same day because she had to be back in work next morning.”

“Greece will not send passports by post so, Elena had to go back to Athens the following week to collect it. So she flew to Greece from Charleroi on the red-eye, collected the passport, flew to Manchester on the same day, on to Leeds, the train strikes complicating things, all just in the nick of time to keep a clean sheet in our match against Hugh O’Neills the next day.”

You’d be exhausted just reading that.

The last time Belgium reached this stage of the competition was eight years ago, when they became the first continental Europe-based club to achieve the feat.

Moore credits manager Cosmos Gilmore, the Longford man whose CV includes leading the Galway men’s’ under-20 side to All-Ireland success in 2020, for the team’s progress this year.

“Before Cosmos arrived, we kind of trained ourselves. But then he moved to Belgium and was looking for a team to coach – we were the lucky team to get him. He brought way more intensity to our training sessions and I think he has brought us up a level.”

“After we beat Hugh O’Neills, he told us that Castleblayney would be a different, much tougher challenge. We’d be coming up against a club, a proper parish team. But as Anay Rios said, our team is our own parish, our bond is just as tight.”

Rios, from Andalucía in Spain, was on that original 2008 team, since then winning 12 European titles, Belgium by far the dominant force in the women’s game on the continent.

“But the growth in the women’s game around Europe has been huge,” says Moore, “there are around 100 clubs now in 24, 25 countries, there are new clubs coming on the scene every year.

“Warsaw, for example, has quite a big club because there are a lot of people there studying veterinary. We have a lot players who work for the EU or in the private sector, so that’s where most of our panel come from.”

“Our club is entirely player-run, our whole committee is made up of players, and we have around 50 now across football and camogie. Marla Candon [ex Roscommon and Foxrock Cabinteely] is our chairperson and captain this year, and I’m involved in organising the travel to games and tournaments.”

While the club receives a grant from the LGFA for the travel and accommodation costs accrued by their involvement in the All-Ireland club championship, they have to stump up themselves for their European competition through the year, their travels taking them to tournaments in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and beyond.

“Yeah, but we love it,” says Moore, dismissing any talk of financial hardship.

“It’s a lovely community, it’s a bit of Ireland away from home, most of my friends in Brussels now are people I met at the club. We all hang out together, some of us live together, if we need help with anything – accommodation, job-hunting, putting up a visiting friend, whatever – we’re all there for each other in our WhatsApp group. We’ve bonded as friends off the pitch as much as we have on it. If you don’t have family here, it becomes your family.”

All they lack, for now, is a pitch big enough to host All-Ireland championship games, hence the need to make the one-hour journey to Maastricht to take on Castleblayney, their pitch at their Celtic Rugby Club base in Brussels not the required size.

The odds are firmly against them, Moore conceding that “once you go out of Europe, the level is much higher – it’ll be very hard on Sunday. But we were underdogs in Leeds and managed to pull off the win, so we’ll be hoping to do it again”.

The parish of Brussels will, then, give it a crack against Blayney.

Belgium Abú.