Recently the victorious Dunshaughlin footballers arrived back in the county Meath village after a weel-deserved 10-day holiday in the west coast of America…

On this highly enjoyable trip, they visited places such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. While they were in San Diego, an ESPN reporter called Jim Caple caught up with some of the contingent and gave them an extensive mention in his online report about the Super Bowl between the Buccaners and the Raiders.

Here’s what Jim fearlessly reported:

I'm sharing a hotel with fellow ESPN employees and the Dunshaughlin County Meath Gaelic football team from Ireland that is training here this week. I ran across one of the players as he strolled to the soda machine in his underwear early Monday afternoon (not a pretty sight) and the rest of them a couple hours later when they took over the pool for a makeshift game of water polo using two garbage cans and a miniature football.

I asked one of the team members whether he knew much about American football and the Super Bowl, and he nodded his head enthusiastically. "I know a lot about it -- I love it. Didn't the Yankees play in it a couple years ago?"

Ummmmm, sorry. That would be baseball's World Series.

"Well, I was there for that."

Still, if the lads were a little uninformed about the Super Bowl, they certainly knew far more about American football than I knew about Gaelic football. I assumed it was what we called soccer, but I was wrong. It's more like a cross between rugby and Australian Rules football, and pretty much played (to any significant extent) only in Ireland. Games take place on a field roughly 50 percent larger than a soccer pitch and are divided into two 35-minute halves. Teams of 15 players score points by either driving the ball under the goal's crossbar or between its uprights.

I asked the team's coach what the game was like and he snapped back, "It's only the fastest and most exciting sport in the world!" in a tone implying that anyone who didn't know that was really beneath contempt.

The sport's big games are played at Dublin's Croker Stadium, which is often filled with 80,000 passionate fans. It's amazing. That's more fans than the Super Bowl will draw this Sunday, and it's for a sport I had never even heard of until Monday. And the most interesting thing is that the sport is all amateur. Athletes play for the teams located in their local parishes and the best of those go on to represent their county.

"It's hugely popular. Everyone knows about it," David Crimmins said. "There's a lot of advertisement and sponsorship money like in football, but it all gets poured back into the county and parish programs."

Another player, Declan O'Dwyyer, wanted to know where American football players who were too old for college but not good enough for the NFL played. When I explained that except for a handful of semi-pro teams, there was nowhere for these football fans to play, he found it hard to believe.
"That's strange," he said. "Jeezus, that's a shame."

He's right, it is. Wouldn't this be a better world if more of us played the sport we loved well into adulthood instead of lying on the couch in $150 replica jerseys, eating nachos and watching pampered millionaires on TV? Wouldn't it be better if we focused more of our attention on playing our own games than devoting it to an overhyped game on TV the final Sunday of each January? Wouldn't it be better if we rooted for teams whose players truly represented their local community instead of representing the ruling in Al Davis's latest lawsuit?

The answers, I suppose, depend on whether you were rooting for the Buccaneers and Raiders instead of the Eagle and Titans on Sunday.

The Dunshaughlin County Meath lads played a very spirited game of water polo until a lone hotel desk clerk, armed only with her voice, ordered them all out of the pool. I was stunned when they all quickly acquiesced, leaving the pool without complaint or backtalk. It was an impressive display. And an encouraging one. Unfortunately, Jim does not mention is the Dunshaughlin lads tried to emulate the pool antics of Paw-Dee's Kerry Heroes in South Africa.


San Diego TV News reports 'live' on the Dunshaughlin footballers game of water polo

If one young San Diego woman can order an entire Irish football team out of a pool without incident, then what could this city possibly fear from Raiders fans?

I just hope she's on duty Sunday.

Oh, and the Buccaneers and the Raiders …? You can read what Jim had to say about that Jim Caple's Report