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The Arabian Celts are kicking off their 2019-2020 Gaelic football season with the first of five tournaments slated to be held in Dubai this weekend. They aim to take their game to the next level especially after a stellar 2018-2019 season.
With a relatively young history spanning just a decade, the club, which calls the Bahrain Rugby Football Club its home, has attracted a staunch multi-national following and last season, the women claimed their first championship.
This year, the Celts are sending two women’s teams and two men’s teams to bring home some silverware.
In the region, the game is played at five levels – Senior, Intermediate, Junior 1, Junior 2 and Social, with the top ranked teams earning a spot at the next level in the subsequent season. The women were crowned the Middle East League Intermediate Champions of Gaelic football and advanced to the senior level where they hope to shine this season. The men’s teams compete at the intermediate level and hope to get promoted to senior this season.
Anthony Friel, 39, the women’s team manager said: “The training for this season has been going really well. The women are quite motivated and committed. They are really hard-working and we have been working on getting used to the day heat by practicing on Friday mornings.”
Team captain Mairead Kennedy, 29, who lives in Saar added: “There is some added pressure being in the senior league, but we do well under pressure, so we are looking forward to putting our best foot forward.”
Gaelic football, one of Ireland’s oldest traditional sports, is usually played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch, although in the Middle East the game is played nine-a-side.
Players advance the football, a spherical leather ball, up the field with a combination of carrying (for four steps at a time), bouncing, kicking, hand-passing, and soloing, which involves dropping the ball and then toe-kicking the ball upward back into one’s hands. The objective of the sport is to score by kicking or hand-volleying the ball into the other team’s goals (three points) or between two upright posts above the goal’s crossbar 2.5 metres high (one point). It can seem like a cross-over between rugby, football and basketball, even though it pre-dates all of these sports.
Men’s team manager Kieran Gallagher, 39, said: “The game has been attracting a lot more attention in the region. With the first tournament, especially in a region where teams can be quite transient, we will get to see where we are relative to the competition and set our aspirations and training goals accordingly. But, with the men and really, with both sides, we are seeing a lot more commitment, so we are hoping to keep that up.”
In the Middle-East, owing to the intense heat, each game is only 14 minutes long, with each half lasting seven minutes. The final game of each tournament is longer, lasting 20 minutes in total. Each league usually has four teams, with the league champions facing off for each tournament’s final. It is a high-intensity game, and the short game length means that across the span of each day-long tournament, the teams each play five to six games.
The next tournaments of this season will be held in Bahrain (coinciding with the Gaelic festival) in November, Oman in January, Sharjah in February and the final tournament set in Abu Dhabi in March.
