Review of 2000: They're coming to the end of a very busy year. On the match front, they played in our own March "Paddy's Day, Y2K" event, the April GAA Tournament on Guernsey in the Channel Islands and, their highlight, represented Europe in the July International Feile Peil na nOg in Dublin. On the coaching front, in Feb Meath All-Stars Tommy Dowd & Enda McManus (with the Sam Maguire Cup in tow …) ran them through their paces and in Nov Dublin player Mick O'Keeffe who's working here for a few months also did some coaching with them. In between, they trained every second Sunday between March & Nov save for several weeks during the Summer holidays and will finish up on Sun 3 December.

Preview of 2001: Their Schedule for 2001 has been circulated separately to all parents - the 3 main events planned are visits by under-age teams from Ireland in March (the Paddy's Day event in Overijse on the 18th) and June and representing Europe again in Feile Peil na nOg in Thurles in July.

Review of 2000: Again, a busy year. After the visit of The Sam in Feb, Patricia Hickey & her friends set about organising Ladies GAA on the Continent for the very first time. They had their first outing in Overijse at our Paddy's Day Y2K day out and subsequently used matches at the Luxembourg Tournament in May, Brux in July and The Hague in early September to prepare for their highlight of the year in late September, when 11 of the Brux ladies together with a few others from Jersey, represented Europe at the biannual International Ladies' GAA Tournament in Dublin. The 11 Brux Ladies were:- Sonja Dockx, Patricia Willaert, Maja Van Develde & Karina de Boeure (Belgium); Patricia Hickey & Niamh Matthews (Ireland), Cheryl Lee MacIsaac (Canada), Maggie Bowers (UK), Patricia Ngo Ndong (Cameroon), Lise Libo (50/50 Denmark/Norway) and Jennifer Weber (Sweden). There, they competed against teams from Ireland, UK, US and AustralAsia and, while not winning, certainly put European Ladies GAA on the map in more ways than one ie.:-

• Joe McDonagh, just finished a 3-year term as GAA President outlined their efforts & applauded their success on RTE TV on Sat night 24 Sept during the All-Ireland Gaelic Football Final preview; &
• They all arrived back to Brux with extremely distinctive red t-shirts with "GAELIC FOOTBALL … WHO SAID IT'S A MAN'S GAME ?" emblazoned on the back !

The Hague Tournament: The Brux Ladies finished the year off last Sat 18 Nov with a match at the GAA Tournament in The Hague run by the Irish Club of the Netherlands.

Preview of 2001: What the Brux Ladies have found in their travels this year to date is that, with the exception of Brux & Jersey, there has been no other real breakthrough for Ladies GAA in Europe. Accordingly, their focus next year will be on direct contacts with teams from Ireland hopefully starting with a visit from an Irish team for St Patrick's weekend event on Sun 18 Mar 2000.

Review of 2000: A fairly busy year. In Feb, we played a Rest of Europe selection from Luxembourg, Paris & The Hague during the weekend of the visit of The Sam. In Mar, we hosted a visit here by 37 hurlers, footballers & officials from the Monaleen GAA Club in Limerick (led by their 87 yoa Honorary Life President, Sonny Moore !) who played us at our Paddy's Day Y2K event. Unfortunately, in April & early May, we couldn't get teams together to play first in the Paris Tournament and later in the Guernesey Tournament. However, in late May we did get a team down to our Southern neighbours for the Luxembourg Tournament where we lost the semi-final by just 2 points to eventual winners Guernsey. On Sat 8 July, we played in our own Brux Tournament where The Hague beat Luxembourg in the Final (luckily, we got better weather in Tervuren than the following day when the Gaelic Club/Irish Club Sports Day had to be abandoned). Finally, in mid-Nov we rounded off the year by sending a team up to our Northern neighbours for the Hague Tournament.

• we did win our Group 2, beating our hosts The Hague & a Guernsey/Rennes amalgamation & drawing with St Margaret's B from Dublin (topping the Group over St M's B by score difference);
• in the other Group 1, because Dusseldorf didn't arrive, they only had to play 2 Group games with St M's A qualifying as Group winners and Paris scraping by Luxembourg on score difference;
• in the semi.s, that extra game did seem to catch up & make a real difference with both qualifiers from Group 2, Brux & St M's B, losing out by just a single point;
• in the Final, St M's A ran out easy winners over our conquerors Paris; and finally
• we did manage to take away 1 of the day's honours with us when impartial observers (inter-county refs Brian Crowe & Michael McGrath sent over by Croke Park for the day) voted Mick O'Keeffe of Brux GAA as the Outstanding Player of the Tournament.

Preview of 2001: The preliminary schedule of Tournaments by other Euro GAA Board Clubs for next year is first Sat of March in Rennes, the first Sat of April in Paris, the first Sat of May in Guernsey, the last Sat of May in Luxembourg, the first Sat of July here in Brux and mid-Nov again in The Hague (their late timing commemorates the passing away in Nov 1996 of an Irish Club of Netherlands stalwart). Apart from the Tournaments, we hope to arrange a mens' match for the 18 March St Patrick's Day event in Overijse to fit in with the kids' & ladies' matches also planned for that day.