For the first time in years, Brussels entered a team in the Luxembourg Sevens Tournament, sponsored by Guinness and The Black Stuff Irish Bar. It was played out between 10 teams, 5 from the host town Luxembourg and 1 each from Brussels, Dusseldorf, Guernsey, Paris and The Hague. It was attended by the Croke Park visitors listed in yesterday's report on the Brussels kids, whose match kicked off proceedings.

The Brussels adults' return from our 4 matches reflected our being novices ie. 2 defeats, 1 win and 1 draw in that order. In Match 1, the phrase "tactically naive" springs to mind, sevens is a specialised game with different rules and our opponents Fleming's Bank from Luxy, had rattled in a couple of goals before we knew where we were. We did get to grips in the second half but the only rattling we did was of their crossbar, no less than 3 times (even B Munich didn't manage that many ...). In Match 2, to the surprise of all present, we led Paris Gaels (going for 4-in-a-row in this tournament) for most of the match but (again like B Munich) were beaten by late scores. In Match 3, we finally got our act together to beat the Pygmalion Bar from Luxy. Match 4 against The Hague, with both teams already eliminated, was a routine draw. For the record, Guernsey beat Paris in the Final to the relief of the other regulars fed up of seeing Paris win every year.

Later in the evening, the visiting GAA team led by President Joe McDonagh and team organisers discussed problems with and possibilities for playing Gaelic games in Europe. While the President acknowledged that Croke Park was not active enough in promoting the GAA in Europe in the past, he stressed that in the modern world where satellites broadcast Gaelic games live to audiences in all corners of the globe, internationalising and real help for Clubs outside Ireland is now very much on its agenda . The upshot of the discussion was an agreement to put in place this year a structure, linking to Croke Park, European GAA Clubs currently up-and-running in the following 9 European locations (& any new ones in future ...):-