Thomas Hubert, Paris Correspondent

PARIS Gaels GAA Club miss their secretary so much that they couldn't make it to Guernsey for last weekend's tournament!

Or is it the long bank holiday weekend and the cost of the ticket to the Channel Islands that prevented the players from taking part in the competition? Still, with Ann Donnelly moving back to Ireland, Paris GAA is losing one of its founder members and strongest promoters. Just like many other Irish expats, the Celtic Tiger has lured her back at home.

"We miss her", says Hugh Liston, chairman of the club. "She organised all the tournaments, booked all the trains, obtained all the discounts... She has a thorough knowledge of football and knows all the clubs. She went to every single tournament!"

This 31-year-old bilingual secretary from Ratoath, Co Meath, has always played football. (Those Meath women are something special!) She did in her younger days in Ireland, and when she came to Paris to work and improve her French at the beginning of the 1990's, there was no question of her giving it up. She then met Peter Gavigan, who trained a group of Irish players in Paris. There was no club as such at that time, merely a bunch of friends who gathered every weekend at the Bois de Vincennes to play hurling and football.

First in Europe
With their activities getting bigger, they decided to set up an association under the 1901 Law in April 1995. Paris Gaels also became the first GAA affiliated club in mainland Europe. Ann was elected secretary the same year: "It was very basic at that time", she says. Her job involved a lot of fundraising, organising raffles and seeking grants from sponsors such as the GAA itself and the Irish Fund of France.

She soon started to organise tournaments with other GAA clubs in Europe, especially The Hague and Luxembourg, which, along with Paris, remain the cities with the strongest gaelic games structures in mainland Europe.

"A lot of players were students and we always managed to finance part of their tickets", she says proudly. Thanks to Ann and her colleagues, the club now has 50 members and runs various activities: weekly training sessions, fixtures all over Europe, demonstration matches, children coaching, as well as a leading role for the development of Gaelic games in France. Help and technical support from Paris Gaels enabled GAA fans in various places to set up their own club. But as Ann says, "there's a lot of room for improvement!" The new committee would certainly agree with this sentiment.

Ann is optimistic about the future of Paris Gaels: "The people on the committee have been involved for several years, they'll be efficient", she says. She will now go her own way, but says: "I'll still help, I can do some work by e-mail." And of course, she'll get involved in her new club, Garristown.

Meanwhile, Hugh Liston says that the club boasts a new Ladies Football team and hopes to win some tournaments in this department. He's also planning a series of fundraising nights.

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