New York GAA is set to reap a financial windfall from on the back of the historic breakthrough win over Leitrim, chairperson Joan Henchy has revealed.
The dramatic penalty shootout victory at Gaelic Park in the Bronx on Saturday night set up a Connacht semi-final away to Sligo on Saturday week, with Henchy and her fellow county board officers currently in the thick of the logistics to take a travelling party of 50 or so across the Atlantic.
“The flights and the accommodation we’re working on right now,” she said. “We were smart enough to put a hold for a group booking before this just in case so now we just need names to get it done.
“The place has just erupted. Everyone’s ecstatic. The lads are just on an absolute high.”
Previously, question marks hovered over New York teams’ ability to travel back to Ireland given that many players were undocumented but that doesn’t apply now with all of manager Johnny McGeeney’s squad legal residents in the US.
With the team set to travel from New York on Wednesday of next week and return the following Sunday, getting time off work is the pressing issue but one that Henchy is confident can be managed.
“I think basically our lads right now are going to take holiday time from the jobs but most of the companies that they work with here, they all know the gig now and the fact that New York has actually won that first game, people have been absolutely amazing and have rowed in hard behind us in the last 48 hours.
“I don’t foresee too much issue with anybody getting off work.”
The Kerry native has been critical in the past of county boards from Ireland and the Gaelic Players’ Association holding fundraisers stateside, feeling that it impacted on New York GAA’s ability to secure financial backing for their own affairs, though pledges of support in that regard have been streaming in since Saturday night.
The New York senior team is due to travel to Ireland at least once more later in the year, be it for the Tailteann Cup or All-Ireland series, while the junior football team will be taking part in their All-Ireland Championship over here also.
But any financial burden that comes with that has been alleviated in the last few days.
“Like every county, your finances are your finances and you have to be mindful of everything but by the same token, this might just have changed the entire trajectory for me on a personal level and for our county here.
“We’ve been saying for years about companies here and people here that haven’t necessarily been investing into us but would give to their own county at home. I think we’ve just changed the tides and I think they realise now because we’re getting messages from an awful lot of people wanting to know what they can do to help here now.
“They can really see it and they know that the future is within our own county and if we don’t invest into our senior team and continue giving a pathway to our underage programme - we need the people here in New York particularly to realise that sending the money home to Ireland and to counties coming out here raising money has to stop now and I think Saturday night’s result showed that and spoke volumes that the investment needs to be here.
“We’re already getting people contacting us. Listen, small amounts of money go a long way.”
Twelve members of the New York squad from last Saturday are American-born, including Mikey Brosnan, who scored the winning penalty, and that level of local representation is set to swell in the coming years on the back of the breakthrough.
“I think if you watched the final moments of the game when Mikey Brosnan scored that last penalty, the pitch invasion alone spoke a million words,” said Henchy.
“They were all American. Every last one of those young kids, teenagers, young lads that are 18 and 19, their parents and everything invading that pitch - that’s what it is.”
And while New York will be outsiders against an in-form Sligo side, they did give them a stern test in last year’s Connacht Championship and were level late on only to concede the last four points.
“We played Sligo last year after playing no games for two years and we have a stronger panel this year than we had last year,” Henchy pointed out.
“There’s a couple of new additions into the county that have moved out here, that are here long-term. These are not lads that just flew in for games or that we did anything, these people are here living and working on long-term visas and stuff.
“I don’t think Sligo will be under any illusions with New York. And we’re under no illusions either. We know we’re digging deep on this one, we know we are.”
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