My Brief and Wonderous Life as a Gaelic Footballer

Ever wonder what it would look like if soccer, rugby, and Aussie rules football all got together and had a baby? That biologically impossible child would probably look a lot like Gaelic Football.

The Bordeaux women's rugby team was a bit too intimidating so when I saw a poster for Burdigaela, it seemed like a perfect fit. Of course I would transition from Ultimate to Rugby and then to Gaelic Football. Obscure sport that no one has ever heard of/is not typically played in the place where I live? Check. Running around in a big field? Check. Co-ed? Bonus check! Let's play.

I joined in October last year when my Kiwi friend Laura and I decided it was time to meet some French people and get some exercise. I had gone to a pick up session with the local Ultimate team and found them to be strangely standoffish and not really that good for how serious they seemed to be about the sport. The Gaelic gang, however, were ridiculously welcoming, inviting us for beers and snacks after practice and offering us rides back to the tram so we wouldn't have to wait hours for the bus. It was also really encouraging that no one was super great at it. Of course we had a couple folks that grew up playing it in Ireland but most players were new to the sport just like me so I wasn't alone in mishandling the ball every 10 seconds.

If you have any sport sense at all, it's actually not very hard to understand. "Get the ball in the net/through the uprights" is pretty much the objective for any field sport, and they are both true for Gaelic. The tricky part is moving the ball around but again, once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad. Every four steps, you have to do something with it: kick it back up to yourself (called a solo), dribble it once (but not two times in a row), kick it to a teammate or hand pass it to a teammate by striking the ball with one hand WHILE IT REMAINS IN THE OTHER HAND. On defense, stop the other team from doing all those things.

Rain or shine, I was at practice almost every Monday and Thursday. I have never been very good at doing fitness on my own so the team really held me accountable for staying in shape. There is nothing better than hanging out with friends and getting a solid work out at the same time. Plus, it was nice having girlfriends again. There is something truly special about the bond that forms between women who play sports together and I was surrounded by a really fun, international and dedicated group of ladies. (The guys were cool, too!) Life was good.

It was snowing back home on this day. I was in shorts and a T-Shirt.

The best and worst thing about Gaelic Football is its obscurity. Since so few people play it, if you have decent hand eye coordination and stamina, you can get pretty good pretty quick. Unfortunately, that also means that playing in real competitions against other players doesn't happen very often. While my class schedule left me plenty of time to attend practices, I was often working on Saturdays when our rare matches were held.

The first match I played was at home in Blanquefort and it was an amazing day. If I had not twisted my ankle in the first match, it would have been even better. We played well, earning second place after Rennes, a team comprised almost exclusively of girls who play for the French national team. (All that Celtic heritage is what makes them so damn good...) That evening, there was a giant party for all the players that attended the tournament. Imagine a beer hall at Oktoberfest and that's kind of what we had going on at this restaurant. Endless food and booze, with singing and dancing on the tables. When we started to get too rowdy, we hit the club for the after party. We danced 'til close and thankfully the booze kept the pain in my ankle mostly at bay until the next morning...

Tchu tcha Burdigaela!!!

I know my body well enough to know when something is just general day-after soreness and when something is really wrong and this was definitely the latter. I once walked around for three days with a broken leg before seeing a doctor and I was not trying to repeat the same mistake. I limped over to the hospital (It was Sunday. Nothing else is open) and had the doctors check me out. At the time, the most intense pain seemed to be coming from my right leg and was awfully reminiscent of how I felt with my fractured fibula. They did an x-ray and luckily nothing was broken. They prescribed crutches and pain killers, anyway, neither of which they could give me there at the hospital (??) and sent me home. Is it weird that I was disappointed that all my bones were intact? If nothing's broken, why does it hurt so bad???

Within a week or so, my leg felt fine but my ankle was only getting worse. I broke down and borrowed some crutches from a friend (the ones with forearm support, not the ones that go all the way to the armpit) but I was so unstable on them that I gave them up for fear that I would bust my other ankle on all these damn cobblestones.

There was another tournament in April but I had to miss it because of class. It was probably for the best since my ankle was still pretty banged up. By May, it was still not great but I really wanted to go to the tourney in Niort. Again, it was an excellent day. I love competing and it proved to be a day of high level play with lots of excitement. I scored a bunch of points and finally felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Everything was starting to click, not just with me but with the rest of the team, too. We played as a unit. We ended up losing to Rennes in the final, and it was a bit sad because we gave them a much better fight in pool play; injury and fatigue were our biggest adversaries that day.

The finals were held in Paris but I was in the US for Jenna's wedding. When I got back, it was visitor season so that kept me from going to trainings very often, coupled with Jason's insatiable wanderlust and getting ready for all the weddings at the end of the summer. Once I stopped going regularly, it was easier and easier to find an excuse to keep me from going back.

September was upon us before we knew it and I was working extra hard to make up for all the time that we were away. I accepted every course they would give me, which meant classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Although that still left me with Thursday evenings free, I was so tired by the time it rolled around that the last thing on my mind was spending another four hours running around out of the house. Also, there's this man that lives with me who I actually kind of like and it was surprisingly hard not having evenings together half of the week.

The final nail in the coffin was the fact that 90% of the people I was closest with on the team had left for bigger and better things in other corners of the world. As is usually the case, the team is the thing I like most about playing a sport and the team that I knew and loved just wasn't the same. There was also some drama between a few players and I didn't think it was handled very well by the executive board which left a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing. In short, it was no longer a group I really could (or, honestly, wanted to) be a part of.

I can't say for sure that I'll never go back but it's just not in the cards for the moment. Maybe I will finally grow a pair and go check out the rugby team or try the Frisbee team again on a non-pick up night. Or maybe I'll find some other obscure sport to whet my fitness appetite. Anyone for a quick game of netball?