By: Paul Schneider

The Barrys are all ears for the coach, Gerard Dillon.

So right up front, we have to give Tir na Nog credit.  Don’t want to get the Kevin Barrys Gaelic footballers in trouble with the downtown eatery that’s their official sponsor and unofficial destination.

But with apologies to the folks at 16th and Arch, the key location in this story is Billy Murphy’s Pub in East Falls. Or more correctly, the gym behind Billy Murphy’s Pub in East Falls. That’s the winter home of what Gerard Dillon considers the future of Irish football in this country.

Gerard and Paul Schneider

While squads that are well-stocked with players from overseas scatter in the off-season, Dillon’s mostly American-born squad, the Kevin Barrys, simply changes venue.  After an Autumn of relaxation, they begin to gather in East Falls in mid-January to play basketball and indoor soccer, and to get a head start on being a team again.

“One of the advantages of having a lot of American players is that we have most of the club together all year round,” said Dillon after coaching the Kevin Barrys to a 1-7 to 0-4 victory over Tyrone in Bill Davis Cup play at Cardinal Dougherty High School last Sunday.  “With other teams, you lose guys when they go home.  Most of our players live here.”

For all of them, the transition from winter indoor workouts to outdoor drills and practices comes—fittingly enough—around St. Patrick’s Day.  Over the next several months, there are two key objectives:  to coax older players out of “retirement” for one more season and to hone teamwork among the growing group of young Americans.

Some of the latter, like cousins Kevin and Brendan Trainor, grew up with the game through the influence of their fathers. Others, like Horsham’s Dan Clark, participated in other sports as high schoolers, but have come to enjoy the fast pace and challenging play of Gaelic football.  All of them, says Dillon, are the next generation of Gaelic football in this country.

“We’ve got to promote the American players,” said Dillon.  “They don’t always have the background in the game that the Irish players have, but I think they work harder at learning it sometimes than the Irish.  And when you have a good nucleus of American players, you have a team that is with you all year ‘round.”