Barcelona Gaels eyeing more history in Kilkenny

On Saturday week, Barcelona Gaels will make history when they become the first Iberian team to compete in the Leinster Club Junior Football Championship.

They'll travel to Kilkenny to take on Conahy Shamrocks at UPMC Nowlan Park, intent on adding more chapters to the story of their remarkable rise.

Barcelona Gaels enter the Leinster JFC as European champions - they beat Berlin GAA 4-15 to 3-09 in Maastricht last month to clinch the crown and set up a trip to the Emerald Isle.

It's just reward for a club that has grown exponentially over the last few years, with the men's and women's sections enjoying impressive growth.

"We're the largest club in Europe," Eoin McCall, Barcelona Gaels chairperson, told RTÉ 2fm's Game On.

"Especially since Covid, we've seen a massive boost within the club in terms of people moving to Barcelona – people either working remotely or people just deciding to move here.

"Look, it’s two hours from home, it’s really nice weather, it's a great standard of football. It’s hard for people not to want to move here. It’s really booming within Barcelona and then obviously across Iberia and Europe as well.

"The vast majority (of the players) would be Irish. We’d have quite a few Catalans involved with us, we’d have Australians as well. But the vast majority would be Irish.

"It’s hard to walk down the street at the minute without hearing an Irish accent. There’s a lot of Irish living here and that’s a great thing for us as a club. It really help us to improve numbers and participation, and then the success we’ve had in the last few years as well."

"We've two huge events in the history of the club happening on the same day about 3,000 miles apart."

In a neat piece of symmetry, former Barcelona Gaels player Eoin Kennedy