Kilkenny community gets behind bid for purpose-built GAA ground in Uganda

A Kilkenny hurling legend is helping to raise €20,000 to put towards an organically grown club build the first-ever GAA grounds in Africa, where the sport has now spread to five schools.

Aidan Fogarty is heading to Uganda for St Patrick's Day to give workshops to over 120 schoolchildren who have fallen in love with GAA, without any direct Irish involvement.

The club was founded by friends Moses Amanyire and Robert Bakaza after coming across videos on TikTok and YouTube videos of the sport in 2019. The hurling craze has now spread to four other schools, including one in the inner city of Kampala.

The club has been inundated with hundreds of hurls, sliotars and helmets gifted to them by the Irish, who have been hugely supportive after watching children playing hurling with makeshift hurls and tennis balls and wearing only flip-flops.

And a skills video — compiled by eight-time All-Ireland winner Fogarty — accidently sent to an inner city principal has led to even more students taking up hurls in a school in an underprivileged area of Kampala.

Now a Kilkenny hotel has started its own 'Kilkenny to Kampala' skills campaign to try and raise €20,000 needed to buy three acres of land to develop into the first GAA ground on the African continent.

The Newpark Hotel is urging people to record a GAA skills video and share online, tagging three other people to do the same.

The four-star hotel is also sponsoring Kilkenny GAA legend Aidan Fogarty and the hotel's own leisure and fitness manager Sinead Brennan to fly to Uganda on March 12th for the first All-Uganda GAA blitz in Kampala.

The blitz will be part of a week-long schedule for St Patrick's Day, which will also feature former Lord of the Dance artists Niamh Shevlin and Ciara