Home from home

By Shaun Casey

FOR half of his life, Dunloy native Barry Dowds has been a dedicated servant to San Franisco club Ulster GAA and along with a few others from Ulster, he has seen the club grow from strength to strength.

There were a number of down days. During the Covid pandemic, there was a possibility the club could fold. With travel restrictions, Ulster couldn’t call on Irish players to fly out to the States for the summer.

Instead of throwing in the towel, Dowds and a number of others pulled up their socks, got the jersey on, and lined out week by week to ensure the club stayed afloat. They are out the other side of it now.

Like most summers, thousands of footballers from the Emerald Isle will flock to the US for a couple of weeks filled with memories, craic, and football. Ulster are one of those clubs hoping to land a big signing or two.

Established in 1987, Dowds is currently the club chairman. There’s Mayobridge man Brian Poland, James McCann of Eglish is the PRO and the joint manager of the team, alongside Drumgath’s Ciaran McAlinden.

Ulster lost out in last year’s North American final by the minimum of margins to Wolfe Tones, 3-14 to 2-16, and are hoping to go one step further this time around.

“You’re really only as good as your home base is,” Dowds explained.

“You have to build your home base. Back in 2020, around Covid time, we were pretty close to losing the club only for the four of us. We said it’s not going to happen.

“We had a couple of bad years, obviously with Covid and stuff there wasn’t players coming out and so we were still playing bits and pieces as well, but we managed to stay a senior club, there’s actually only two seniors clubs now in the city.

“There’s us and then there’s Sean Treacy’s as well. There’s two intermediate clubs, Eire Og and Young IrelandersSt Brendan’s and then there’s three junior clubs made up of us, Sean Treacy’s and Eire Og.

“To bring it all the way back from nearly not having one team to having two now, we’re pretty pleased with that. We had to talk to a lot of boys and convince them to move to the States and try to help them get jobs and visas and whatever else.

“We got lucky with some boys that had just moved here and joined the club, and our home base is now pretty strong. There’s a lot of good footballers in our home base, boys from all over really. Down, Cavan, Tyrone, there’s a few Donegal men.

“Last year we broke through again, it was the first time since 2017 that we’d won the championship here and we got to the North American final and got pipped by a last-minute kick so that was disheartening.”

Ulster are in the middle of their club championship campaign at the minute. They face off against Sean Treacy’s in a five-game series, with the winner after five games collecting the champions’ crown. The sides are tied 1-1 at the minute.

But with floods of playing heading stateside for the summer months, the teams could have a very different look to them going into the final few rounds, with both teams hoping to strengthen their hands.

Their home-grown pool is strong too, and it’s going from strength to strength.

“We’re on the uptake with the home-grown players at the minute. We have Mark Dunphy, who was born in Boston and his parents are from Donegal, and we have three young boys, the Coyle bothers – Conor, Danny and Brian Coyle.

“We have Matthew Duggan, he’s American but his father is Hugh Duggan, and his grandad is the other Hugh Duggan, the referee, so he’s registered with us as well.

“We actually had our first-ever player whose father also played for the club. Ryan Neeson is a son of Tommy Neeson from Moneyglass and that’s the first son of a former player to play for the club and he’s only 17, he played for the junior team.”

Dowds is also a member of the Western Divisional board and a number of weeks ago, they had a very special guest appearance at their annual San Francisco GAA Finals. GAA President Jarlath Burns paid a visit, and they were honoured to have him.

“We have a home-based competition before the lads come out for the summer, it’s basically a warm-up before the championship and it’s all the boys that live here and Jarlath Burns was here for the finals.

“He did a Q&A, and it was well attended. His daughter is out here playing for one of the ladies teams, Clan na Gael, so it was a big day. We had done a lot of work this year, I’m on the Western Divisional board as well and we got the pitches looking really well.

“We got the whole place painted, got new tarmac, for the first time we now have an electronic scoreboard, and it was brought out from Tyrone, and we had it up and running for the finals, so the place was looking well.”