By Conor Coyle

IT was in the dark depths of a Russian winter that the first idea of setting up a new GAA club in Moscow came to the mind of founder Brendan Henderson, originally from the Creggan in another red city of Derry.

In a homage to one of the county’s favourite sons, Seamus Heaney’s GAC was formed in the Russian capital.

With a strong Derry core to many of the founding members of the club, as well as the fact that many of those members are teachers, its first chairperson said naming the club after the Bellaghy poet was a natural fit.

“We were trying to think of a name and a lot of clubs tend to go with Gaels or Shamrocks, but I always liked the idea of naming it after a person. I liked the fact that my home club in Derry was Sean Dolan’s.

“We also didn’t want to have it overtly political either, and the fact that a lot of us here are teachers, Seamus Heaney was a name that stuck in my head. Obviously as he was from Derry as well and had an interest in Gaelic games. We did a bit of research and found that there was no club named after him.

“We contacted the family and asked for permission to use the name, especially in light of recent commemorations. They were delighted and sent a really warm email back saying that they supported us and that it would be the first club to have used the name. I think they quite liked the symmetry of having a club named after him and the fact that he had an interest in Gaelic games. It may have been a close second to poetry but there was an interest there!

“Our colours are blue and white after his home club of Bellaghy, with a bit of red thrown in to incorporate the Russian flag.”

The Heaneys are not the first GAA club to be set up in the Russian capital, with the Moscow Shamrocks having been on the go for a number of years. That led to the inaugural Moscow derby, where the Heaneys and the Shamrocks battled it out in the former’s first official game at the training ground of local soccer Club Locomotiv Moscow.

The Heaneys eked out an impressive 3-13 to 1-3 win in their first encounter, but Henderson said the most important thing was that the two clubs can work together in the future to create a vibrant GAA scene in the city.

“We thought we wanted to go big quickly rather than keeping to a small group playing at indoor facilities. So we kept in touch with the Shamrocks and organised to have a Moscow derby day.

“By the time we played the game we had only had four sessions.

“It was very ambitious. We thought we would probably get beaten, but at least we would learn our lessons.

“We only had two subs for the men’s team on the day and the ladies had one but we had prepared ahead of the game with a team meeting which lasted four hours in the pub! So on Saturday morning we realised someone had left the teamsheet behind.

“The game ended up being played in the training pitch at the Lokomotiv Moscow stadium, and it poured down all day. But luckily enough the ladies team ran away with a victory, they had Clodagh Graham who would have played underage for Armagh, who was a big help to them.”

“The men’s team ended up winning 3-13 to 1-3 as well – so it was a very, very successful day for us. But probably the best part of it all was the fact that both clubs met up after the match and we had a presentation and a traditional music night and everyone got on very well.”

A keen Derry GAA and Derry City fanatic, Henderson met his Russian wife while living in Barcelona and the pair relocated to Moscow in 2017 where they now reside with their two children.

Henderson took stock from his previous involvement with the Barcelona Gaels, where he witnessed the growth of the Galician league in the north-west of the country. There, the standard of play has risen significantly as interest grew in the area and the number of teams competing mushroomed.

“My own personal experience of playing in Iberia was that the Galician GAA community was one of the biggest success stories. I remember playing them 10 years ago and the standard was very poor but now that they have their own leagues up and going the standard has risen remarkably in the last decade.

“So our thinking was that the Irish community is very small here, we could have just joined the current Shamrocks club. But the dream was that we could get more Russians involved and more games with a competitive edge we could build Gaelic games up in the city.

“There was a part of self-interest to it. I’ve got two young kids now and wanted them to play and there was no kids team for the current Shamrocks set-up, so part of the aim was getting them and other kids involved.

“We’ve got seven or eight kids so far and even a couple of Slovakian kids joining us, so we are starting off small but the plan is to grow it as much as we can.

“We’re quite fortunate in that there is an international school nearby whose facilities we can use.

“We’re probably about 50-50 in terms of Irish and the rest. We have a couple of guys from England, a couple of Americans, and a couple of guys from Dagestan even.”

With 50 members already on their books, the Heaneys are hoping to go from strength to strength in the coming years and the key element for the Derry man is to bringing Gaelic games to a new generation of children who have had no exposure to it before.

“At training last week one of the Irish kids was showing one of the Slovakian kids how to hand-pass the ball.

“Stuff like that, that’s what is making us do it and if the club is still here doing that in five or 10 years then I’ll be a happy man.”