It caused a bit of a stir at the time. In a 2012 speech to a dinner in New York, then GAA president Liam OโNeill expressed the ambition that there would one day be a greater number of association members outside Ireland than at home.
At that stage, it appeared fairly fanciful even to carousing members of the press, who were in town for that yearโs All Stars trip. The idea of it, however, was sufficiently offbeat to tickle the jaded appetites of sports desks back at home and so, we followed it up with the president a day later.
Fourteen years ago, the numbers were forbidding for the aspiration, a rough ratio of 16:1 or 250,000 home members to 16,000.
OโNeill was quite earnest about what appeared an outlandish ambition. He reeled off a number of examples of developments in New York and the huge numbers of juveniles involved, before referencing the growing interest of those born in the US in Gaelic games.
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