Gerry Adams, center, with the Mairead Farrell Ladies Junior Football Club in Philadelphia.
It seemed like the perfect name, says Angela Mohan. When she and Siobhan Trainor were casting about for a name for their new ladies Gaelic football club, they wanted to honor a strong Irish woman. They picked Mairead Farrell, the Belfast-born IRA fighter who spent 10 years in prison and was killed by British soldiers on Gibraltar in 1988.
The insignia associated with Farrell was a phoenix rising from the ashes. It seemed appropriate. Mohan and Trainor have both been involved with other football teams in the Philadelphia area that have folded and later been reborn as interest and the number of seasoned Irish players waxed and waned.
Their new team still relies on the Irish—often with summer visitors that Mohan recruits—but is now bucked up by Americans, many of them superb athletes on the basketball courts, but who have never played the game that started in Ireland the early 14th century.
Nevertheless, the women took home the Sean P. Cawley Cup as Philadelphia’s regional champions after a tough game against the Notre Dames last summer on the fields of Cardinal Dougherty High School.
But it was the name of their team that caught the attention of Gerry Adams, a member of Northern Ireland’s parliament and longtime head of Sinn Fein, the political party closely affiliated with the IRA.
A few months ago, he sent them a letter,commending them for commemorating the life of Mairead Farrell who, he said, “was a very special young woman whose love for her country encompassed its history and culture, including Gaelic games.”
The letter concluded, “I wish you well and hope to see you in Philadelphia in the future.” A typical sign-off. . .except that Adams meant it.
Last Friday, October 16, before Adams attended the annual banquet of the Irish Society in Philadelphia at the Penns Landing Hyatt, he spent half an hour chatting, laughing and posing for pictures with members of the team who came suited up and with a gift—a Mairead Farrell jersey. “I hope it’s extra large,” he joked.
With him was Rita O’Hare, the Sinn Fein representative to the United States, with whom Farrell had stayed in Dublin after her release from prison. “I’m glad Mairead’s name is being used and still being heard,” said O’Hare. Adams, she said was very enthusiastic about meeting the team that bears her name. “Plus he’s mad about GAA,” she laughed.