Macroom native James O'Connell spreading the GAA gospel in the Middle East

Macroom native James O’Connell has been living in Dubai for the last 10 years, but he continues to spread the GAA gospel.

A brilliant goalkeeper back in the day, O’Connell played a key role as Macroom won the Cork IFC in 2010, but five years later, work called him over to the other side of the world. Despite being in a new country, O’Connell got involved with the local GAA club and the rest as they say is history.

“I was in goal for Macroom in 2015 and all was going fine at the time,” he says.

“But, I work for EMC now known as Dell. An opportunity came up to join the EMC team in Dubai. I decided to take the plunge and have been here since. It was a difficult decision as Macroom was part of my life. Work is a big part too and it was too good of an opportunity to turn down.

“I actually came out in July 2015, but still played for Macroom for the rest of that year until we lost to Éire Óg in the quarter-final of the county over in Coachford. I then took a break from sport for 12 months and then my wife Fiona said, ‘You have got to do something because you are driving me mad’. So, I joined the local club here in Dubai called Jumeirah Gaels.

“The season goes from September to March because of the extremely hot weather during the summer. I played for two or three years over here and in the end, I got too slow and the other lads got too fast. 

"I then went into the administration side of things and started coaching teams. I had been managing and coaching Jumeirah Gaels senior team. I got more people involved to make the management team bigger so in the last number of years, I have just been the coach.” 

The Macroom native has been surprised with the standard of the GAA in Dubai, with a growing number of Irish moving to that part of the world over the last number of years.

“The standard of the GAA over here in Dubai has improved significantly over the past decade,” he says.

“When I got over here first in 2015, if you are comparing it to back home, the senior championship would have been a very decent Junior A level in Cork. Now, with so many young people coming to the region, it would be at a decent Senior A level I would say. It really has come on leaps and bounds. 

"In the last count of the Irish Embassy here in the United Arab of Emirates, there’s about 12,000 Irish people. That’s the registered number, but I say there’s a few thousand more.

“The GAA is a great hub for all of those people when they get here first. It’s the first thing they seek out. The majority of the Irish are involved in the GAA over here in some capacity."

O’Connell has GAA in his blood given his father Pat has been involved with Macroom all of his life and is currently president of the club. It was no surprise when James got involved in the GAA in Dubai that success would follow.

“In the last two seasons, Jumeirah Gaels have won the senior championship, so that was obviously huge for the club and also I was lucky enough to be coach of the team. The club was only set up in 2015 and it has grown and grown. We are one of the biggest clubs in the region now.

“I have three kids and in their upbringing, I wanted the GAA to be part of their lives. In 2022, we set up an underage GAA club here in Dubai to service all of the adult clubs, but essentially to have a place for all of those kids to have a place to go to and learn our games. 

"The club is called Dubai Éire Óg. That would be the biggest highlight for me so far. We would have 140 kids on a Sunday morning playing hurling and football, boys and girls. That’s fantastic.”