Douglas' Seán Wilson on making his inter-county debut with New York 

When New York took to the field for their Connacht SFC quarter-final against Galway two weeks ago, there was Cork representation in the Big Apple.

Douglas’ Seán Wilson played the full game for New York. The 27-year-old is in his first campaign with the New York inter-county team and himself and his teammates didn’t leave themselves down against last year’s beaten All-Ireland finalists.

Galway might have won easily in the end, 3-28 to 0-20, but it was a competitive game for the majority.

Wilson has been based in New York for a year now, so it has been a whirlwind 12 months for him, from touching down to playing inter-county football within under a year. 

“People might not be aware of this, but I was actually born in New York,” he says.

“I moved to Ireland when I was five years of age, so the grá for New York has always been there and wanting to go back. When I was back in Ireland, I was working for a US company. The approach came from them in terms of a role opening up in New York and I didn’t want to turn down the opportunity. I came out here then.

“The main theory of moving was that I got the travel bug. I wanted to go travelling but where to go and then the role popped up for work in America, so I kind of killed two birds in one stone. I settled in pretty quickly and got stuck into playing GAA almost immediately to be honest.

“When a GAA team is made aware of an Irish person coming over to America and especially when I am from New York, clubs got onto me fairly quickly. The standard is actually quite high here, so every team is looking for that advantage. I had a few options, but given Cork is my home, I am playing for Cork New York.” 

The New York inter-county football team have done well by their own standards in recent years. That was shown in the recent Galway game when they only trailed by three points at half-time and could have actually been in front at that stage.

It’s not an open door policy for players to join the panel, so the fact that Wilson not only made the squad but is now starting, shows how well he has done over the past 12 months at club level.

“I had the chance to join the New York panel at the start of last year,” the defender said.

“But I was just after landing and I just wanted to get my feet under the table. There were a lot of territories to be made. I wanted to settle down with work and so on. I stayed with my club last year. We didn’t progress as well as we would have liked to in the championship, but the results aspect isn’t the be-all and end-all.

“I must have been doing something right for the club to have been called in with New York. That’s for other people to judge. I did man-mark a few key forwards to good effect last season and it worked out for me. There’s hundreds of footballers, so it’s not a case of, ‘Oh, I might play for New York next season’. You have to work very hard. The club championship is very similar to back home.

“I got a call from the New York manager at the end of last year to see if I was interested in coming on board again. I was happy to do so. I am competitive at everything I do.” 

Wilson played underage for the Cork minor and U20 footballers and also dabbled with the seniors for a short period. He had been one of Douglas’ main men prior to his departure at the start of last year.

All of his experience and guile was put to the test two weeks ago against Galway. Marking Robert Finnerty is no easy task, but the defender restricted him to three points from play.

“Firstly, it was a great honour to play against Galway. It was a great experience and something I may not have imagined when I moved back over here last year. We were actually quite happy with the Galway game. We were competitive, but the lack of games caught up with us.

“We don’t have the luxury of playing in the Allianz League, so therefore we didn’t have competitive games prior to the Galway game. We train as hard as any inter-county team. If we can get a run of games in the Tailteann Cup this year, we are capable of making progress.”