British University Gaelic Football Championship - History

History

The first attempt to start a British colleges Gaelic football tournament was in 1989, but it lapsed the following year and was revived in 1991 by the University of Crewe and Alsager who hosted and won a five-team tournament. In 1992 Newcastle and Sunderland Universities hosted a ten-team event on converted rugby pitches, and St. Mary's, Strawberry Hill (London) took the first of its titles. The British Universities' Gaelic football Championship - as it then became - started back in the 1992/93 academic session. Twelve teams congregated on Páirc na hÉireann, Catherine-de-Barns Lane, Solihull, Birmingham, with Swansea recording Wales' first and only club championship success thus far. The competition had found its true 'home', both in terms of geography and facilities, and there it has remained ever since.

The number of participants had risen to sixteen by 1994, but in 1995 an uncharacteristically heavy snowfall rendered the Birmingham pitches unplayable, and the competition had to be cancelled. The experience led to a championship review, arising out of which it was decided to divide Britain into four regions. Thus from 1996 the regions held their own qualification schemes, each sending two qualifying teams to the finals weekend.

The quota was raised to three teams per region in 1997, thus making for a 12-team weekend. In 1999 Joe McDonagh became the first GAA President to attend the British Universities' championships, and his lead has been followed by his successor, Seán McCague in 2001 and 2002.

In 2011 the University of Glasgow fronted by Mickey Hicks and Rory McKeever the won the Division 3 Championship.

In Division B, The final was won by Bangor University. They were in jerseys of pink.

Division A was won by a Liverpool John Moore's who took their 7th title in the British University Gaa's 20 year history back to merseyside.

In 2012 Liverpool Hope University avenged previous final defeats by claiming their first ever title. Beating their city rivals John Moores in a scoreline of 1-8 to 0-9 after extra time, With Hope's Paraic McGuirk being named MVP for the championships.

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