Irish Experiment
The Irish Experiment is the popular name for the interest, primarily from VFL/AFL clubs, in bringing Irish Gaelic footballers over to Australia to play Australian rules football professionally. The AFL's focus on Gaelic footballers is due to the similarities between the sports.
The Irish Experiment began in the mid-1980s as an informal project of the Melbourne Football Club. Despite its initial success, enthusiasm for the project lapsed until the 2000s, when it again became ongoing and currently increasing due to globalization and professionalism in sport.
The highest profile product of the experiment to date has been Medal of the Order of Australia and Brownlow Medal recipient Jim Stynes, who was an early recruit. Irishman Tadhg Kennelly was a key player in the Sydney Swans 2005 AFL Grand Final victory. Former hurler Setanta Ó hAilpín is the best known current product of the experiment, while the highest profile Gaelic footballer to sign an AFL contract is Tommy Walsh.
Over the years the Irish experiment has attracted media and public interest in both Ireland and Australia.
Read more about Irish Experiment: List of Irish Sportsmen Linked With The VFL/AFL
Famous quotes containing the words irish and/or experiment:
“Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)