YOU MIGHT BE given to wonder, as three Irish lads sit around in America waiting to hear if they will be set up for life with multi-million dollar contracts to play American football, what the average Chad Hogan of Missouri might feel about it all.
Think about it. In America, there are a million kids who play the sport at high school. That’s not an exact figure, but bear with us.
Of that number, about 73,000 go on to play College Football. Again, we know we are one step from back-of-a-fag-box accounting here, but forgive us.
And of that number, 250 make it to the big time; the NFL.
As things stand, it is possible that some and maybe even all of Monaghan’s Rory Beggan, Wicklow’s Mark Jackson and Charlie Smyth of Down will sign forms to become professional athletes in the National Football League.
For those young men it must feel like a complete dream, an unreality. Such an avenue was never really an option until the former Ireland underage fly-half Tadgh Leader set up a series of combines and then trials for kickers, after the opportunity of the NFL’s International Player Pathway was expanded to include kickers.
The three players must never have thought it would lead to this. Beggan was actually meant to be present at the AIB Club All Stars Awards night in Croke Park this Friday night after getting off his flight.
Instead, they have been told to sit tight. While there have been some speed-dating type meetings where team franchises have had face to face contact with each, American sports teams now factor in extensive psychological profiling. Due diligence is no doubt underway.
Whatever about Jackson and Smyth, we could make it handy for the laptop nerds when it comes to Beggan.
He, along with Niall Morgan of Tyrone, are the most adventurous players in Gaelic football.
They weren’t the first to come off their line and play around out the field. But they have brought that evolution to its’ limits. Beggan actually became the first goalkeeper to score from play in a major match when he advanced to clip over a point against Burren in the 2018 Ulster club championship.
He greeted it with a fist-pump celebration and told reporters afterwards; “Goalkeepers can play football too. I think it’s a ‘keeper’s initiative, really. There is always space there when teams are attacking and when you are going down the side of the field nobody is focusing on the goalkeeper, everyone is focusing on their own man.
“I’m sure teams will clamp down on it now. I’ll always be an option because you could see at the end there, teams are pinning us back and I’m the extra man, so I might as well help us out.”
When he scores from play now, he doesn’t celebrate. Scoring from play has become an expectation for the very best goalkeepers. Beggan and Morgan have created this world now.
So much so, that another fresh tactical element sprung up in Gaelic football last winter. In playing for Scotstown in the Ulster club campaign, Beggan was pushed far upfield to mark Trillick’s high-fielding Richard Donnelly.
He began doing so well against Donnelly that Trillick had to use a man-marker to try to screen off Beggan for their own kickout. That’s how much Beggan has moved the dial.
However, it is from the dead ball in pressured situations that he is awe-inspiring.
It raised a chuckle when he told the Second Captains Podcast that during the NFL Combine in Indianapolis on Sunday, the music in the stadium was raised during the kicks. He joked that having had his ears worn off by various Tyrone and Kilcoo supporters down the years, it was fairly tame.
Last week, he was being interviewed for the CNN website and outlined for the uninitiated, how Gaelic football has conditioned him.
“I’ve been at this from a very young age so striking a ball has been built into me,” Beggan said.
Rory Beggan, from the @officialgaa to the NFL combine! 🏈🇮🇪 pic.twitter.com/kbACiD1wMa
— NFL UK (@NFLUK) March 4, 2024
“There is the pressure part too. Gaelic football is probably the main sport in Ireland. I have played in front of 80,000 people at Croke Park and taken big pressure kicks. There are not many athletes out there who can say they’ve had that experience.”
“To think that someone from a place like Scotstown in Monaghan could be potentially playing in the NFL…”
It’s beyond surreal. And you have to wonder how many other Gaelic football goalkeepers have been in touch with Leader to book a try out for next year.
During the turn of the century when the Ireland-Australia Compromise Rules series was at its’ height, there was a fear that some of the best players in the country could be lured away.
Those in charge of the trips preferred to frame it as two sporting bodies ‘learning from each other,’ and saying that it would only be a trickle, not a flood of players leaving.
However, the sporting world is a global one now. And that impacts in every small village and hamlet of Ireland.
Monaghan have been one of the most enterprising and entertaining sides in Gaelic football over the past decade.
This year, they are in serious danger of relegation. And a huge part of that is this; it is five miles between the village of Tydavnet, where Beggan is from, and Karl Gallagher’s village of Emyvale.
In a few weeks’ time, one could be signed to an American Football franchise, while the other is a Category B rookie in Australian Rules Football with Adelaide Crows.
This isn’t a flood of players. But it isn’t a trickle either.
Let’s call it a flow. For now.
