'I'll be in the home end... on my best behaviour!' | Prague Hibernians GAA Club | Live from O'Neills pub in Prague

Football, unoff the ball. He's played in the stadium just last week. I think he scored as well.

He will have great memories and he must be walking around like an absolute e-cuffin.

Join in the obsession. Subscribe now at offtheball.com for its last join.

You are welcome back to O'Neill's pub here in Prague. It's O'Neill and Sherry Bern here

till 10 o'clock this evening. We've got a football show with a difference coming your way

after nine o'clock. Kevin Calban and Dion Fanny in conversation with one another is coming your way

after nine. We're all going to be chatting with Ian Willoughby, who's in our Irish journalist.

Who's been living over here for over 30 years. He's going to go through all the check back pages and

from pages us a little bit later on. I'm also going to be speaking to Gavin Cooney in the next hour as well.

In the meantime, very happy to say that we've got Connor and Darren here with us two Irish fans,

two very separate stories, two very impressive stories. Connor, first of all, I want to chat to you.

You are here as the proud representation of the Prague Hibernians G.A. Club.

Talk to us about the Prague G.A. Club here. How long have you been involved in it?

How big is the setup? Yeah, the setup, I suppose, is quite modest

in comparison, Sarge. Clovis, but I've been here for four and a half years now.

When I moved over here first, I had no idea there was a G.A. Club here.

Was just happy to get involved and now kind of as a role in the committee, just happy to keep it going

for the next generation of college kids and people coming to Prague. So just happy to keep it all

taken over. How long have you been in? Happy to be in Prague for four and a half years.

Okay, very good. So when you get here, how long does it take for you to discover that it is actually

this nice small but nice Irish representation community? Yeah, I moved over during COVID,

and when I got off the plane, I was booked in the hostel and there was no one to greet me at

hostel because there was no one working, but I met this Belgian man. He let me say it with him

eating the hostel. And we went out to watch, I think it was a nation's league game, Belgian versus Ireland

in 2021, and I met a man at the bar. He said, there's G.A. trying to win's day.

Obviously, I hadn't. I mostly soccer and rugby back home, I hadn't been any G.A. for years.

Then I got involved in the club then, and from evermore, I've just started the club, so it was a great

way of communicating and meeting people across the city. Fast majority of the members Irish,

or are they expats from different countries or are they checked? There's a lot of Irish, but there's

a lot of people from the UK, Americans, Slovakians, Czechs, and Australians, the Australian rules.

The club is obviously quite similar to the G.A. club, so we kind of mixed players and

everyone is going to say I'm still scared, so it's pretty easy to mix and match for their games and

their games, so it's quite a fluid thing. So is it one G.A. club in Prague and then there's

not a city or what way does it work? There's only one G.A. club in Prague, it's just all across

Europe, so if we go to a tournament to play a game, it's normally the Munich, Berlin, Zurich,

Budapest, Warsaw, it's all the capital cities. Oh, well. Mostly the Germans cities are normally the

kind of strongest us, the Slovakians, the Polish, but it's normally the, I think the Germans,

are normally the... There are six more horses. Your phone must be hopping out of it this week,

as an Irishman living in Prague. We've been quite busy, I think Brendan was on before us,

I was speaking to Brendan on Tuesday, just giving him a bit of the back, sorry, but...

What are the terms of your own friends looking for a place to say and all that?

Well, I suppose in terms of a place to say it's quite... Give us a cheer there, Alex.

It's quite the contents of your house. Yeah, quite a cheap place to get a bet. I mean,

if we're hoping to get to the World Cup and we're hoping to get a bet in North America,

we're sorry, but you can get a hostel bet here, you can say my house for you, but it's definitely

a lot worse than we get to the World Cup, hopefully. Well, you've teed me up beautifully there for

guest from North America here. Darren, you're very welcome. Where have you flown in from?

Yeah, I flew in from Toronto this morning, so a bit jet lag right now, kind of three or two hours,

but I'll work this. Where about to you from originally? From Newark originally, same as

Connor, so we're in school together, so kind of French, we've got for a few years.

Unbelievable. Have you met anybody who's made a language or anything to be here this week?

Not yet, so we've been talking to the lads. I haven't seen the lads for a while since Christmas,

but I'll just catch up with the same lads. I've been on direct flights from Dublin, it's not the same

as myself, but like, do we're all here for a good time? Yeah, when do you make the decision to

fly over for it? Immediately. I see a group chat blow up the day after the hungry game, and like,

I know I'll leave shortly. I'll roll Z-throw him. I don't want that smoke. I'm just

poking the flights the next day. Like once the jaws made, Q is his hair, Connor's hair, the stairs

are aligned. Where do you watch the game in Toronto? You watch the game in Toronto, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's fair to football team at home has a sponsor bear, and I was buried to brazen head.

So it's like, 13 or 14 yards that's in there, and 9 a.m. on a Sunday. We don't need an excuse,

but it was a good night, a good day, even. So what's the plan? Have you got time off work,

or like, and is that extendable until next Tuesday in Dublin, potentially?

Yeah, so definitely swing by home when I'm inside the world, and I try to like the motor and

fodder, like wouldn't have any other way. Where's home?

Limerick City, so like... Pretty good, just in downtown there. Yeah, I work know how

where they are, my priority list there. They're very flexible to try, and they're good to me,

wouldn't say a bad word about them. They know, like, I need a few weeks off in June as well,

hopefully, so they can't let me play it by year. I'm sure the football will take over Toronto as

well for those few weeks as well. Yeah, it's what's the story of match ticket tomorrow, how are you

sorted? Are you into stadium?

Yeah, you don't even need to say anything, but that is home tickets.

And the whole man, red scarves the red scarves for the boys.

We're hearing it more and more this, aren't we? This is really becoming the thing.

We just got to assume the Pavel Medved's not listening to us tonight.

You're safe here, this is going on. I'm just a face to radio in here,

so everyone on the camera is tomorrow. What wants to game plan?

Best behavior. Yeah.

Keep it on the QT and hopefully.

Big woolly jump around. Really woolly jump around for 90 minutes, lose the run of ourselves.

Yeah, a few check words, maybe?

I was asking Q. It was too fair. It's been over four and a half years, and you couldn't even

order a beer for me an hour ago, so I'm going to reach out to some of his other networks as he's

no good to me. I passed that mic back over to the corner, so what is the word here with regards to

Irish fans at home? I did get the sense when Medved was saying that, that there's a sense of,

this is a competitive thing that I'm saying. We wanted to be a real home atmosphere.

We don't want Irish people getting their hands in the tickets.

I don't think there's going to be any sense of danger or anything like that.

People just have to play a cool walking injury to turn styles.

Yeah, I don't think it's any sense of a sort of a danger per se, but I think they were,

I think the easiest way of describing it is extreme paranoia. I think they had a fixture here.

They lost the Croatia. Croatia kind of overtook the stadium. Is that right?

They had a fixture against Ukraine. Obviously, Ukraine,

the refugees have a lot of Ukrainians in Ireland, but there's thousands of Ukrainians in Prague,

and obviously, they kind of overtook the stadium. Obviously, the stadium was so small,

I think they probably had worries that it would be kind of 10,000 Irish, 10,000 Czechs,

so I mean, designing a IT system that only lets someone who could put their passport data

into the system is quite extreme. It was not something I've ever heard of back home.

So I think they're worried, but if you could imagine if the game was in the Aviva,

we sold out 200,000 tickets. They only had to sell 19,000 tickets, and they had pre-sale,

the tickets didn't sell out. The home fans have lost interest since the Euros, the last Euros,

they had a bad run, they got one draw, the three games. Obviously, they kind of lost interest,

and they had their fair oil and since then. So I think the tickets were there, but unfortunately,

our people couldn't buy them, so we've looked enough. If you check people bought us,

if you take it so hopefully, we'll be all good for tomorrow. A Czech plus three Irish friends

is hopefully what we're going for. It's going to be amazing seeing double the amount of Irish people

in the home section as there is in the away section across that stadium tomorrow evening. It's

going to be a fascinating sight. You've been listening to Connor and to Darren Gentleman. Thanks so

much for hopping down to the center here in O'Neil's. Can we get a big cheer for the Prague G&A?

We're going to take a quick break, bring you the eight o'clock news, and then we've got loads more

from Prague coming your way.