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Pat Magee remembers playing a number of priests from Seattle’s Irish American Club in 1958. The Vancouver Irish only found out afterwards they had been marking priests when they were taking their post game showers. It seems that only the priests would take their showers with “boxer” shorts on. Jimmy Dunne remembers the priests “being as tough as nails” and Irene Fee remembers them being the “dirtiest ones” on the field! Over the next few years the Seattle teams always consisted of four or five priests, but in the early Sixties the Archbishop of Seattle got word of their involvement with Gaelic football, and that brought an unfortunate end to their participation. It should be noted that the formation of the North American County Board in Cleveland (1959) occurred with Los Angeles winning the first football championship, and San Francisco the first hurling championship.
The American west would continue to dominate in these early years. In 1960 the cities exchanged hardware with San Francisco winning the hurling and Los Angeles the football. The first Canadian team to win a hurling championship was Montreal in 1961 with Boston, Galway and San Francisco sharing the football championship that year. Gaelic football took root in Vancouver with the Sons of Erin Gaelic Football Club whose marching song was Roddy McCorley before each match. A number of parishioners who worked the bingo at St. Patrick’s Church at Twelfth and Main used to play broomball and floor hockey in the winter months on Friday nights. The Irish participants, with the encouragement of assistant priest Father Neal Carrigan (R.I.P.), introduced the game of Gaelic football for the spring of 1961, and many joined in playing this “new” sport. The Sons of Erin Club was formed with the late Peter Fee as President, Joe Kelly as Treasurer and Terry Wheatley as Secretary. The Club held many dances, chartered two flights to Ireland, and hosted various entertainers over the years. Local matches were played at John Hendry Park and Stanley Park (Brockton Oval). Irish-born Sons of Erin footballers included, Jimmy Dunne, Pat Forrestall, Eddie Eviston, Matt Sheridan, Chris Morgan, Bob Jordan (R.I.P.), Nick Forrestall (R.I.P.), Mike Kelly (R.I.P.), Pat Flanagan (R.I.P.), Joe Tohill (R.I.P.), Mike Kiely (R.I.P.), Joe Kelly, Tom Doris, and Don McGuiness. Canadian-born players included, Terry Wheatley, Al Favero, Tom Nellaney (R.I.P.), Jimmy Williamson, Chuck Krastel, Jack Cowie (R.I.P.), and Bill Stansfield. Well-known supporters of the club included Malachy and Peggy McKenna, Tom Butler and deceased members Tom Gibbons, Paddy and May MacDonald, Andy Anderson and Patrick McAreavey. In 1962 Vancouver and Seattle along with Portland, participated in the North American County Board Northwest play downs. Seattle beat Portland in their qualifying match and the stage was set for the Irish American and Irish Canadian showdown. The Sons of Erin drew with Seattle in their first match and then went down in history by becoming the first Northwest Champions of the NACB, when they beat Seattle on July 27, 1962, 15-9 at Brockton Oval. Shortly afterwards the Sons of Erin travelled to San Francisco for the West Coast Championships. They were welcomed by a very hospitable Irish community in San Francisco who provided an excellent dinner/dance and a great time was had by all on the streets of San Francisco. The following day, San Francisco’s “select” team promptly hammered the Sons of Erin on the playing field with the referee putting away his pencil at some point. As former Sons of Erin player Terry Wheatley said, “the Vancouver substitutes came on, but we took no one off!” Albert Favero recalls, “They seemed to be so professional in how they played.” Despite the loss it was still an historic occasion and the Vancouver team will forever be enshrined in the annals of Gaelic games in Western Canada. The following year in 1963, Seattle won the Northwest playoff over the Sons of Erin. Afterwards, a select group of five Sons of Erin players were drafted onto the Seattle team in preparation for the visiting San Francisco team who travelled north for the championship. Although Seattle lost the match, the play of the Sons of Erin was a welcome addition by the Seattle Irish community. Eventually, the Vancouver Sons of Erin Gaelic Football Club gave way to become a soccer and social club, and Peter Fee stepped down from the presidency in 1967. Well-known local individuals who steered the club in its new direction included, Tony and Gertie (R.I.P.) Leathem, the Macken brothers, and John Stewart to name a few. Organized Gaelic football would wait upon the formation of the Vancouver Irish Sporting and Social Club in 1974. The matches played by the ISSC with San Francisco in the mid- Seventies were, in many ways, a replay of what had happened 10 years earlier with the Sons of Erin. Still, the ISSC would take Gaelic games to a new level never before seen by the earlier Vancouver Irish communities.
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