PROMOTE, PARTICIPATE AND compete.
That’s the tagline of the Irish team that will play at the first-ever Transplant Football World Cup in Cervia, Italy next month.
“Our main aim is always to promote organ donation awareness,” captain and goalkeeper Alan Gleeson says. “After that, we’ll compete.
“The 16 lads going to Italy wouldn’t even be here only for organ donation. It’s a continuous process in our team. Without organ donation, we won’t get our players back, and families won’t get their loved ones back. It affects everyone.”
Gleeson is speaking to The 42 on an in-depth Zoom call alongside his Transplant Football Ireland team-mates Keith Daly, Paul Browne and Ciaran Tiernan.
They each tell their stories, and share their personal journeys to joining this self-funded national team which was first set up in 2019.
Gleeson has had two kidney transplants; the first when he was a teenager and the second 17 years later in 2014 after it rejected and his life changed again overnight. After two years on dialysis, less than a 5% chance of getting a second transplant, and almost giving up hope, the call came in September 2016.
The Kerryman will be eight years transplanted on the day of Ireland’s third group match at the World Cup. “That’ll be an emotional day for everyone, obviously, with the team stepping out, with the national anthem being played — I’ll try not to cry, but it’ll be tough.”
“Everyone on the team thinks of their donor before every game,” he continues. “It’s always said in the dressing room and on the pitch. There’s always emotions running high, even if it’s just a friendly. You always think, ‘Jesus, all the days I spent in the hospital bed or days I was in front of the doctor being told things aren’t getting better, you need a transplant sooner rather than later.’
“We all have our own stories, but it’s only when you step out on the pitch and you look at the fellas to the left and right of you, you go, ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else today.’ It gives you that extra 10%, 15%, even 20% to go and give your all, even the days you’re not feeling great.”
Keith Daly had a double lung transplant in 2018. He was born with cystic fibrosis and his 30% lung function shocked doctors as he played football with St Patrick’s Athletic in his early teenage years.
When moving around the house became increasingly difficult, the Dubliner knew he needed a transplant. After confirmation from medical professionals and “the whole ground in the hospital opening up, and [me] breaking down”, Daly was put on a waiting list in March 2018 and got the call eight months later amidst rapid deterioration.
“After my transplant, the surgeon came into me and he just said, ‘Keith, you’re one lucky boy. If I had to have known you were this sick going onto that table, you wouldn’t have been getting done,’” he recalls. “I would have had a week to live.”
Amazingly, eight days later, he was home, and six months on, Daly climbed Carrauntoohil.
He founded Transplant Ireland Football with Lar Brennan in 2019.
Paul Browne received a bone marrow transplant in 2007. One night on a milk run, he experienced sharp pains into his hip. Immediately after test results returned from a doctor’s appointment the following morning, he was sent to Wexford General Hospital, and then on to University Hospital Waterford. After two months there, they told him he may have had leukaemia.
It was only later at St James’ Hospital that he was diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia. This is a severe condition in which the body fails to make blood cells in sufficient numbers. Like Daly previously, doctors were shocked Browne was walking around. “I felt fine in myself and I thought I can’t be sick or anything like that, it’s probably a mistake.”
After transfusions and two failed rounds of chemotherapy, the Wexford native needed a bone marrow transplant and an unrelated donor came forward.
Ciaran Tiernan is different to the others in that he was born ill, with a liver disease called biliary atresia. He was transplanted at the age of four-and-a-half in April 1992 after a difficult road for his family.
“My parents were called into a room with a doctor and they more or less told my mam, ‘I hope you’ve more success with your next child, write this one off,’” he says, also revealing he had the last rites three times.
They fought and fundraised for him to go to Birmingham along with four other children, and his surgery was the most successful of the lot. They were told a second transplant may be needed in 5-10 years, but the Cavan man is the last one on the same liver.
Last March, he was listening to the radio when he heard the Transplant Football Ireland team had won a silver medal at a tournament in Solihull, Birmingham, and he knew he had to get involved. He sent a message to the Facebook account, and hasn’t looked back since.
“It’s your family outside of your family,” Tiernan smiles.
Browne, who joined around the same time, echoes his words. “I call the whole lot of them brothers. I couldn’t see myself anywhere else.
“I play club soccer still, but most of my enjoyment comes from playing with the transplant team. We’ve become so connected, the stories we all have and the help that we give each other, it’s fantastic.”
“You tend to talk to the team more than you talk to your family sometimes,” Gleeson says at one point.
“I know it’s a football team, but it’s also like, ‘I don’t want to go and see a counsellor, I just want to talk to a group of lads,” Daly adds, encouraging others in need of advice or guidance to reach out.
That March 2023 tournament in Solihull was ‘the ignition point’, the players agree. Self-funded and self-trained, they reached an international final, and knew they could progress further with the right structures in place.
They secured a main sponsor in Sonas Bathrooms — they are also backed by Fine Living, Sensible Safety and Yule Sport — and formed a partnership with Kilkenny club CK United around facilities and coaching. The standards have risen tenfold since, with Matt Dunne the manager, Richy Watson his assistant coach, and others from CK heavily involved.
A fundraising drive remains underway for the World Cup (there is over €4000 on the GoFund Me page) while talks for FAI recognition are at a standstill, but all four players can’t speak highly enough of those who allow them to live out their dreams.
Ireland are among 12 teams set to compete at the World Cup, which was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic. It’s seven-a-side football, 20-minute halves, and there are certain rules in place disallowing side tackling and goalkeepers claiming high balls with their knee up.
The majority of the team will fly from Dublin to Bologna on 6 September. The tournament gets underway on the 8th and runs until the 14th, with the draw yet to be conducted. Whatever lies ahead, the players guarantee no “tippy-tappy football,” as some people wrongly assume.
“Until the first ball is kicked, I’m going to be bag of nerves,” Tiernan says as preparations and training ramp up, his team-mates nodding in agreement.
“This is the biggest thing I’ll ever have done in sport. I’ve always played football, but never at this standard. This is the sort of stuff that you dream of. You’re going to be representing your country, you’re going to have your family there with you. You don’t want to let them down. You don’t let yourself down either, but you don’t want to let people coming over down.
“The main thing is that we come back with no regrets, that we’re all happy we’ve given everything we can. You have to enjoy it, you have to take whatever happens – be it good, bad, indifferent – and in 20 years time, you can sit back and say, ‘I played for my country at a World Cup.’ How many people can say that? Not too many.”
“We’re not tippy-tappy football,” he adds. “When lads go out there, you wouldn’t even know half of them were transplanted. You go out, you want to win and that’s just it.
“We want to win, but also, you want to be pushing out the word of organ donation. None of us would be here without it.”
You can donate to the Transplant Ireland Football GoFund Me page here, visit the website, and follow their social media platforms. Reach out, and get involved.
