GALWAY senior Cillian McDaid and last year’s All-Ireland minor winner with Kerry Stefan Okunbor have been invited to attend the annual AFL Draft Combine in Melbourne in October.

The pair trained with the AFL Academy in Florida in January, along with David Shaw (Kerry) and Evan Murphy (Galway), impressing with their athleticism and ball skills, as well as their interviews with the scouts from various clubs.

They will travel to Australia in September to...

ZACH Tuohy chuckles at the memory of that first phone call from AFL scout Gerard Sholly. At 17, he didn’t know an Australian accent from a Nigerian one.

On ‘Hello’, the brain computed Ulster and reasoned that this must be a journalist from the north, wanting to talk about the All-Ireland minor semi-final r...

FORMER Cavan footballer and current AFL coach Nicholas Walsh has rejected criticism of the recruitment of GAA players by AFL clubs.

Mark O'Connor is just the 20th GAA recruit to play in the AFL

Walsh, who has been part of the coaching staff since the GWS Giants’ inaugural season in 2012, dismisses the dep...

WHILE many in Kerry are decrying the so-called poaching of the county’s top players by Aussie rules clubs, teenage AFL hopeful Stefan Okunbor insists that even the slightest chance to reach his athletic optimum and play sport professionally is too much of a lure to turn his back on.

Okunbor and his All-Ireland minor-winning teammate David Shaw were in Florida recently along with Galway duo Cillian McDaid, who played in the FBD League this year, and Evan Murphy to train...

IN DIFFERENT circumstances, Darragh Joyce (pictured) might have been hoping to join his older brother Kieran in a transitioning Kilkenny panel, and maybe get a few minutes in the pre-season Bord na Móna Walsh Cup.

Instead, the 19-year-old is undergoing the most intense training regime he has ever encounte...