A small piece of GAA history will be made tomorrow week when Barcelona Gaels become the first team from the Iberian Peninsula to compete in the Leinster Club JFC.

The club, which was formed in 2001, travel to UMPC Nowlan Park to face Kilkenny’s Conahy Shamrocks on the back of their European Championship final win over Berlin in Maastricht last month.

"We're the largest club in Europe," Barcelona Gaels chairman Eoin McCall told RTÉ 2fm's Game On.

"Especially since Covid, we've seen a massive boost within the club in terms of people moving to Barcelona – people either working remotely or people just deciding to move here.

"Look, it’s two hours from home, it’s really nice weather, it's a great standard of football. It’s hard for people not to want to move here. It’s really booming within Barcelona and then obviously across Iberia and Europe as well.

"The vast majority (of the players) would be Irish. We’d have quite a few Catalans involved with us, we’d have Australians as well. But the vast majority would be Irish.

"It’s hard to walk down the street at the minute without hearing an Irish accent. There’s a lot of Irish living here and that’s a great thing for us as a club. It really help us to improve numbers and participation, and then the success we’ve had in the last few years as well."

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