COMORTAS PEILE Countdown continues Bank Holiday weekend festival of football

Apart perhaps from some small, if vital, last-minute tasks, everything is ready for the big invasion, or 'an ionradh mor,' as native speakers might describe it.

The invasion in question is the expected arrival of thousands of people into the Athboy/Ráth Chairn area this weekend for the Comortas Peile na Gaeltachta 2025, the annual Gaelic football festival featuring teams from Irish-speaking areas all over Ireland, including the hosts, Clann na nGael.

The logistics and statistics associated with this heaving, throbbing extravaganza are startling. It is anticipated 3,000 people, perhaps more, will show up including people who will either participate in or watch games. Many more are expected to tune into TG4 to view the action over the weekend.

Just over 30 teams will take part (eight senior male, 10 junior male, two senior ladies and 12 junior ladies) in a series of 20 games played at five venues - Athboy, Dunderry, Cortown, Kilberry and, of course, Ráth Chairn where the local playing arena has received a major face-lift to be ready for one of the biggest tournaments in the GAA's calendar.

The level of organisation needed for such a influx of people can only be imagined with the logistics for this three-day festival put in place by a Ráth Chairn-based committee.

For one member of that committee, Michéal O Tiomáin, the very fact that the tournament is going ahead at all is an admirable expression of how the people of Ráth Chairn, Athboy and beyond, merged together to achieve something that at one stage looked impossible.

To illustrate his point O Tiomáin outlines how 1,400 beds in the local area had to be secured so that players and mentors on the various visiting teams had a place to put their heads down over the weekend; a basic requirement for any host club.

As Winter gave way to Spring the organisers were short of their target. Well short. "Acquiring enough beds was the hardest task we had, no doubt, and for a time we thought it was never going to happen," he recalls. "We thought we are going to have to turn people away, that people would have to stay in Maynooth and places."

He recalls at least one occasion when that quota of beds looked insurmountable. "I remember going out one night, knocking on doors in this estate in Athboy asking people if they would be interested in taking people in. The estate had 24 houses. We had 20 done and not one bed was secured. I was that dejected I didn't even try the last four houses. I was broken."

O Tiomáin pays special tribute to "a group of local women" who made up a sub-committee and who displayed amazing stamina and resilience by relentlessly seeking accommodation all over Meath.

Their efforts ensured that a few weeks before the tournament was due to start the beds had been secured. The impossible had been made possible. It all has restored O Tiomáin's faltering faith in the power of the community; in human nature itself.

"The way the community has worked together is absolutely unbelievable, and it's not just Ráth Chairn, it's not just Irish speakers, the whole of Athboy, the local sporting community are helping out, it's been brilliant, great to see. Everybody has been very, very good."

Those who take people in for the night will be paid €40 per person, without a breakfast, or €45 with a breakfast.

To underline and further highlight this community togetherness, this collective espirit de corps, O Tiomáin points also to the way volunteers are helping in myriad other ways.

"Everything is voluntary, the work carried out by the bar staff, those who pick up the glasses, people looking after the pitches, it's all a community effort and it's wonderful to see."

Part of the infrastructure provided for the festival includes a 1,500 person tent in a field opposite the community centre in Ráth Chairn. That will, over the weekend, reverberate to the sound of performing bands as entertainment is provided after the serious business of seeking to win football games is completed.

Car parking facilities have also been added and organising committee members have also worked closely with the Gardai to ensure proper security will be in place. Sponsorship too has been secured and there too O Tiomáin's faith in human nature has been enhanced. "The generoristy of people and companies has been fantastic," he adds.

Comortas Peile na Gaeltachta started in 1969 in Gweedore and eight teams took part. Ireland has changed a great deal since then but Michéal O Tiomáin and others have pleasantly discovered that the 'failte isteach' attitude of the Meath people, that old sense of Irish hospitality, lives on.

The Irish heartbeat beats on.