The Shenzhen Celts Gaelic Football Club was founded in the summer of 2004 by a couple of Shenzhen veterans - Peter Watson, Greg Schultheis, Donald MacCallum and Dan Givens. From a small bunch of unfit, unsporting, and untalented group of wanna be footballers the club has grown have grown into a bigger and more organized group of expats who play regular, competitive games. Our story goes a little like this...
By October 2004 we had managed to get together enough drunks to field a squad of 12 for Asian Gaelic Games held in Hong Kong. This was our first competitive games and the club managed to come away with a win in the mighty Plate competition. We managed to get hammered on the Friday night, the Saturday night and the Sunday night so how we won any games at all we're not so sure. The Saturday night party had a famous movie characters theme and we all went as 'Goodfellas' with a couple of the lads also going as the 'Blues Brothers'.
Beijing 2005 was the next competition - the All China Games. Again Shenzhen won the plate final and celebrated the fact till dawn the next day. This was also first time Aaron set eyes on his now wife Riot!
2006 was a great time for the club. Shenzhen hosted the All China Games and were narrowly beaten in the final by Hong Kong. That year we also travelled to Shanghai for Asian Gaelic Games. We managed to win a bottle of champagne for being the last team to leave the bar on the Friday night.
Going from there we have competed in Chengdu, Dalian and Penang and the rest is history as they say.
In 2009, we hosted the inaugural South China Games in Futian. The event was a great success with some great football played in fantastic conditions. The Canton Celts of Guangzhou were well represented in their first ever tournament and Hong Kong brought both men and ladies teams also.
Congratulations to Shenzhen on winning the mens competition and Hong Kong for winning the ladies trophy.
After a number of years in the wilderness, the Shenzhen Celts returned in 2015 led by Eddie MacCarthy, Craig Berrigan, Paddy Cooper and Aneisha Vieria. The Celts returned to winning way almost immediately, taking home the Junior plate at the All China Games.
Numbers continued to grow and we returned to the All China games in 2016 to retain the Junior Plate and our Women's team took part for the first time in years. Later that year, we headed to Shanghai for the All Asian games, with the men stepping up to Senior level. After a magnificent showing over the weekend, we faced Beijing in the Senior Plate final with Jimmy Delany and Craig Berrigan stepping up to add to our trophy collection! The ladies also showed a competitive edge claiming the Junior plate!!
Since then, players have come and gone, but we continue to make the trip to tournaments around Asia making sure we a least win the after party if nothing else!!
None of this would be possible without our sponsors, Amrosia, Evil Duck, The Brew, Kaizen Dynamic, Teqo, Candy Girl, F45 and Little Mix Bakery.