Ballinagore native’s role in bringing hurling to Helsinki

A Westmeath man is at the heart of an effort to pioneer the sport of hurling in the Finnish capital of Helsinki.

Physicist Dan Nickström, a native of Ballinagore and former resident of Coralstown, joined the Helsinki Harps GAA club shortly after moving to Finland in February of this year with his wife Paulina – whom he met in Dublin some years ago – and their young son.

Dan (née Kirby) and Paulina reversed the tradition of a woman taking her husband’s surname – hence, Dan Kirby is now Dan Nickström.

Dan, a former student of Mercy Secondary School, Kilbeggan, has only been in the Scandinavian city for six months but already he’s making the headlines in Finland, where the MTV3 channel carried a piece about the emergence of a new hurling team attached to the Helsinki Harps, and interviewed Dan in the process.

The story caught fire online and ended up capturing the attention of the broadcast media in Ireland.

Although he admits to being no Joe Canning, Dan has had a love of hurling from a very early age.

“I think it’s very funny that it took a move to Finland to get me back playing hurling. But I’m really enjoying it,” he told the Westmeath Examiner. “It must be the Tipperary blood running through the Kirby family!

“All my family on my dad’s side are from Castletown Geoghegan, so I used to hurl a bit for Castletown when I was a young lad. I mainly warmed the bench though! I quit when I was 14 or 15 to play music instead. So I definitely wasn’t a hurling superstar!

“Helsinki is a lovely city and Finland is a really nice country too. I’m very much enjoying it here at the minute. But there’s not too many Irish about.”

However, as Dan amply demonstrates, lack of strength in numbers isn’t much of an obstacle to the Irish emigrant spirit.

“I joined an ‘Irish in Finland’ Facebook group and saw someone mention the Helsinki Harps GAA Club,” Dan continued. “I looked them up but they only played Gaelic football. I was never a massive fan of football; I always preferred hurling, so I didn’t bother joining up.

“After a couple of months though, I saw a post saying that they were thinking of trying to get a hurling team going if anybody had the interest. I jumped at the opportunity and headed down to see what the craic was.

“There were only four or five of us there and half the lads weren’t even Irish. But we pucked the ball around for a bit and we showed the non-Irish lads the ropes.

“It kind of stalled for a bit after that, but myself and a couple of lads started doing some puckabouts right in the city centre on a big green area with lots of foot traffic. We got a bit of a buzz going, and we started getting more people to hurling training.

From there, the committee of Helsinki Harps decided to organise an historic first ever game of hurling in Finland to coincide with a GAA festival to mark the club’s 10th birthday, which was originally supposed to involve only Gaelic football.

“I was appointed hurling development officer for the club as well, and I was delighted to get the chance to do my bit to get hurling going in Finland,” Dan said.

“We had no helmets, and a very ramshackle collection of hurls that were in the basement of the Irish embassy in Helsinki for years, and a lot of very inexperienced players. But we figured it’d be grand!

“We managed to get some old ice hockey helmets donated to us; ice hockey is huge in Finland. These are fairly similar to hurling helmets. Visibility is not as good with them, but they do the job!

“On the day we had no idea how many players we’d actually have. We had a core group of about 10 people who had been training for a couple of months, and a few others who had been there on and off.”

When the big day arrived, Dan did a quick scout around the pitch asking anyone if they’d like to play, and there were some who jumped in at the last minute.

“They had either played a bit as a youngster, or they were married to an Irish person or friends with a Irish person, and they had pucked a ball about a few times,” he continued.

“We had enough players for a nine-a-side match. We had mixed gender and mixed ability levels, and about 60 percent Irish and 40 percent non-Irish. We chose the teams for a balance of skill levels the best we could.

“We were all delighted with how smoothly the game went. The sides were well matched and the beginners and experienced players alike all got a nice bit of play. Nobody went too hard on the new players, but nobody held back too much either.

“We were surprised at how good some of the new players were. Everyone had a great time and we had a lot of people hooked on the game afterwards!”

Dan added that last week, there were about 20 people at hurling training with Helsinki Harps, and recruitment has only been helped by the publicity in which the club has been bathed recently. The club runs beginner hurling sessions on Saturday mornings.

“We have a real mixture of skill levels and all are welcome. We have people from China, the United States, Finland, Denmark and many other places,” he said.

“We’re excited to see where we can go with the club. Hopefully we’ll be in a position to compete in some European tournaments next summer, all going well.”

Hurling isn’t the only string to Dan’s bow. He studied applied physics at Dublin City University and was educated to PhD level. He has worked as a lecturer at Maynooth University’s Department of Experimental Physics, and last year, produced a series of 15 educational videos aimed at children entitled ‘Science at Home’, in collaboration with Midlands Science.