Celebrate the club’s 2009 successes and finish off the GAA season in style as Michael Cusack’s GAC turns 21!

The event will take place on Sunday September 27th at Dockside, Darling Harbour.

Tickets are $130 and include a 3-course meal, drinks (includes wine and beer), live music, lucky door prizes and prize raffle.

Tickets are available from training, Sunday's in Auburn or contact gaa@michaelcusacks.com to secure your tickets now. Last year's event was a sell-out so get in quick to avoid disappointment!

Every Team has one – someone who (usually when a few drinks are in) likes to think they are the best at doing physical challenges like; the Plank, Arm Wrestling and Press Ups (usually with their shirt off too)!

Well now it’s their chance to prove just how good they really are as we announce the launch of the Aussie Push-Up Championships!

We are looking for representatives from the GAA Clubs as well as AFL, Rugby and Soccer to compete for the title (event is open to both men and women). Contestants need to be relatively fit but most importantly be up for the craic and be ready to trash talk the opposition at every opportunity! Each contestant will have a stage name, entrance music and a video showing their training regime (this can include lifting pints in Durty’s). So if you know somebody that fits the bill email us today on aussiepushup@gmail.com. Entries are strictly limited.

The event will be held in the Courtyard of The Gaff Party Bar on Oxford Street on City2Surf Sunday from 2pm.

Spectator tickets (to come and lend your support/laugh at your fellow team mates) are only $20 (includes drink promos, lucky door prizes, live music and all the shenanigans on the stage!) and will be available at training, from the Canteen in Auburn on Sunday or by contacting us at aussiepushup@gmail.com

More info is available online at http://aussiepushup.blogspot.com

Following is Sean Og O hAilpin's article from Amnesty International's new book about Ireland's relationship with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO REST AND LEISURE, INCLUDING REASONABLE LIMITATION OF WORKING HOURS AND PERIODIC HOLIDAYS WITH PAY.
ARTICLE 24

By Seán Óg Ó hAilpín

For me, Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means that I have the right to pick up a hurley. In Article 24, I see the right to stand in a field, frozen, in lashing rain with a bunch of other lads. I see the right to sport and am reminded again of the importance it has played in my life.

As a young boy, I grew up in Australia with my Fijian mother, Emilie, and my father, Seán, a native of County Fermanagh. At the age of eleven, we left our home to move right across the world to the land of my father. To be honest, before then, I was never quite sure if Ireland even really existed.

My dad had given me a hurley when I was younger and, every September, we were woken in the middle of the night to gather around the radio to listen to reports of a game called hurling in a place called Croke Park, but it didn't feel real to me.

When I arrived into Cork city in 1988, I realised that my life had changed suddenly, and completely. I remember my first day in school. There I stood in front of my new classmates, a half-Fijian, half-Irish boy, straight from Australia. My new teacher introduced me to my classmates, 'We have a new boy his name is Seán Óg and he comes from Australia.' One of my new classmates turned to our class map of Europe and pointed at Austria, 'Is that it sir? Is that where he is from?' I knew then that I was far from my old home.

But I was to find a new home in 'the Mon', North Monastery CBS, where I was introduced to hurling properly. We were probably, though I'm not sure, the first Fijian-Irish family on arrive to Cork's northside, but I am very sure that we were the first Fijian-Irish boys to stand on the hurling pitch.

It didn't matter to the lads I played with in the Mon, or went on to play with for my club Na Piarsaigh, that my brothers and I were born in Fiji or Australia. It wasn't about the colour of our skin, it was about the game. Regardless of my colour or that I was from a different
place, I was free to step onto the pitch and pick up a hurl and sliotar like anyone else. Nobody cared where I was from. They didn't care what I looked like or how I sounded. It was about the team. It was about lifting the sliotar, passing it on, playing with the team.

That's sport. It's a universal language. It's something that you can play with complete strangers who don't speak your language or know your culture or it's something you can spend a lifetime trying to perfect with your closest friends.

When I first arrived in Ireland, I was an outsider and a stranger. But, through playing hurling, I became as much a part of the community as a boy or girl born and raised on the northside. The freedom that afforded me, the idea that a foreigner can come into a community and play a sport that is the essence of this country, had a huge impact upon the way my life turned out.

After a while, I wasn't 'Seán Óg the Fijian'. I was known by my name, Seán Óg.

I was fortunate enough to go on to have the opportunity to represent my county, to wear the same colours as Christy Ring, to stand on the steps of the Hogan Stand and to hold the Liam
McCarthy Cup aloft in front of tens of thousands of my county men and women and thank them in our own language. And I got to bring the trophy home to the Mon, for the next generation. The self-belief that playing GAA instilled in me has brought me to a very privileged place.

My story demonstrates the opportunity sport, or any form of leisure activity, can afford people to integrate into a community. For me, it was the GAA and hurling. For other children in Ireland today, it could be soccer or rugby or swimming or tennis.

It'