🚨GAA player proud to ‘come out of the closet’ 👏👏

Meet 28-year-old Cian Ó Gríofa who is a marketing professional from Wicklow. He is also known by his flamboyant online alter ego @gaylgeoiri.

Ó Gríofa is queer. He’s a drag queen. He plays football with Ireland’s first LGBTQ+ GAA club, Na Gaeil Aeracha. And he doesn’t think he’d be who he is today were it not for Gaeilge.

It was spending time in the Connemara Gaeltacht as a teen that woke him up to the vitality of the language. Speaking to the Irish Examiner he said;

“I was suddenly immersed in it,” he says. “The history and culture were all around me. There were even toddlers speaking Irish! I realised it was far more than a school subject: it was a living thing.” 

This experience inspired him to study the language at university and to host a show on the Irish language radio station, Raidió Rí Rá.

This deep-dive into the Irish-speaking world gave Ó Gríofa an unexpected sense of freedom.