Wednesday evening at 8pm in Brittany in the north-west of France and although the temperatures have dropped to -8C, 24 Gaelic footballers – 17 men and seven women - have still gathered on a frozen pitch at the Harp rugby club in Beauregard in Rennes City. The field was so dangerously hard and the air so bitingly raw that the coach Yves le Prioul, structured the 90 minute session with stamina-skills drills, avoiding the routine match. The weather was freezing all week but this group have never sought an amnesty from harsh training conditions and it’s never been a deterrent to numbers in the past.

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