IAFA Appoints New People to Administration

The Irish American Football Association (IAFA) are pleased to announce the appointments of the following, both at Board and Administration level;

Our new External Board Member Colum Cronin is originality from Cork. Colum has been living in Dublin for over a decade. He works as the International Student Adviser at University College Dublin, having previously been in a similar role at Trinity College Dublin.

A lifelong Denver Broncos fan, Colum is delighted to have been appointed as an external board member with IAFA. He is looking forward to working with the other members to help develop and grow the sport in Ireland.

New Director of Coaching Emma Burrows arrives in Irish American Football on the back of 10 years in the sport, health and wellbeing sector. She completed a BSc. in Sports Science and Health in 2013 during which time she conducted award-winning research on coaches’ attitudes towards mental health issues in athletes. She has published a number of peer-reviewed articles on sport and human performance and is currently completing a PhD on the career transitions of Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

Ethan Fitzsimons joins us as IAFA Administrator. He is a graduate of Sports and Leisure Management in DIT from Dublin. He previously worked in a similar role for the FAI, and he is now looking forward to a new challenge, and becoming part of the team at IAFA.

Gerard Mulreaney takes up the role of Communications Officer. Gerard comes to IAFA with a journalistic background, having worked with the League of Ireland. He is a Green Bay Packers fan. The Galway native is looking forward to getting his teeth into the new role at IAFA.

Michal Kazio is our new Finance Officer. He is a qualified management accountant (CIMA) with 9 years of experience in both financial services and operations outsourcing sectors. He currently works as the Finance Manager in DST Systems.

He said, “Being passionate about American Football, I’m excited to put my accountancy skills to use in developing this great game in Ireland.”

Conor Gibney joins the team as our new Director of Finance. Conor has just returned from living in London for three years but is originally from Dublin. Conor qualified as an accountant with KPMG in Dublin and now works as the Fundraising and Investor Relations Manager in NTR plc.

These new appointments come on the back of the election of Orla McAleese as president in January of this year. She was joined on the newly elected board by Liam Ryan, from University of Limerick Vikings, Stuart Donaldson of the Cork Admirals, Stevie McCrystal of the Belfast Knights and Donncha Ó Conmhuí, of the Dublin Rebels.

Full details of IAFA Management can be found here.