Joe Cunnane is a former

Gaelic football Gaelic football (; short name '')'', commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA, or football, is an Irish team sport. A form of football, it is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score ...

er and

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

er who represented

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

at the

Australian Football International Cup The Australian Football International Cup (also known as the AFL International Cup or simply the IC) was an triennial international tournament in Australian rules football. It was the biggest international tournament in the sport that is open t ...

and also appeared on two Irish football

reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...

shows.

Playing career

Australian football

Th
Dublin Demons
clubman was the ruckman on the Ireland national Australian rules football team which won the

2002 Australian Football International Cup The 2002 Australian Football International Cup was the inaugural international Australian rules football tournament held in Melbourne, Australia in 2002. 11 nations participated from around the world and the tournament was officiated by the In ...

. Cunnane was one of Ireland's best players in the final against

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. He was top scorer when Ireland won the 2001 Atlantic Alliance Cup, playing at

full-forward Full-forward is a position in Australian rules football and Gaelic football with a key focus on kicking goals. The Coleman Medal is awarded to the player, often a full-forward, who has kicked the most goals in an Australian Football League seaso ...

and played in the forward line again in the

2008 Australian Football International Cup The 2008 Australian Football International Cup was the third time the Australian Football International Cup, an international Australian rules football competition, has been contested. It was scheduled for 2008 (as part of the 150th year cel ...

, reaching the semi-finals. Cunnane returned with the team for a third time to help them reclaim the

2011 Australian Football International Cup The 2011 Australian Football International Cup (also known as the AFL International Cup 2011 or IC11) was the fourth edition of the Australian Football International Cup, an international Australian rules football competition run by the Australia ...

title.

Gaelic football

Cunnane is a club member of the

Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sports, amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports o ...

team for his home town of

Tulsk Tulsk () is a village in County Roscommon, Ireland, on the N5 road (Ireland), N5 roads in Ireland, national primary road between Strokestown and Bellanagare. It sits at around 19 km north of Roscommon, Roscommon town. Heritage Near Tulsk ...

in Ireland, has also represented

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

in the Australasian GAA Championships. He has appeared on ''The Craic Down Under'' on

RTÉ Television RTÉ Television is a department of Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Ireland's public service broadcaster. Its first channel was Telefís Éireann, which began broadcasting on 31 December 1961. Since the 1960s, RTÉ Television has added chan ...

and was selected on TV channel

TG4 TG4 (; , ) is an Irish free-to-air public service television channel. It launched on 31 October 1996 and is available online and through its on-demand service TG4 Player in Ireland and beyond. TG4 was initially known as (TnaG), before bein ...

's "The Underdogs" team that narrowly lost to

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

in 2003.

References

Living people Roscommon inter-county Gaelic footballers Gaelic footballers who switched code Irish players of Australian rules football 1971 births People from Tulsk 20th-century Australian sportsmen {{Roscommon-gaelic-football-bio-stub