David Shanahan’s unconventional journey from Ireland to Atlanta and back

The Week 0 matchup between Georgia Tech and Florida State at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland is a neutral site game for everyone on both teams — except Yellow Jackets punter David Shanahan.

Shanahan hails from Castleisland, County Kerry, Ireland and is believed to be the first Irishman to receive a full scholarship to play American college football. On August 24, he will get a chance to play in his home country.

“I’m excited to get the kid home,” Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key said. “Any time any kid can go back to their home it’s exciting, especially when it’s so far away from here.”

When he went to Georgia Tech, Shanahan — now a senior — thought there was a remote possibility he would be able to play a game in Ireland, but thought the odds would be slim because Georgia Tech already played in Ireland in 2016. But in 2022 During spring ball, Shanahan Key called him during practice and asked a “cryptic” question about Ireland.

“Usually he’s crossing the O-line and yelling at them somewhere. He’s not really practicing mid-conversation,” he said. “I caught it after a while because I knew the game was coming up and I knew they hadn’t announced a match for 2024. But eventually he told me, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty sick.'”

Shanahan has walked a winding path in American college football. Growing up, rugby and Gaelic football were his main sports. He compared the passion people in Ireland have for Gaelic football to the passion people in the United States have for American football.

“When you’re 15, you’re training really hard, you’re in the gym really hard,” he said. “I’m from Kerry, so every town in Kerry would have their own club, and then the best lads from their club would play for their county. So I was playing for the county minor squad.”

Shanahan was a member of the Kerry U17 Gaelic Football “panel” that won the 2017 Munster Championship (Gaelic Football’s national title) at U17 level. But as he matured, Shanahan’s passion for the game waned and he began looking for a new challenge.

“There wasn’t much adventure, I thought. Because I say, ‘OK, best case scenario, I’ll just grow up and play for Kerry and never really leave my hometown’ or whatever. Don’t really excite me that much. .”

Instead, he entered American football. The mechanics he had already learned were so applicable to the American game that Shanahan believed he could jump. “Certainly the skill set has translated,” he said. “I tried to kick a little bit, but it didn’t really come as naturally as punting. But even saying that, punting was really hard, it took me a while to get really good at it.”

Shanahan realized he had to take some steps to reach his full potential. That’s where he gives a lot of credit to his parents, Jack and Eliza, for believing in him to take the leap of faith.

“I was 18 years old, and I was like, ‘Hey guys, I want to move to Australia, to the other side of the world, to this place in the suburbs of Melbourne, to try and get a scholarship to America to play soccer for a year.'”

Over the past decade or so, Australia has emerged as the unlikely home of many of football’s best punters. This was largely due to ProKick Australia in Melbourne, an academy established in 2007 by Nathan Chapman, an Australian rules footballer who played three preseason games for the Green Bay Packers in 2004. Prokic has produced six and four of the past seven Ray Guy Award winners. Current NFL punter. Shanahan felt that if he wanted to break into high-level American football, he would first have to go to the other side of the world.

“I’ve worked, I’ve saved money and stuff. But for (my parents) to agree to it and fully support me is probably something that shines a little bit, how much commitment there was from them — as much as me — – to send their youngest son halfway around the world to a country they’ve never been to, to do something they know nothing about.”

Shanahan worked at her family’s farm, her father’s pharmacy, took the money she had saved from her previous birthday, her first communion and her confirmation and used it to move to Melbourne at the end of August 2019. But in the end he was forced. To return to Ireland in quarantine due to the covid-19 pandemic.

Shanahan, his brother Rob and his parents stayed together to quarantine at their home. They turned their shed into a gym, where the brothers would practice. Once they are done in the shed, David and Rob will walk 20 minutes to their farm behind their house, kick for 2.5 hours and drive back home.

“Honestly, I had a great time during Covid,” he said.

While he was honing his skills on the farm, ProKick’s team was trying to find a landing spot for Shanahan. He likens the process to ordering a pizza.

“Coach rings them up, he tells them, ‘We want a guy who can do this, this and this.’ And then they look at their guys and (see) which guy would be a good fit so they come to you and say, ‘Hey, is this school interested in giving you a scholarship?’ And if you say yes, and they give you a scholarship, there’s no going back.”

Shanahan said they were talking to a couple of ACC schools, and then one Tuesday morning, he woke up to a text from offensive line coach John Smith.

“He’s like, ‘Hey we’re having a zoom with Georgia Tech tomorrow. I’m sure you’d be interested in going?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’

“Then they sent them all my film, and then I woke up probably three or four days later to a text, and it’s like, ‘You committed to Georgia Tech.’ It happened very quickly.”

Shanahan announced his commitment to Tech on May 15, 2020. He was supposed to arrive in Atlanta in January 2021, but due to the addition of the Covid year, he was told that no scholarships would be open until May.

He had already wanted to continue working on his craft, but could not return to Australia due to Covid restrictions. Shanahan’s coaches at ProKick suggested he visit Tom Hackett — a two-time Ray Guy Award winner and ProKick alum — in Utah. Shanahan traveled to Utah, worked on his game and eventually ended up in Atlanta. He played his first American football game for the Yellow Jackets on September 4, 2021 against Northern Illinois.

It was a feat only accomplished on the field, but Shanahan still had growing to do, especially when it came to understanding the game and situational punting.

“It was definitely an adjustment,” he said. “I can always sit back and boot the football, but it’s probably more of a situational thing, when the rush is coming, when you want to close it, when you back up in the end zone you have to cut short, and punting the dog.

“Obviously, a lot of the situational stuff, I definitely wasn’t good at it as a freshman, and I just went out there and swung my legs and hoped for the best. But that’s something that comes from experience, and the coaches have helped me through it all but I feel like I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

Adjustments on the field are important, and Key emphasized that Shanahan’s journey is nothing to gloss over. But Key also praised Shanahan for adapting to everything off the field.

“To transition to living here, to transition academically, he never looked back, and it was never something that was a struggle for him,” Key said. “Except for his accent, he plays straight with everyone else.”

Its Lingus College Football Classic will be the first time Shanahan’s family has been together for one of his games. Each player was given two tickets for family and friends, but Shanahan was able to get some from his teammates and his father bought 20 additional tickets to give the family what Shanahan estimated to be at least 40 total seats.

Along with his excitement for his family to attend, Shanahan hopes to introduce his teammates to the local breakfast.

“It’s blood pudding,” he said. “You might mistake it for sausage, but it’s not really sausage. Coach Key hated it. I asked our nutritionist yesterday, ‘We’re eating pudding, aren’t we?’ And he’s like, ‘Coach Key said he doesn’t want to see it.’ I was like, ‘What are we doing here?’ But I’m going to hide some blood pudding.”

“He can introduce them to whatever he wants,” Key said. “I’m staying away from it. I’ll take my eggs and my grits.”

ok Shanahan also has some less offensive things he wants to show his teammates and coaches: “There are a few bars in Dublin that I want to take them to if we win.”