Shairoze Akram: Pakistan-born All-Ireland winner pushing Castleknock to new highs in Dublin
Rewind. Pause. In 2016, when Mayo won the under-21 championship , Shairoze Akram became the first Pakistan-born player to win an All-Ireland medal. In the global village, where everyone knows everyone’s business, word of his triumph made the television news in Pakistan . It might have been served as dessert in the “And Finally” slot, but somebody was paying attention. A sportswear supplier in Pakistan tracked down Akram on Facebook and sent him the seed of a business proposal. He was looking for a way into the Irish market and suggested Gaelic football gloves as a foot in the door. Akram was only 19, his football career had taken flight and he was about to start a sports scholarship in DCU . He had no sense of himself as an entrepreneur; he was busy being other things. “I didn’t pay too much heed to it,” he says now. “I was thinking, ‘What would guys in Pakistan know about Gaelic gloves?’ But then I looked into it more and I realised that Adidas have bases in Pakistan. Nike was getting stuff there.” The contact continued until the seed germinated. Cian Hanley, Akram’s childhood friend, returned from a stint in Australian rules and his interest was piqued. By the time they decided to start a business, Akram was in his third year in DCU, Hanley and Akram were both on the Mayo senior panel and their Mayo team-mate Tom Parsons had joined them in the nascent enterprise. In 2018, Game Ready Gear was born. “My living room [in Ballaghaderreen] was the base at the very start and from there we moved into Cian’s garage,” says Akram. “And then, during Covid, when businesses were shutting down and cutting their staff, we hired two people: my brother and Cian’s sister. Then we moved into a facility in Ballaghaderreen Main Street, that used to be a sports shop but had been closed for years. We spent two or three years selling stuff from that. “We started off with just gloves but we branched out into socks and shorts and now we do everything. We’re doing PE uniforms, we’re doing bespoke workwear and at the moment we’re waiting for a GAA licence. If we get that, that will allow us to do the full range of gear, including match-day jerseys. We have seven staff now and we’re looking to hire more. If we get the GAA licence, we’re going to need more stitchers to manufacture in Ireland. We’re set up for that.” Rewind. Pause. Akram was four when he arrived in Ballaghaderreen 25 years ago. A year earlier his father had secured a job in the Dawn Meats factory in the town and when everything was set up for family life, the rest of them followed. He started school without a word of English. The languages they spoke at home were their mother tongues, Urdu and Punjabi, and through the years that has never changed. In school, in the beginning, he communicated by hand gestures or nodding his head. It was a while before sport broke down barriers. Very few of the Pakistani children in the town played Gaelic games. Akram was 11 when he first tried. Around that time, Andy Moran and his partner Jenny – now his wife – used to come into Akram’s primary school to take the children for PE classes. Akram’s first love was soccer, and everybody could see that he was gifted at that game; his talent for Gaelic football, though, was hidden. Moran encouraged him. “He nudged me and pushed me,” says Akram. “You can see what he’s like, his enthusiasm and his energy are so persuasive and so overpowering. He really pushed me to take it up, first in school and then in the club.” When he was under-12 he couldn’t make his place on the club team; four years later, he was vice-captain of the Mayo under-16s. Talent is always a matchmaker and in that sense Akram and the GAA folded into each other’s arms. But GAA pitches all over the country are still not a reflection of a multi-cultural Ireland. Against that background, Akram stood out. “Where we all belong,” is the GAA’s latter-day catch-cry and recruitment motto. Is that how Akram felt? “For the most part, I would say yes. I was fortunate that I could count on one hand where I’ve had racial incidents on the pitch. I’m very thick-skinned. It goes in one ear and out the other.” But shouldn’t a handful sound like a lot? He tells a story of a minor club match, where without Akram saying so, he must have been lording the play. “I was 16 at the time and the person roared out, ‘Stop kicking it to the black whatever’. And like, the crowd heard it, the players heard it, everyone heard it. The referee had to have heard it. My team-mates got around me, my coaches got around me and the way I looked at it, if somebody is having to stoop to that level to get something over me, I’m obviously doing something right on the pitch. “My club were willing to bring it to Mayo GAA but it ultimately came back to myself and my family to make that decision. The person involved apologised and we didn’t want to progress it.” Moran continued to mentor him. When Akram made the Mayo minors, Moran would sometimes drive him to matches or to physio sessions. When he needed a work placement for his college course, he landed in Moran’s gym and when the placement ended, he worked there for months afterwards. When Akram and Hanley started their sportswear business, they turned to Moran for advice and sometimes good advice would come unsolicited. Akram’s career with the Mayo seniors never climbed above a certain altitude. When he finished with the Mayo under-20s, Stephen Rochford drafted him in and in 2018 he appeared in a couple of National League matches. But James Horan replaced Rochford at the end of that year and he let Akram go. For the 2025 season, Kevin McStay brought him back and at 28 years of age he made his championship debut against Leitrim. But then McStay’s time as manager came to a brutal end and Moran took over. He didn’t have a spot for Akram. “When he got the job he gave me a call and we had a very open conversation,” he says. “We chatted about the club championship coming up and he mentioned that the way he was going, the direction of the team would be more towards youth. He put it to me very straight that if I perform well in the club championship, I’ll be involved in the plan and if I’m not [playing well], I won’t. And unfortunately for me, I just didn’t deliver the performances to the level that the guys were expecting. “I was disappointed not to be involved. Andy, I suppose, is very straight to the point. Like, he wouldn’t go two ways about something. If he feels a specific way he’ll tell you, which I think is important.” On the weekend Mayo breasted the clouds and reached the summit , he was at a friend’s wedding. When he accepted the wedding invitation there was nothing else in his diary. In every way, there was more distance between him and Croke Park than his heart desired. “I was living it through the videos of other people. There were mixed emotions in the sense that obviously I would have known a lot of those guys. I played with them, I would have played against them with the club. Matthew Ruane, Diarmuid O’Connor, Stephen Coen and Conor Loftus all played on the team that won the under-21 All-Ireland [with Akram]. But at the end of the day, I was just delighted.” Apart from college summers and some time spent at home during one of the Covid lockdowns, Akram has lived in Dublin since he landed in DCU 10 years ago. After he finished his degree in sports science and health he pivoted into a master’s in business and entrepreneurship in Technological University Dublin. From there, he entered the Civil Service through a graduate programme and for the last five years that has been his day job. During all that time, he continued to play for Ballaghaderreen, but at the beginning of this year he knew that was no longer sustainable. Injuries had mounted up over the years and the evening commute to Mayo for training and matches had not improved his physical state. This year he bought a house in Dublin with his fiancee, and something needed to change. Between last October and this July he didn’t play football for anybody. Ballaghaderreen soccer club were in a relegation play-off earlier in the year and they reached out to him. He answered their call and in that game he tore both of his hamstrings. Castleknock had approached him at other times over the years, but when they tried again during the summer he had a different mind. They were the nearest club to where he lived. He had no more stomach for the road. When Ballaghaderreen’s senior footballers were dragged into a relegation play-off last weekend he was glued to a commentary on Facebook and an X account that couldn’t keep up. A 42-year-old Andy Moran came off the bench in the last quarter to turn the tide. They survived. “I wasn’t really going to play at all this year. I was undecided. It’s not easy leaving your club. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I’m not young but I’m not too old either. So, getting to training again, getting yourself moving again was good, even from a mental health perspective.” On Saturday, Castleknock will contest a Dublin semi-final for just the second time in their short history. In their storming run, Akram has marked Paul Mannion, Niall Scully and Seán Bugler and held them all scoreless from play. End of pause.