- as good ideas tend to - had humble beginnings.

The idea took shape back in 2004, in a small Irish Pub in Newmarket, Auckland - owned at the time by a fellow Limerickman.

After living in Auckland for 4 years I was totally bemused when I stumbled on a vibrant Irish community. Bemused not in that there was an Irish Community, here more that I had lived here for 4 years and I only found it by bumping into the 'right person at the right time'. After my email was placed onto a certain email distribution list - Lo and behold - a whole world of Irishness opened up for me!

This was great. But, if it took me 4 years to find it - how hard was it for others that were fresh off the boat?

Being a bit headstrong (I blame my Limerick extraction - in good way - of course) I took it upon my self to create a single website that all the Irish community would use to broadcast to the world what exactly they get up to and when they were getting up to it.
And so, was born. I built the first site in late 2004 and I went out to the Irish community and poised myself for the mad rush of Irish minded organisers that would charge at the opportunity of getting their community antics on the web.

I could have remained poised for a long time - there wasn't a soul who was interested!

My first and biggest learning with to date has been this;
Communities like to be autonomous.
i.e. they're together because they do their own thing - together.

Obvious when you look at it isn't it?

So, not giving up on the thing (did I mention I am headstrong?) I took a slightly different slant to . And this is where things started to take off more than a little bit.

Seeing as all the different parts of the Irish community wanted to keep their autonomy, I decided to create a completely standalone website for each of them that they would be fully responsible for. They would own the information that was on it and how often it was updated. I would provide the technical know-how to enable this, I provided a heavy discount to all Irish Community sites and I extracted the latest news items and events for that community and collated them all on .
And thus, the network was born early August, 2005.

And who am I? Well I'm Kevin Finnin.
Headstrong Director of


Currently the Sceal Network comprises of

Auckland Irish Society	- historic home of the Irish in Auckland
Auckland GAA	- The sporting epicentre of the Irish in Auckland
Traditional Irish Dance NZ	- The cultural epicentre of the Irish in NZ
Bohemian Celtic	- a mainly Irish Football (Soccer) club
Harps GAA	- a long established team in the Auckland GAA
Celtic GFC	- a long established team in the Auckland GAA