When Ruaidhri Fegan started teaching martial arts classes in his local gym in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, Australia, two years ago, he decided to call the club Celtic Jiu Jitsu, simply because he was Irish.
Little did the Derry native realise that this choice of name would grow his Brazilian jiu-jitsu club organically into a thriving Irish community in Melbourne. “It blossomed,” he says.
“Soon after I started, my first couple of members were Irish. You get these young guys, fresh off the plane, saying ‘I saw you on Google and wanted to see if it was an Irish person’.
“They come in and meet a whole bunch of Irish and suddenly have friends – they start to help each other find jobs and make connections.”
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Jiu-jitsu has grown in popularity in Ireland with the rise of UFC, and so Irish people seek it out when they arrive. “They see Celtic and I’m the person they’re going to.”
He says so many people discover they know each other or have a common friend.
“They’ve an immediate community to plug into. It’s wild to watch.”
Fegan has been doing jiu-jitsu since he was 12, “back in the dark ages of martial arts in Ireland”. The modern version of the martial art, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), involves much close-range grappling and ground fighting.
Fegan started the club after earning his black belt two years ago through Lachlan Giles, who is considered one of the top BJJ grapplers in the world.
Fegan gets lots of newcomers to his sessions: “I get quite a few guys when the Gaelic season is off, looking for another sport, and they are hooked.”
You get some of the nicest people you will meet
— Ruaidhri Fegan
“Heaps” of newcomers to the sport come through a six-week introductory course Fegan runs for those who have never stepped on a mat before.
“Guys come in very nervous – they’ve only played Gaelic and perceive this as a fight club . . . but you get some of the nicest people you will meet.” The course soon filters out the “bouncer types”, who quickly leave, he says.
For emigrants, Fegan believes BJJ can provide a very important support and outlet: “It’s a very physical thing but there’s the stress relief and the confidence you build.”
He recalls one recent Irish emigrant who was very shy and didn’t like raising his voice, but within a few months, he was opening up. For those emigrants who find themselves between jobs, BJJ is a superior alternative to sitting at home in their apartments and wondering if they should go back to Ireland, he says.
Fegan believes he would have benefited from this type of community when he arrived on a “one-way ticket” in 2013 and knew nobody. “When I think back, it was kind of mad but I ended up loving it.”
For Fegan, the BJJ club is part-time and “purely a hobby”. He has worked every sort of job, from removals to bar work and labouring, due to the temporary visa situation. After a year, he met his now fiancée and ended up getting a partner visa.
I get quite a few guys when the Gaelic season is off, looking for another sport, and they are hooked
— Ruaidhri Fegan
“This opened the door to the legal field,” says Fegan, who has a law degree from Magee College in Derry. It is helpful that the UK and Australian legal systems are “pretty much the same”, he adds.
He isn’t qualified as a solicitor. That’s something he would have to train for in England for a year, although there are options in Australia too. “That was part of the reason I came over here, to think about that,” he says.
He now works for Allens, one of Australia’s big six law firms, in legal project management. It is an area he “fell into” that exists only in top-tier law firms.
“Things are very fast-paced over here. It’s a very morning-heavy culture. People are up at 6.30am and at a cafe by 7am. And the restaurant and cafe culture is huge.”
It makes him appreciate the pace of life back in Derry when he visits. “People walk a bit slower, you can feel like you are on a treadmill here, constantly running.”
However, he says rents are “pretty crazy” in Australia, with many people moving in with their parents. The jobs market is tougher than when he moved over and he sees more people struggling to get work.
Most of the Irish arrivals he meets are there for a “fun year away”. Very few stick around, partly due to visa issues. It can be difficult to stay without being on a skill-shortage list or meeting an Australian partner, he says.
When they do return home, many of his former students contact him to say that they’ve joined a jiu-jitsu club back in Ireland. “It’s like having a kid or a younger brother – I didn’t expect it to be as emotional,” he says.
