Harry Cramer with his parents Gary and Rebecca and his siblings
Young Harry doing his family proud with Sydney
FORMER St Mark’s and Dublin minor player Gary Cramer traded Tallaght for Australia a number of years ago, but now his son is making sporting waves of his own as he lines out for the Sydney Swans who compete in the AFL.
Aged just 14, his son Harry still has a few years to go before making his debut at senior level but has been with the Swans since the age of 10 after picking up AFL around seven years old following a brief stint playing for Rheban GAA in Kildare.
Making it to U14s level is a serious achievement as this is the age group where competitive tournaments start to be played and each year players will be released that the club do not feel will be able to progress any further.
Harry also lines up for a club team in Sydney also with the situation being similar to how his father would have played for St Marks at club level before being called up into the Dublin squad.
“He definitely wants to do it. Depending how lucky he is I suppose will decide how far he can actually go with it.
‘He’s scoring plenty of goals. I think he’s 41 goals in 64 games at club football.
Harry Cramer
‘That’s the reason we’re kind of pushing, it’s not a low league and it’s quite a high and competitive domestic league. It’d be like Cherry Orchard or Home Farm in Ireland, all your top soccer teams.
‘That’s what it’s like here so to get that amount of goals here you have to realise that he must have talent.” – Gary Kramer, Harry’s father said.
Gary, a native of Old Bawn, played with St Mark’s where he was coached by none other than Dublin legend Brian Stynes before an ACL injury forced him to reconsider where his priorities lay.
Ultimately he and his wife Rebecca, a Springfield local who was involved playing camogie for Thomas Davis elected to make the move down under.
Funnily enough the brother of Brian Stynes, Jim Stynes, was one of the first Gaelic players to make the move to Australia to play AFL. A process which has been the subject of many headlines recently following Mayo youngster Kobe McDonald’s move to St Kilda in the past couple of weeks.
Harry will continue to line up for the Sydney Swans for the foreseeable future and could very well be the next Irishman to make an impact in the AFL, following in the steps of Stynes.
