Gaelic Football Update - Seattle
By JOHN KEANE
INTERNATIONAL Gaelic football championship:
The Clare team
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International Gaelic Football Championship
The Clare team which defeated Sligo in Croke Park on August 22 in the Tommy Murphy Cup Final, traveled to Boston on October 3 to play the NACB (North American County Board) All-Stars for the Irish Diaspora Perpetual Trophy, the international Gaelic football championship. After a hard-fought game that swung back and forth, Clare emerged victorious by a score of 1-14 to 1-12, just surviving by the skin of their teeth.
INTERNATIONAL Gaelic football championship:
The NACB team
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The NACB team gave away a gift goal from a sideline ball which put Clare in front for the first time in the second half, and they managed to hang on. It was the first time an NACB All-Star selection, comprised of players from Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia, had ever competed against a County team from Ireland in a meaningful competition, and it showed that the players in the NACB are equal to those anywhere in Ireland. Next year, the Tommy Murphy Cup winners travel to New York while their hurling counter-parts will travel to an NACB.
Hurling
The 2004 hurling season was the last year that any county in Ireland was automatically eligible to win the hurling All-Ireland. From 2005, only 12 counties will battle it out for the McCarthy Cup, with the rest split into tiers two and three, where they will contest their own All-Ireland championships. Twenty-two counties competed for the 2004 All-Ireland title, but 10 of those will drop down to a lower tier next year.
The following teams will compete for the All-Ireland crown: Cork, Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford, Offaly, Laois, Dublin, Galway and Antrim. The provincial championships will proceed as usual with the Leinster and Munster winners and losers both progressing to the All-Ireland quarter-finals. The eight others will split into two groups of four, play off in a round-robin (three games per county) with the top two in each group joining the provincial winners and runners-up in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Camogie
One of the players on the All-Ireland winning Tipperary camogie team was born in Saudi Arabia, and she also lived in Atlanta. Jill Horan, 20, lived in Saudi until she was four and then her father John, a civil engineer, brought his family to Atlanta, where they spent a further six years before returning to Ireland.
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