Asian Gaelic Games

protos

The Asian Gaelic Games are kicking off this weekend in Shanghai, China.

I've been to the previous two in Hong Kong and they were a great laugh.
Going to miss this year though ................. C'mon Japan - time to break the
Korean stranglehold on the Derek Brady Cup.

From the South China Post :


Tuesday, September 20, 2005
SHANGHAI
Ancient footy

MARK O'NEILL

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?? Always eager for something new, Shanghainese have an event to watch this
weekend - the 10th Asian Gaelic Games opening on Friday.

About 1,000 spectators are expected to watch two of the oldest sports in
the world - Gaelic football and hurling, played for centuries before soccer
and rugby were invented. Written records describe hurling in the 5th
century and folklore even earlier. Gaelic football is a mixture of soccer
and rugby, and hurling is played with a stick made of ash wood and a
wool-and-cork ball wrapped in leather. They are fast, physical and
exciting.

The event brings 400 players in 34 male and female teams from 10 Asian
cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen clubs, with a third of the
players Asians. They will play seven-a-side rather than the 15 in the full
game, with two referees from the mother organisation in Ireland.

The first Asian Gaelic Games was held in Manila in 1996; since then it has
been held in Singapore, Phuket in Thailand and Hong Kong. It is the first
time the games are held in the mainland.

The Sunday final, will be preceded by a march around the pitch including a
People's Liberation Army band playing the Chinese and Irish anthems.

The games are an attempt to popularise sports that were historically
associated only with the Irish. The Gaelic Athletic Association, set up in
1884, is a fiercely nationalistic body which until the 1970s forbid its
members from playing "foreign" games, such as soccer and rugby. In 1938, it
expelled president Douglas Hyde for attending a game of rugby.

Noel Lennon, 32, chairman of this year's event, said he had played at the
games for the past 10 years in Asia, starting in Taiwan. He said about half
of the players in the three Shanghai clubs were not Irish. "We have half a
dozen clubs in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan," he added.

To spread the sport's popularity here, one Shanghai club, with money from
the Irish government, on September 14 started an eight-week course to train
pupils from two primary schools to play, hoping they will develop an
interest in the game.

The All-Ireland hurling final on September 10 attracted a crowd of 81,136
at the Croke Park stadium in Dublin and was shown in recordings to
thousands of players and supporters in Asia. The global audience included
100 fans in one Shanghai pub, who enjoyed the game to the accompaniment of
searing wind and rain. It was a gift from Typhoon Khanun that reminded them
of winter nights in Galway, one of the finalists. It was, alas, a bad omen,
for they lost to Cork, by 1-16 to 1-21.