GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 17 – January 10, 2015 | Page 11
The Asian Gaelic Games the biggest event in the
annual calendar takes place in October and each
year is going from strength to strength. Last year
over 50 teams took to the playing fields at the 70
acre equestrian centre at Putrajaya, south of Kuala
Lumpur in men’s and ladies football, hurling and
camogie exhibition games.
Defending senior men’s football champions for
2015 will be Singapore who just edged out Seoul,
while in Ladies football, Singapore will be looking
to hold onto their title which they garnered from
rivals Shanghai. Singapore hurlers will defend
their title this year with Hong Kong the principle
opposition.
USA
Photo: Daegu GAA.
The North American GAA (NACB) (excluding New
York) has the largest numbers of clubs in the world outside of Ireland and runs competitions over vast distances.
America is one the fastest growing areas for club growth
Photo: NACB GAA.
particularly in hurling and that’s in cities with no particular connection to Irish culture.
Presently, there are some 130 adult clubs and 45 youth
clubs playing all codes in the
‘county board’ which is broken up into Boston/Northeast,
Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, Western/San Francisco,
Midwest, Philadelphia, Mid
Atlantic and Central/Chicago.
The overall US Championship (NACB) the ‘National
Finals’ is played in early September and draws teams from
all across America to play in
all four codes. In 2014, some
2,500 players represented 110
teams and were looking for a
chance to win one of 17 titles.
While the senior men’s and
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