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on 7 August 2006 , 2:42 pm 29 | 1 views

A date and venue has finally been set for this year’s Ulster hurling final between Antrim and New York – 22nd October in Boston, USA.

On the face of it, it seems slightly ridiculous – but let’s hope they can turn it into a great day out for all concerned.

UPDATE: Should have linked to this old discussion earlier.

  • Pete Baker

    “On the face of it, it’s seems slightly ridiculous..”

    Remind me, Aaron, of the reason behind this slightly ridiculous venue and date change?

    Oh, that’s right.. there are a number of players on the New York team who are in the US illegally

    That’s not ridiculous.. it’s farcical.

  • Chris Donnelly

    I take it Pete has his flights booked- and visa in hand….

    Look’s like Antrim will have to wait until October to win their second piece of silverware this year, unless of course the footballers come through in the Tommy Murphy Cup.

    Then the Saffrons could truly be proclaimed All-Ireland kings of second-rate championships…

  • Garibaldy

    What’s to stop the immigration authorities arresting the players on their way to or from this match, as they will know where they are? They can be very vicious so it wouldn’t surprise me if this happened.

  • Keith M

    So the GAA are explicitly supporting those that flaunt the law. What a surprise!

  • Aaron_Scullion

    Yawn yawn yawn. judge not lest etc etc.

    i choose to see the positives – a great day out for the Irish-American community, and a way to promote Gaelic Games abroad.

  • Owen

    Would Hurling be an ‘in-clusive’ sport in America?

  • carlosblancos

    Then the Saffrons could truly be proclaimed All-Ireland kings of second-rate championships

    A little harsh Chris?

    I might be clutching at straws here but few counties (excepting Galway, Cork and perhaps Westmeath) are capable of fielding teams in both codes who can win Championships, whether 1st or 2nd rate

  • Peter Fallow

    Given the now official link-up between the IRA/INLA and the GAA, one imagines the republican collecting tins will be shaken with considerable gusto at this event.

  • dantheman

    Peter Fallow,

    You’re like a cracked record player.
    Its not our fault you blew it all on Armagh/Donegal at the weekend. I fancied an Ulster double myself.

    Time to move on.

    Regards,
    Dantheman

  • peter fallow

    I love hearing republicans telling everyone else to move on. When you all apply the same principle to Pat Finucane, Bloody Sunday, the famine and the Norman conquest of Ireland, perhaps we might be more inclined to listen.

  • new boy

    Peter Fallow
    Now residing in NYC and having attended the last number of Ulster Hurling champ matches out here as well as Connaght f’ball, I can confirm that there were no collecting tins at Gaelic park for anything political. The only items for sale were NY playing gear and the visiting counties merchandise. There isn’t a strong nothern influence here in NY GAA, and the organisiion concentrates on raising money for itself and not for others.
    The friends of SF probably do a lot better at one of their corporate dinners.

    Great to see the game going ahead though.

  • peter fallow

    “There isn’t a strong nothern influence here in NY GAA, and the organisiion concentrates on raising money for itself and not for others.”

    Sounds like a tacit admission of the ultra republican / sectarian / terrorism supporting
    nature of the GAA in ‘the North’ compared to its southern counterparts. A difference reflected in the broader population, most of whom want nothing to do with their headbanging ‘countrymen’ over the border.

  • dantheman

    Peter Fallow,

    That may a be a similar relationship betweeh the British people of GB and eccentrics like yourself. Why not head to a GAA and find out yourself?

    Regards,
    Dantheman

  • peter fallow

    I’d rather enjoy a sport which – with the exception of this jaunt to play a gaggle of illegal immigrants – is played on an international stage, rather than by only one tribe on this island. It’s kinda touching in some ways though. Your own wee sport. It’s just a shame about the official endorsement for sectarian mass murderers that goes with it, though.
    Why should I or anyone else drop this? After the sectarian bile thrown at the NI football team by republicans over far, far, less? Over the actions of a handfull of hoods who have been systematically rooted out.
    This is about insitutional support by a sporting organisation for those who murdered hundreds of Protestants for their religion.

  • NYC

    Peter Fallow
    My local club is based in Antrim, and we have never collected for political parties, we also put an effort to promote the clubs absolute sporting ethos so that the kids would make a committment to sports and not to any other non sporting organision. The club realised that to ensure the club was sucessful that politics must never came into the running of the club. The nothern GAA are not all “ultra republican / sectarian / terrorism supporting” although granted I can’t speak for all clubs. Your insistance on driving that argument without considering that there are non political members of the northern GAA makes you look like a rather bitter illogical man of the past

  • Aaron

    Peter

    Give over. You are boring us.

  • lala

    “It’s kinda touching in some ways though. Your own wee sport.”

    No need for patronising.

  • “I’d rather enjoy a sport which – with the exception of this jaunt to play a gaggle of illegal immigrants – is played on an international stage, rather than by only one tribe on this island.”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/irish/4477177.stm

    Just thought I’d point Peter towards this wonderful example of sporting brotherhood. I know what I would sooner take my kids to watch.

  • carlosblancos

    This is about insitutional support by a sporting organisation for those who murdered hundreds of Protestants for their religion.

    No it isn’t. The Central Council of the GAA made it clear last Saturday that the rules were being broken by allowing the event to go ahead.

    The Antrim County Board appear to be on a solo run.

  • Peter Fallow

    I would have thought the official honouring of an INLA member like Lynch would be grounds for mass resignation from the GAA for those non-political GAA members. I haven’t heard of any. Or indeed any form of protest.
    I shall leave it. But perhaps you have some understanding now of what decent NI soccer fans felt like when they were demonised and abused for far, far less than that.

  • slug

    NYC – thats good what you say and I have been impressed by the GAAs changes in recent times but the Hunger Striker/Sinn Fein GAA thing in last weekends news was a setback for me, to be honest.

  • new boy

    Peter Fallow
    there should not be mass resignation in the GAA ranks over the Casement issue as that would be self defeating. The structure of the GAA is generally a club first county second priority setting, so the non political members will be working hard to improve their own clubs, so its from the foundation up that issues like these will be resolved. I find the Casement issue interesting in that the clubs normally vote to allow the event to go ahead in the County grounds, something that I believe didn’t happen this time.

  • Aaron_Scullion

    But perhaps you have some understanding now of what decent NI soccer fans felt like when they were demonised and abused for far, far less than that.

    Nope.

    The GAA is what the GAA is – a sporting organisation with roots in nationalist politics. It is what it is. Spade a spade.

    The IFA is a supposedly cross-community organisation that has always stood by while nationalists were made to feel like second class citizens.

  • [i]”Your own wee sport. It’s just a shame about the official endorsement for sectarian mass murderers that goes with it, though.”[/i]

    Hmmm, Peter, before you post such nonsense as this, I rather think you should check your facts.

    FYI, from the Sutton database. unionist murder gangs, or death squads or loyalist paramilitaries killed some 1,020 people from 1969 through 2001. Of yhat 1,020, 873 were civilians or about 85%. And, of those 873 innocents, 686 were Catholics and another 65 were thought to be Catholics.

    From the same database, Sutton identifies some 715 of those killings as sectarian murder, i.e. in which the sole or primary motive for the killing was the victim’s religious belief.

    So, before you throw around the term “sectarian mass murderers”. it would be wise that you make sure that it cannot be applied to your heroes. Obviously, the loyalist paramilitaries were sectarain mass murderers beyond the shadow of a doubt.

    I suggest you clean up your own house and backyard [b]before[/b] you start accusing others.

    Especially as the equivalent figures for the PIRA are 516 killings of civilians, 30% of total killings. Sutton identifies 134 of PIRA killings as sectarian — but that includes some 94 killing which were claimed by another organization which Sutton claims was a PIRA [i]nom de guerre[/i] based largely, it seems, on evidence provided by the RUC.

    All republicn guerrilla forces combined killed 737 civilians or about 36% of all those killed and 155 of those killings as sectarian.

    Seems to me that your characterization of “sectarian mass murderers” fits your heroes far more correctly than it fits republican groups and especially the PIRA.

    Care to correct your statement, please?

  • Occasional Commentator

    This is not the place to discuss the sectarianness or otherwise of the GAA. If any thread is the appropriate place, it’s the recent ones relating to Casemount Park.

    I usedn’t to mind these diversions but they’re getting boring now. Somebody might actually want to talk about the game in the U.S. or something on-topic like that.

  • Chris Donnelly

    Carlos

    Clutching at straws you certainly are. I’m a Saffron fan and I find scant consolation in the county’s hurlers having to compete with counties like Kildare and Carlow for a championship.

    To be fair to the team and management, they hardly got excited by the prospect themselves, as the demeanour and words of Jim McKernan after the game illustrate.

    You are right to point out the potential Antrim has for providing a strong panel in both football and hurling: but it remains only a potential.

    That said, there is a lot of good work going into Antrim at all levels which hopefully will reap rewards in the near future.

    Both Culbert and McKernan are good managers who have lifted the confidence in the county and in their respective playing panels.

    The footballers will be bouyed by the success of St. Galls this year, and success in the Tommy Murphy cup will undoubtedly boost morale ahead of next year’s league outings.

    In both football and hurling, the county’s Minor teams have performed well at provincial level, and a number of young players are coming through-particularly in the football side- which should boost prospects in the time ahead.

    The establishment of Club Aontroma in March this year, aimed at providing funds to support the development of Gaelic Games across the county, is another step forward in the county.

    But competing for 2nd tier competitions is not what Antrim as a county should be about, certainly not in the case of the Hurlers, who are not likely to have learnt too many lessons against a team they were beating 3-6 to 0-0 after a quarter of an hour yesterday!

    Sambo McNaughton, in his regular Irish News column, has floated a number of interesting proposals for re-shaping Hurling, not just in the county, but throughout Ireland.

  • peter fallow

    Well, like duh, I’m not going to engage with an argument made on the basis of a completely false premise, ie: that loyalist sectarian murderers are ‘my heroes’.
    I love the way every single attempt to deny the blatanty sectarian nature of the Provos merely serves to underline the sectarianism of those doing so.

  • willowfield

    Another disgraceful GAA decision.

    Now they are actively endorsing law-breaking by the New York County Board.

    If New York’s team is made up of illegal immigrants should they not be banned from the competition and the US authorities informed? How do they get away with it, and why?

    I can’t imagine this situation being officially endorsed in any other sport.

  • Todd

    1989, Tony Keady banned from playing for Galway by the GAA for illegally playing in the US, thereby handing the All Ireland title to Tipperary.

    The ref helped alot by the way and was rewareded by winning some prize down in Tipp (A car I think) and promtly settled there. Wanker I won’t mention his name but easu enough to find out.

    Chris, Antrim minors ran Galway close this year own beat ye by 2 points so things I think are looking up for Antrim.