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 11