Buenos Aires hurlers to take on Westmeath in Cusack Park
A team from the famous Hurling Club in Buenos Aires is coming to Mullingar next Tuesday, September 17, to play against a Westmeath selection at Cusack Park.
The team is coming to Ireland for the first ever International Hurling Festival, taking place in Galway later this month, and the visit to Mullignar is part of the festival.
Aer Lingus, in partnership with Etihad Airways, is hosting the event.
Hernán Magrini Scally of Hurling Club Buenos Aires explained why the trip to Mullingar is so special:
“A lot of the big Irish families that came to Argentina in 1860 were from Westmeath, names like Scallys and Gallaghers have all strong Argentinean links.
"We are delighted to be given the opportunity to travel to Westmeath whilst we are in Ireland to play in the International Hurling Festival,”
In 2012, Connacht Hurling Director Damien Coleman under a directive from the GAA' was sent to Buenos Aires, to a small town called Hurling Ham, where he embarked on a two week adventure to energise the hurling club and deliver on coach education.
The Hurling Club, whose chairman Ronnie Quinn is third generation Irish, has an amazing 2,000 members.
Says Damien: "We went with a 3 pronged approach taking in the juvenile and adult section within the club."We delivered a foundation level coaching course through an interpreter, this was a first for me!
"There was serious interest from everyone at the club, to find out more about the game of hurling but also in technical side of the game and its coaching techniques. Hockey is one of the biggest sports in the country and the coaches from these teams sat in and participated on the foundation course and were looking to see how the GAA coaching templates could in fact, benefit their game!”
From Damien's trip, a 3 month window was identified where the GAA season could run.
"This is a definite work in progress, the GAA season now runs for 8-12 weeks and already since the trip there have been 3 exhibition matches between Argentina and Ireland, these matches have lead to help the selection for the team to travel to Galway for the International Hurling Festival. In the last game the Argentinean Hurling team had their first win over Ireland which is showing the progress of their development.”
This potential of this project was spotted by Pat Daly, GAA National Coaching Director and through the two week trip and the ongoing work by the club executive, hurling is continuing to grow and the fruits of this will be displayed during their time here in September playing in the International Hurling Festival.
Sixteen overseas teams will participate in the overall competition including teams from New York, San Francisco, Canada, the UK, Continental Europe, the Middle East and Australia. The tournament will also serve as an opportunity to promote the game of hurling in developing regions by including teams such as Buenos Aires, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and a European team made up of non-Irish nationals.
The International Hurling Festival will run from Wednesday 18 to Saturday 21 September 2013. For more information log onto , www.hurlingfestival.com, Like www.facebook.com/aerlingushurling or Follow www.twitter.com/AerLingusFest