US soldiers take hurling into 30 million homes

[Declan]

They couldn't hit the ball to save their lives but by jaysus they were a determined shower.

So just like Loughnane's Clare them then

[Eamonnca1]

How many hurlers are there in the US ?

Tricky question.  I'm going to guess about 500 or 600 including college players.  The number increases during the summer when the Irish students come out.

How many are Yank as opposed to Irish?

Milwaukee skews the number quite a bit in favour of the Americans, you're looking at about 90% American but that would go down to probably about 75% in the summer when the students land.  The most competitive competition in the North American Championship is the Junior C hurling which is entry-level and reserved for US-born players only.  In the senior hurling championship there was 4 teams, Junior A there was 4 (although one of them was imported from Canada to make up the numbers because the Boston teams didn't travel - long story), Junior B was 8 teams, Junior C was 11 teams.  Don't forget, in Senior and Junior A there are other teams that have to fight their way out of city championships to qualify for the finals, so you could add two or three teams in those grades.  So that's 33 teams at the finals plus about 3 more that were left behind in their cities or didn't travel from Boston.

There's also three unaffiliated clubs in the Pacific Northwest which play against each other but haven't sent a team to national finals yet. They're 100% American.

The pattern over the years with registration had been a decline in the number of players in the traditional GAA centres (Boston, Chicago, Philly, San Fran, New York) but an increase in other cities that don't receive as much immigration from Ireland, hence the increase in US-born players.  That has turned around a little bit though because youth programs have been running for a while now in the big five cities so even they are starting to see more American born players coming through at adult level.  Hence the growth in the Junior C and Junior B grades.  They're working their way up through the grades too, so we're probably less than five years away from seeing a competitive all-American senior team.

Edit to add: I haven't included New York in these numbers.

Where do they get their hurls ?

Joe Quigley is the fella from Chicago who makes them locally.  Some people say his stuff isn't very good but that was only true in his first year.  He's worked hard at it and gotten a whole lot better, I've given his more recent stuff out to college teams and they've worked out fine.  The fussier clubs will get their stuff shipped out from Ireland, usually via a friend's checked luggage.

[seafoid]

This is a very sad article about how returned injured US soldiers were treated in 2007. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html

[aontroim]

Saw this story made BBC Newsline this evening.  So who's Austin O'Callaghan posting as on here then??