'There is more strategy and I like that there are few rules'

GAELIC GAMES ALL STARS TOUR:THE LAST ball struck in Sunday afternoon's All Star exhibition game was driven into the crowd by Tipperary's Pádraic Maher.

But instead of the crowd enjoying a baseball moment and scrambling to collect a home run, the ball cleared the bleachers and sailed into an empty car park. It was chilly by this stage and people wanted autographs and to get indoors so the ball was forgotten by all save one teenager who followed its arc and retrieved it.

Seán Martin-Hamburger is 14 and has been hurling with the San Francisco GAA since a visit to Ireland over a year ago stoked his curiosity. Pocketing the ball was a nice memento except he didn’t keep it. Instead, he handed it to seven-year-old David Fitzgerald, who was standing nearby.

“I know when I was little, I would have really wanted the ball,” Martin-Hamburger beamed. Martin-Hamburger is a perfect example of the way Gaelic sport is beginning to capture the imagination of first-generation Americans.

“When we were in Ireland my cousin told me there was a San Francisco team. And his mom looked up hurling people on Facebook and emailed my mom and from there we found SF GAA.”

As a result of Seán’s interest, his father – LA born and raised and a gridiron fan – has found himself drawn towards the GAA scene. He spent Saturday morning, when the All Star hurlers gave a clinic for local kids, recycling tins for the association. “There wasn’t any point in my helping out with the coaching,” he said. “I just can’t understand the accents.”

He smiles when asked what he thinks of the Irish game.

“Well, my mother thinks it’s barbaric. And I think they look more like axes than sticks and I am glad they wear helmets. But it is an intelligent game. It is not just about running into collisions.

“I mean, I love American football but face it: it is just about running into each other. With hurling, there is a lot more strategy and it is quicker and I like that there are few rules.”

The young man who was gifted the ball is new to the GAA scene. During the match, the Liam MacCarthy Cup was sitting on a table on the edge of the pitch and was easily the star attraction. Young David bashfully wandered up to the cup and put his arms around the handle. It meant more to his father than to him but Fitzgerald is a GAA blueblood: his great-grandfather was Gilbert Fitzgerald who opened Killarney’s Fitzgerald stadium in 1936.

“We call him the Original,” says David’s father, also Gilbert, who has been in California since 1989.

Not far from where they were standing was a tall man who looked much too fresh to have played in the 1947 All-Ireland hurling final. Msgr Ned Kavanagh was ordained the year after that and appointed to a church in Sacramento a year later. It was a far cry from his childhood in Urlingford. He kept in touch with hurling through the Kilkenny People newspapers his parents posted out. Trips home were allowed every four years. “But if Kilkenny were in the All-Ireland final . . . I used to slip quietly home,” he admits.

Sunday’s game was an exhibition in the truest sense: the Opel All Star GAA-GPA team 2011 put 7-11 past the 2010 All-Stars who scored 3-24.

The crowd was Irish-American but not exclusively so: Stanford and Berkeley students who happened on YouTube clips of hurling became so fascinated with it that they set up clubs and play challenge games regularly. The current recession is bringing a new wave of Irish people to California. So the presence of the best hurlers in Ireland displaying their skills over here matters.

“I think it is important,” says Gilbert Fitzgerald. “The Irish community is bifurcated now, if I can use that phrase. So the GAA fulfils a very traditional role on one side of it – the sporting and social aspect of it. And for the other side, it probably has some cultural significance. You know, I’d often tell David about Killarney and it is much easier to tell about those stories when this is going on here. I think it is a very significant cultural contribution to the diaspora. Michael D would be very pleased!”

Then he took his son to get the ball signed. They were after one signature in particular: a Clare man named Davy Fitzgerald.