Exciting times as Philly now home to Stateside GAA

Since 1959, the seemingly impossible task of deciding a North American senior football champion has challenged the overseers of the GAA across the US and Canada.

Down by the banks of the Delaware River this weekend, they’ll be doing that and much more. Gluttons for punishment, they’ve always been expanding. In Philadelphia, the city where the North American County Board first got its act together in the late 50s, hurlers, footballers, camogie players and lady footballers of all different levels will be competing with the best of all the divisions which make up the GAA in the US and Canada.

To peruse the schedule is overwhelming. Preliminary rounds and quarter-finals on Friday, semi-finals on Saturday and all the finals leading up to the senior football final on Sunday, they’ll need every inch of the five pitches they’ll have lined and flagged on public space in the City of Brotherly Love with about 96 full-length games in total and just over 10,000 people expected to pass through over the course of three days.