Irish GAA
By Aiden Begley

All-Ireland Championships Stepping Up The Pace

With summer now (hopefully) on its way, the warm afternoons will provide a great backdrop for the 2005 All-Ireland competitions, and over the past month, counties from across Ireland and beyond have started battling it out the Gaelic Football and Hurling crowns.
With teams going through the ‘back door’ system of qualification, and also the addition of the Christy Ring and the Nicky Rackard Cup – which Warwickshire will compete in – it seems like the GAA is giving all the teams who entered the hurling competition a chance of silverware in 2005.
The chase for the Liam McCarthy trophy has seen defending Hurling champions Cork already through to the Munster final after overcoming a spirited Waterford team 2-17 to 2-15 in Thurles. Awaiting them in the final on June 26 is the winner of the Clare/Tipperary clash on the first weekend in June.
In Leinster, Laois gave Dublin a lesson in finishing defeating them 4-14 to 0-14, setting up a clash with Wexford, while Kilkenny face Offaly in the other clash to see who competes at Croke Park on July 3.
Antrim and Down face each other in the Ulster Final on June 5 at Casement Park. Down swept past London and Derry to get to the final while Antrim held their nerve to defeat New York to set up the clash.
June will see teams such as Galway and Kilkenny enter the All-Ireland race at the qualifier stage, as they all aim to be at Croke Park for the final on September 11.
Over in Gaelic Football, the long process to lift the Sam Maguire trophy on September 18 has begun in earnest, with London almost pulling off one of the shocks of the tournament against Roscommon in the opening round of fixtures.
With London on home soil, they matched Roscommon for seventy minutes, only to be defeated by a single point with the final score 0-12 to 1-08 in favour of the men from the West. Also in Connacht, Galway had the pleasure of a trip across the Atlantic to the Big Apple to defeat New York at Gaelic Park 3-14 to 0-06.
North of the border, Tyrone and Armagh have already recorded comfortable victories in their early games, while defending champions Kerry brushed past Tipperary with a 15 point margin of victory for the Kingdom County in the Munster competition.
Kildare have already recorded two victories in the race for the Leinster title, while Dublin are set to take on fierce rivals Meath in June to try and claim the second scalp of their campaign having already beaten Longford 2-23 to 0-10 in the capital.
The next month will see both the Gaelic and Hurling championships starting to take shape and you can read all the latest developments in July’s copy of The Harp.