’Stars warm up... for their next holiday!
AFTER the recent exhibition game at Fenway Park in Boston, here was another hurling match taking place on foreign soil involving the pick of Ireland’s hurlers, this time in the exotic surrounds of ‘The Padang’ in downtown Singapore.
The All-Star selections from the past two seasons put on a show for the interested locals at the Singapore Recreation club.
With high humidity and temperatures pushing towards 30 degrees, the game was played in four quarters with rolling substitutions. Just like Boston, it was a goals-only game and nine-a-side due to the smaller pitch size with AllIreland hurling final referee Fergal Horgan arguably putting in the biggest shift as he tried to keep up with the end-to-end play.
Gary Hanniffy bagged a hattrick while Conor Cooney and Conor Whelan were two others to find the net with regularity, the Galway pair accounting for over a third of the winning team’s total.
The Galway and Waterford contingent will certainly be clocking up the air miles between now and the start of the National League, both AllIreland finalists heading to New York and Cancun over the Christmas period.
As warm-ups go, this will do nicely.