Keith Duggan reports from Argentina, where hurling has a history and, prompted by the All Stars tour, just possibly a future

In the clubhouse of the Hurling Club in Buenos Aires, there is a photograph of a 1966 event, the Trofeo Paddy Fox. Although Argentine hurling had more or less ceased to exist by then, the game was arranged to commemorate the life of Fox, a renowned hockey player of the time who died in a plane crash while on honeymoon.

The group of around one dozen people is standing around the small trophy which has been placed on a white tablecloth. The names are all Irish - Billy Dolan, John Quinn, Willie McAllister - and the faces are also unmistakably Mick but there is nonetheless a definite Latin-American flourish about them. Pencil 'taches, hair greased back like Clarke Gable, the ladies - members of the Fox family - groomed impeccably. Third or fourth generation Irish, they would have had something of the exotic about them had they visited the old country at that time.

"I don't know what happened in Argentina because between 1920 and 1970 the connection with Ireland was sort of lost. Perhaps because there was hard times in Ireland but now the relationship is getting strong again," says Dickie McAllister, secretary of the Hurling Club.

His great-grandfather came to Argentina in 1868. "I think there is only one reason. It is a Catholic country. But not English speaking. Perhaps in those times, the Irish speak only Gaelic, so maybe the English was not very important. They were shepherds - they had expertise in that," he says.

In 1995, McAllister was one of a group who showed Dick Spring around the Hurling Club on the edge of the sprawling city. After the Labour leader returned home, he wrote an article about his visit in The Irish Times.

"So this guy in Dublin sees my name in the paper and says, oh my God, this is a shot in the dark, and he writes me a letter. And that's how I found my Irish relatives."

McAllister has been to Ireland twice and saw just one hurling match, a club championship game in Ballaghaderreen on a scorching July day. Videos of past All-Irelands are stored in the clubhouse.

"To have these guys here," he says waving a hand across the field where the Eircell Vodafone All Stars are training, "is such an honour. This is a real dream for Argentina and now we are thinking, why not start again. It is a summer sport, why don't we start teaching them now."

Because hurling in the city is just photographs now. Peron's clampdown on imported goods post-World War Two ended the supply of hurleys and, in any case, the 10 teams were growing tired of playing one another so regularly. Hockey and rugby became the sports more commonly seen on the Gaelic pitch. But the myth was kept alive.

"The first hurling match played in Buenos Aires was in 1900 in a square - now called Irish square. In 1922 the club was set up in DeBoto in the city. And in 1948 we moved out here to Hurlingham. So every year on May 25th, the date we came here, we play a match.

"Sometimes Irish people living in Argentina would make a team and come to play against us. We always beat them. But that is only once a year.

"But we stopped playing hurling in those times. It was impossible to get the hurleys. So in 1941 hockey took over and the next year, the Hurling (club) made the national final in the first level. In the London Olympics, all the Argentine hockey forwards were from the Hurling Club. All Irish-Argentine."

McAllister has a million questions about hurling. Can the players walk the streets without being mobbed? Who is the most famous hurler? "It is Tommy Dunne, no." Do they cancel games if it rains?

He is hopeful that around 1,000 people will attend this evening's All Star game in Hurlingham. In the Buenos Aires Herald, the event has made the sports pages. "It is supposed to be the fastest game in the world, so it's not cricket," reads the report.

But with temperatures in the low 30s and the sky flawlessly blue and the players easy and limber in the heat, the Hurling Club has a cricket feel about it, an Old World civility.

"The Irish community, they will come," says McAllister. "Even in these crazy times. It will be good night for the Irish."