Tour to Australia on cards

The International profile of the GAA is to get a new boost with agreements which will see hurling and football teams travelling to Scotland and Australia respectively.

The winners of this weekend's Railway Cup hurling competition are already booked to travel to Oban in the Western Highlands of Scotland to represent Ireland in a shinty-hurling international tomorrow week, while top-level talks between Croke Park officials and their counterparts from the Australian Rules game have taken place in Dublin and a tour to Australia may go ahead in the next two years. The series of international fixtures between Scottish shinty and Irish hurling teams were dropped in 1988, but contacts have been re-established and three teams will travel to Oban to face local opposition at under-12, under-21 and senior level. The winners of the Railway Cup final, which takes place in Ballinasloe on Sunday, will represent Ireland at senior level. The rules of the game have been changed recently, and the Scots have won the last two matches. They came out on top in the last game by 3-8 to 0-10. There have been several attempts to establish regular meetings between Ireland and Scotland dating back to the Tailteann Games in 1928. In more recent times some of the best-known players in the country, including D J Carey from Kilkenny, Jamesie O'Connor from Clare, Larry O'Gorman from Wexford, Limerick's Gary Kirby and Cork's Brian Corcoran, have taken part.

The reaction of the players has always been positive, and recent extensive coverage of the big hurling matches on television in Scotland has done a lot to revive interest, with the result that a big party of hurlers will travel to Oban. On the football front, a Croke Park source has confirmed that a small delegation from the Australian Football League visited Dublin within the past fortnight to reopen negotiations about a revival of the Composite Rules series which ended in 1990. The delegation was led by the AFL's general manager Ian Collins, and its marketing manager, Grant Burgess. At the moment it is thought that it might take from 18 months to two years to organise a tour which would probably be at GAA minor level initially, followed by a full senior tour in the year 2000, with a return trip to Ireland by the Australians the following year.

The widespread televising of top Gaelic matches in Australia has apparently generated interest there. In addition, the amalgamation of the two controlling bodies - Australian Football League and the National Football League - into one body, called the AFL, has helped. The AFL and the GAA have agreed that a revival of the series is a distinct possibility, and both have agreed to consider approaching potential sponsors with a view to putting a package together. On the last occasion that Ireland played in Australia the team was managed by Eugene McGee, the former Offaly manager. The captain on that occasion was Meath's Robbie O'Malley and the team featured players such as Keith Barr, Paul Curran and Tommy Carr from Dublin, Val Daly from Galway, Kevin O'Brien from Wicklow, James McCartan from Down and Bernard Flynn from Meath.

Although the series was abandoned because of an apparent lack of commitment by the Australians, the administrators from both sides have remained in contact and hopes are now rising that, with a greater understanding between the Australian Rules administrators themselves and a greater appreciation about what the rules of the compromise game should be, a revival is a distinct possibility.