Mr. Liam O'Neill:

We are strong in all those cities. People will have to accept it will take us longer to conquer China but we are strong in those three cities. Shanghai hosted the All Stars and it was a huge experience. There is formal contact through Mr. Pat Daly, our games director in GAA headquarters, between UCD and a sports university in Shanghai. While we were out there, we showed the students how to play games and they took to them instantly. The reason is China is the country in which stick and ball games were first played. The officials in the Chinese sports university indicated to us that the difficulty they have is they are trying to spread a coaching model for table tennis because players in other countries cannot beat them. They want to build that sport up in the same way we are trying with Gaelic games. Unless we build capacity in people abroad to play our games, we will never have a vibrant international competition.

The first world cup, which will be held the weekend after next, will be significant. One competition will be mainly for Irish people playing Gaelic football in the areas Mr. Duffy mentioned all around the world. There will be ten teams in each competition but there is a competition for teams from countries in which only non-Irish people will play.

At some point, native players from various countries will represent their homelands in a world cup-style Gaelic games competition. However, that is a little down the road.