irishphiladelphia.com

The afternoon GAA Irish football championships started out so peacefully. For Irish football, that is. The St. Patricks faced Eire Og in junior-C, with the Pats winning. After that, the Kevin Barrys and the Naomh Peregrines faced off in the senior match, played in an Olney monsoon. The Barrys won.

Naomh Peregrine and Chaoimhín de Barra face off in between downpours at Cardinal Dougherty field.

The Delco Gaels brought home the trophy from the Continental Youth Athletic Games in Boston this month. The club sent more than 100 kids to compete in this annual event. More news on engagements, upcoming weddings, Irish pageants, honorees and even new babies!

The Irish have played the game of hurling for thousands of years, and here in Philadelphia for decades. Now, with fewer Irish players, Yanks are joining the Philadelphia Shamrocks.

No one is sure of the final score. At the end of Saturday’s game at Northeast High School, nobody much cared. But if you were looking for a way to spend a summer afternoon, you couldn’t do much better than to watch hurling with the local boys.

At the Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship in Chester, photographer Brian Mengini caught one of the Fighting Irish team’s games, a 30-0 pummeling of Boston College. We have the pics.

Irish dancers and the Brian Boru pipe band on the field, great Irish bands in and around the stadium concourse, and maybe best of all, John and Michael Boyce of Blackthorn singing the National Anthem.

A local martial arts expert goes to bat for an ancient and little-known Irish art of self-defense.