While other teams showed up with similar sized panels of 18 players, Singapore insisted on fielding 2 teams and played a total of 8 games. Joe, Killian, Gary and Cahir put in storming performances in all 8 games. The commendable day time performances did, however, curtail the night time activities. Gary ‘Cinderella’ O’Callaghan was in bed before 12 for once.

While all swear they were early to bed on Friday night, the slow start from the men against Hong Kong on Saturday morning leaves one wondering about definitions of ‘early’. Hong Kong made an explosive start and Singapore was lucky to be only 2 goals down at half time. The half time speech involved many expletives and references to shambolic offence, defence and midfield- not to mention the keeper. However, the half time words were heeded and Singapore came back strongly in the second half with some great scores. We led 3 times in the second half but each time snatched defeat from the throes of victory and lost by 2 points in the end.

The B team got off to a much better start against Thailand with a closely fought contest right up to halfway through the second half when we pulled away. We had a great performance from the new team members in the middle of the park by the Galway hurler, Simon and his counterpart and fellow hurler, Paul. Zack the Yank made a debut Gaelic appearance and once he works out the hand pass is sure to be a force to be reckoned with.

The B team went on to deliver a better performance against Hong Kong than the A team. Notable in this outing with the clean sheet kept by the great John Maguire who saved balls from all angles and prevented Hong Kong from scoring a goal against Singapore- a first in a long time. Lets hope that John loses some of those silky goalkeeping skills, when he is playing for Thailand next year.

The A team put in exemplary performances against Thailand and Malaysia. Joe made some very young men on the opposition team look very old with his greyhound like runs down the wings and even Sean Hearne managed to find the target time and again. The biggest shock of the day was of course the goal by Micheal Smith, who must have been taking notes from Claire who put away 5 goals for the women.  

The second last game of the day was a re-jigged Singapore A against B. The players behaved like real gentlemen and all stuck to the pact of now running at more than 3 steps at a time in any one half.

The Final Game was against Malaysia, where a depleted Singapore B looked more like Singapore A. The Malaysians almost broke into tears when they saw Joe on the pitch again. Mark Gailey and Terry hit the crossbar and upright respectively and the game was very tight. Alan Power showed uncustomary balls of steel by slotting home the final kick penalty to finish the day with a draw.

The luck of the Irish on the day was of course with Donnacha, who flew in the morning and returned back that night. The luck being that he was still not a father when he got back and the taxi operator in Singapore had found and kept the phone he lost that morning.