2012 All Stars 10-4 2013 All Stars 6-13: The 2012 All Stars held out for a narrow, three-point, win against their 2013 counterparts at Shanghai rugby club in Pudong on Saturday afternoon.
In an entertaining exhibition, last year's selection were more adept at finding the net and led for virtually the entire match although their opponents nearly closed the gap before referee James McGrath whistled the end of the match before a respectable crowd of a few hundred mostly ex-patriates, including the Irish ambassador Paul Kavanagh and the consul general Austin Gormley.
The star turn was unexpectedly one of the Asian GAA hurlers, Mickey Barry, who had flown in from Hong Kong for the match. Introduced as an additional player at half-time, Barry formerly of Éire Óg in Ennis and Dublin's Castleknock scored a hat-trick of goals in the second half.
Kilkenny manager Brian Cody had charge of the winning team whereas Croke Park's Pat Daly, the GAA's Director of Games Development and Research, stood in for absent Clare manager David Fitzgerald on the 2013 sideline.
It was Galway's Joe Canning who got the ball rolling early for 2012 by scoring the first goal. In general last year's team were more economical and even though they faded out of proceedings for long periods always appeared able to harvest scores when they needed them.
The other goals were scored by Eoin Larkin, Patrick Maher and the now retired John Mullane, who got two each.
The winners were also assisted by a fine impromptu display between the sticks by Galway's David Burke, an All Star attacker from 2012, who stood in for the injured Anthony Nash and made a number of eye-catching saves.
Overall though it was the 2013 selection's difficulty in getting scores that sank them. On top of Burke's stops, there were a couple of bad misses as well as a superb intervention by JJ Delaney just as Conor Lehane was about to pull the trigger in the first half.
They created plenty of chances with an energetic couple of turns at centrefield by Clare pair Colm Galvin and Hurler of the Year Tony Kelly.
The latter combined well with Patrick Horgan to provide an opening for John Conlon, who after a couple of spectacular misses was relieved to score his team's first goal just before half-time and put the 2013 side into the lead for the first time at the break, 1-9 to 2-4.
Just after the re-start a three-goal blast from Barry, Larkin and Mullane effectively ended the contest although the 2013s pushed all the way and managed to get the deficit down to a single score by the end.
Mickey Barry was chosen as the man of the match.
2012 ALL STARS: D Burke (Galway); JJ Delaney (Kilkenny), P Murphy (Kilkenny); B Bugler (Clare), B Hogan (Kilkenny), M Cahill (Tipperary); I Tannian (Galway), D Collins (Galway); P Maher (Tipperary), C Donnellan (Galway), E Larkin (Kilkenny); J Mullane (Waterford), J Canning (Galway). Extras: M Barry and D McGeeney (half-time). Sub: S Lillis for McGeeney. Scorers: Barry (3-0), Maher (2-1), Larkin, Mullane (2-0 each), Canning (1-1), Tannian, Donnellan (0-1 each).
2013 ALL STARS: N Quaid (Limerick); R McCarthy (Limerick), P Kelly (Dublin), D McInerney (Clare); K Joyce (Kilkenny), L Rushe (Dublin), P Donnellan (Clare); C Galvin (Clare), T Kelly (Clare); P Browne (Limerick), C Lehane (Cork), P Horgan (Cork); J Conlon (Clare). Extras: J Trolan and G Hanniffy (half-time). Sub: A Foley for Trolan. Scorers: Lehane (1-5), Kelly (2-1), Horgan, Hanniffy (1-1 each), Conlon (1-0), McInerney (0-2), Joyce (free), Galvin, Browne (0-1 each)
