Although many hurling clubs exist worldwide, only Ireland has a national team (though this is composed only of players from weaker counties to ensure matches are competitive).
London GAA are the only non-Irish team to have won the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship (having captured the title in 1901), and still compete in the Christy Ring Cup.
Traditionally a game played by Irish immigrants and discarded by their children, many American hurling teams took to raising money to import players directly from Ireland.
[4] This game was organized by the California Collegiate Gaelic Athletic Association, which is recognized by the Western Division Board as the authority for hurling teams at third level education colleges in the area.
Irish immigrants began arriving in Argentina in the 19th century, largely as gauchos and ranchers on the Pampas of Buenos Aires Province.
[7] The earliest reference to hurling in Argentina dates from the late 1880s in the ranching town of Mercedes, Buenos Aires, a major center of the Irish-Argentine community.
On 17 August 1900, Bulfin printed the rules and a diagram of a hurling pitch in The Southern Cross, the official newspaper of the Argentina's Irish community.
Games of hurling were played every weekend until 1914 and received frequent coverage even from Argentina's Spanish language newspapers like La Nacion.
In addition, native born Irish-Argentines assimilated far quicker than in other places, Hispanicising their names and frequently marrying outside the community, something unheard of in the past.
In 1980 the Aer Lingus Hurling Club conducted a three-week tour of the country and played matches at several locations, including the Christian Brothers school at Boulogne, Buenos Aires.
As mentioned above, in 2013 the team travelled to Galway and played in an outstanding level reaching the final which they lost for one point against the Denver Gaels from EEUU.
The earliest known match in Australia took place in the southern winter of 1844, on 12 July, at Batman's Hill, Melbourne, according to Edmund Finn, in The Garryowen Sketches (1880).
The hurling match attracted a crowd of 500, who were mostly Irish immigrants, while the extremely cold weather, according to Finn, prompted an early end to, or cancellation of, the Orange march.
Games were traditionally played in a pitch on the site of the modern day Johannesburg Central Railway Station every Easter Sunday after Mass.
In 1932, a South African hurling team sailed to Ireland to compete in the Tailteann Games, where they carried a banner donated by a convent of Irish nuns in Cape Town.
South African hurling continued to prosper until the outbreak of World War II, which caused immigration from Ireland to cease and made it impossible to import equipment.