Six local club players are being given the opportunity to test their skills against the best Ladies footballers in the game when the 2010 and 2011 TG4/O'Neills All Stars teams meet in Toronto on Saturday.

They will be included in the respective panels for the exhibition match, which will be the highlight of the fifth All Stars tour undertaken by Cumann Peil Gael na mBan since 2004. And, off the field, both players and officials will be busy in undertaking coaching and referee instruction courses aimed at further strengthening Ladies Football in Canada.

The All Stars game, which brings together girls who are normally in competition with each other over the course of the season, will be preceded by an exhibition game between players affiliated with the Canadian County Board. It will include representatives from Vancouver and Ottawa, but the majority are from Toronto-based clubs.

"The Toronto Divisional Board appointed two team managers, Cormac O Muiri and Ger Power, who along with assistants, selected the teams,'' said Board President Sean Harte, who is a relation of the Tyrone manager Mickey Harte. The teams will feature both native and Irish-born players.

Additionally, the Divisional Board requested the five Ladies clubs in Toronto to name their best player to join the All Star panels. "Our committee then added our 2011 player of the year, Siobhan O Muiri to the list!''

Ladies Football Association CEO Helen O'Rourke explained that the policy of involving local players was initiated at the beginning of the tours. "It's a nice opportunity for the six girls chosen to tog out and play with the All Stars and to be involved,'' she commented. "To be fair to them, the Toronto Divisional Board has put a huge amount of work into promoting this game through local radio stations over the past six weeks.''

Helen O'Rourke points out that the benefits of the All Star tours are two-fold. "Number one, it's a reward for all the girls for the efforts they put in and we do our best as an Association to make it a week that they will remember. Secondly, any place we have gone we have helped to strengthen GAA clubs and the Ladies Football clubs. The year we went to Singapore (2006), Ladies Football was not long started there. Now, it's extremely vibrant and popular there, the same with Dubai, where we visited two years later.

"The All Star games provide our own girls with the opportunity to be show-cased and to exhibit our sport. Our units abroad see some games over the internet and that, but they don't really get to see it played at its best. If we get a really good game, then it's something for them to aspire to.''

Urban Programme Officer Cliodhna O'Connor has seen it from both sides, as an official and player - being the current Dublin goalkeeper, an All Star winner in 2004 and a member of the Team of the Decade which marked the tenth year of TG4's sponsorship of Ladies Football.

"It's a reward, without a doubt, when you are chosen to represent the game abroad it reaffirms that you are playing your sport at the very highest level. The players represent the Association very well when they are abroad. They ensure that the match is of good quality and they engage with those living out there to make sure they know what Ladies Football is all about.'

Helen O'Rourke finds it heartening that the game is 'very strong' in Canada and benefitting in recent years from the level of immigration from Ireland. "But, apart from so many Irish players going there now, the big thing abroad is the non-Irish players that are coming through and playing the game. If you consider the huge distances between cities, there is great credit due to the clubs for the way they actually survive and the way they grow the game.''

*The team managers both have Donegal links. Gerry McGill, a Donegal native, is now involved with the Tipperary men's team and managed Dublin to victory over Tyrone in the 2010 All-Ireland final and Sligo man Micheal Naughton was manager when Donegal won the All-Ireland intermediate title the same year. Tweet

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