The government is applying to UNESCO to have hurling listed as a cultural practice and expression of intangible heritage.

Speaking on a recent visit to Stanford University in California during which he met the college hurling team and the local St Joseph's club team, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaelteacht, Jimmy Deenihan, said that other indigenous sports elsewhere in the world are listed but hurling is not because the government has never applied before. "I am convinced that it will be accepted because it is so unique," he said. He went on to reference the cultural significance of hurling, stating how "one of the earliest written records in Ireland refers to hurling."

UNESCO defines intangible cultural practices that are worthy of recognition and are just as important as physical artifacts. Its three lists are; the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, the list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding, and the programmes, projects and activities for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage considered to best reflect the principles and objectives of the Convention. These lists include many crafts, traditions, customs, festivals and sports from throughout the world.

Hurling has enjoyed a major growth spurt in the United States in the last decade and has become a feature of club sports on an increasing number of American college campuses like Stanford, where the team competes in a regional collegiate hurling championship against their local rivals the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Davis.

The US National Collegiate Gaelic Athletic Association (NCGAA) has been running a national collegiate hurling championship since 2010, and will hold the 2014 tournament in New York on the Memorial Weekend of May 24 and 25. The 2014 competition will see the running of the first national collegiate Gaelic football championship that will be contested mostly by collegiate Gaelic football clubs that have emerged on college campuses in the northeast. The NCGAA has a presence on over twenty college campuses across America. Tweet

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