The All Stars trips to the United States have been revived, at least for this year, with the announcement that football and hurling teams will travel to Boston next October. Eircell are the current sponsors of the All Star scheme.

The All Star hurling team of 1998 will play the winners of this year's All-Ireland final and the two teams who contest the upcoming All-Ireland football final will play each other at a new complex which is being developed by Boston's Irish/American community. The cost of the trip will be borne by the Central Council of the GAA and Eircell. More than 3,000 people of Irish extraction play hurling, football, camogie and women's football in the Canton South Boston area at the moment.

In 1996, 47 acres of land was purchased about 20 minutes drive from downtown Boston at a cost of $750,000. Now two pitches, dressing-rooms, function rooms, bars and restaurants and a communications centre have been provided at a cost of $2.5 million and the value of the premises is now estimated at £8 million. The communications centre in the complex will be called the McGettigan-Stewart centre in memory of the two young men from Leitrim and Donegal who died tragically in an accident on a building site in Boston last year.

The chairman of the complex, Mike Connor from Galway, was in Croke Park yesterday to hear the announcement of the trip to Boston by GAA president Joe McDonagh. McDonagh said the event was a significant and historic one in the annals of the GAA. "It has significance for all of us at home and abroad and we owe much to people like Mike Connor and many others who have made it possible," he said. "The GAA is now making great strides in many cities abroad and this is of particular pleasure to us because of the long history of our association with Boston."

He said that he regretted that the trip to Boston by Irish teams would clash with the visit to Australia of the International Rules team for a series of matches there, but that this would be avoided it at all possible in future years.