For a start, stick fighting is no longer extant in Ireland and hasn't been in living memory to the best of my knowledge. Glenn Doyle claims his family style came over to canada with his grandfather or some such, which to me sounds implausible. Originally he claimed that his father/grandfathers' style was called "usice beatha bata rince " which sounds like someone looked up the words "whiskey", "stick" and "dance" in an irish dictionary and literally stuck them together. It appears that he has since changed the name to "rince an bheata usice bheatha" which is grammatically correct at least even if it's kinda amusing (I mean c'mon, not only did his family have a stick fighting style but they happened to name it after two of Ireland's most well known cultural exports?). Everything about it set's my spidey sense's off.
There's a guy called Hurley who started this shillelagh renaissance off, he bases his stuff on period accounts of stick fights I believe. I'm not sure how accurate his sources are but at least he's a straight up WMA recreationist.