Ireland's
Gaelic Games
Ireland
is a nation of sports fans. Whether it's on two legs, or four
legs, the Irish will play it, watch it, talk about it and bet on
it! But while international sports like soccer and rugby are played
and followed by many in the country, it's the native, Gaelic
sports of hurling and football that really stir up the passions
in Ireland. And come September those passions reach fever pitch
as the Gaelic season culminates in the All Ireland Finals.
Gaelic
Football and Hurling are the most widely played sports in the Ireland.
Each parish throughout the island has a team playing one or the
other, or even both sports and you'll come across playing
fields with the distinctive ‘H' style goal posts in
every corner of the land.
Amazingly,
Ireland's Gaelic games are both amateur sports, making Football
and Hurling the most widely played amateur games in the world. Both
Football and Hurling are played by 15 men on a team with 5 substitutes,
playing 35 minutes (at inter county) level each half. Both sports
are fast moving and are very much contact sports where no quarter
is given or asked for!
Football
is like a cross between, soccer and rugby. It is similar to Australian
Rules Football, which actually evolved from Gaelic Association Football,
brought by the many thousands of Irish who emigrated or were deported
to Australia during the 19th Century. Gaelic Football is played
with a round ball, slightly smaller and heavier than a soccer ball.
Points are scored by either putting the ball over the opponent's
bar, as with rugby, which is worth one point, or within the goal
posts as with soccer, which is worth three points. Players can kick
the ball or handle the ball, but just to make it more difficult,
they can't travel with the ball for more than four steps -
players have to bounce it on the ground or drop the ball onto their
foot and kick it back into their hand, which, in the game, is called
soloing.
Hurling
follows the same scoring system and similar rules to Football, but,
like hockey, it is played with a stick, called a ‘hurley'
and a small hard ball called a ‘sliothar'. Whereas a
high ball is deemed dangerous play in hockey, you'll see sliothars
and hurleys flying around at head height in Hurling and though some
players wear helmets, it isn't obligatory and the majority
don't even where them! Hurling is the oldest field game in
Europe and was brought to the shores of Ireland by the ancient Celts
some 2,000 years ago and the sport is chronicled throughout Irish
folklore.
The
main competition for both Hurling and Football are the Inter-county
championships. Teams from each of the 32 counties of Ireland, as
well as teams from London and New York, battle it out for a place
in the All Ireland Finals, held at Croke Park each September. These
finals are the biggest sporting events in the country, as 80,000
people pack out Ireland's largest stadium, to cheer on their
home county and hopefully watch their team lift Football's
Sam Maguire Cup or Hurling's Liam MacCarthy Cup.
Over
the years Football has been dominated by County Kerry. Known as
the Kingdom, Kerry has been crowned Kings of Football more times
than any other county and are followed by fierce rivals Dublin and
Meath. Hurling has proved more open throughout the years with counties
Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary sharing much of the honours.
Both
games have had their share of characters and sporting heroes. These
men not only won at the highest level, training as hard as any sportsman,
but they also held regular jobs, playing their sport as amateurs,
for the love of the game - a rare quality indeed for any sport
today. Men like Mick O'Connell, the Kerry footballer of the
60s, who would row over from Valencia Island to the mainland for
matches. Considered one of the most accomplished footballers of
his day, Mick O'Connell played in nine All Ireland Finals
for Kerry, winning four. And fellow Kerryman, Pat Spillane, who
won eight All Ireland medals between 1975 and 1986 and is one now
one of football's most well known commentators. For Hurling
there are greats like Eddie Keher, who helped Kilkenny win six All
Ireland titles between 1963 and 1975 and scored 194 points in just
21 games. Or Christy Ring, the Corkman who won eight all Ireland
medals during the 40s and 50s, Ring is still one of the games all
time top scorers and is so respected in his native Cork, that they
named a bridge after him. And of course there is Jack Lynch, a successful
Hurler and Footballer wining All Ireland medals with Cork in each
sport, who went on to lead Ireland as Taoiseach (Ireland's
Premier), during the 60s and 70s. The reverence in which these sportsmen
are still held, speaks volumes about what Football and Hurling mean
to people in Ireland, regardless of their amateur status.
The
driving force behind both these amateur sports is the Gaelic Athletics
Association, though there is nothing amateur about the GAA. The
old joke in Ireland goes that Hurling and Gaelic Football are amateur
sports run by a professional organisation, while soccer is a professional
sport run by an amateur organisation. The GAA established Football
and Hurling in the mid 19th Century, it set the rules in 1885 and
drew up the county structure of the sports in 1887. Throughout its
early history the GAA was closely linked with Irish nationalism,
it banned its players from playing non Gaelic games such as soccer
and rugby and many of the GAA's members offered their voices
to the Home Rule for Ireland movement of the early 1900s. During
the War of Independence the GAA was deemed a banned organisation
by the British government. Then on 21st November 1920 came one of
the most significant events in GAA folklore and the most damning
events in Anglo-Irish history, when the British Black and Tan forces
entered Croke Park, during a football match between Tipperary and
Dublin and opened fire, killing 12 spectators and a player, in what
became known as Bloody Sunday. Over the years the GAA has evolved
into one of the most prominent organisations in Ireland and its
history and that of Hurling and Football is outlined in the GAA
Museum at Croke Park.
The
GAA Museum offers a unique insight into Gaelic Games and their important
place in Irish heritage. It allows visitors to relive some of Hurling
and Football's greatest sporting moments, you can test out
your skills at the game, take a tour Croke Park Stadium and imagine
you're playing in an All Ireland Final. And if you ever get
the chance to sample the atmosphere of an All Ireland Final at Croke
Park, you'll be experiencing something uniquely Irish.
Seamus
O'Murchú
until
this time next month...
Best Wishes,
Conor B & Seamus.
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