To our considerable surprise, we recently attended a hurling match, the regional final between Lucan Sarsfields and St. Brigid’s. This is a game we knew nothing of, more or less, before entering the stadium. But you know us, up for anything! We first got interested in hurling from our reading about Irish history. This led us to the Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in 1884, a national organisation that aims to preserve and promote indigenous Gaelic games and pasttimes. It was, from the start, explicitly political, founded by Fenians (nationalists).
The GAA also supports, as part of its founding charter, Irish language, music, and dance. And for a time, its Rule 21 banned members from playing ‘foreign games’ – which included football (soccer), rugby, hockey, and cricket. (These sports were too English, too upper-class, and/or too Protestant.) GAA clubs and supporters were attacked during the Troubles, and religion remains implicit but important. Northern Irish Protestants typically do not play the game. Croke Park, one of the largest sporting venues in Ireland (also for concerts), is the home of GAA national matches, and has been since 1896. Other, ‘competing’ sports were only allowed to use the stadium starting in 2007.
So, what is hurling? The game itself has Celtic roots and is thus potentially as many as several thousands of years old. Fortunately, the nice man at the gate who took our ticket gave us the quick run-down on the game. So here goes. The game occurs on a hurling pitch, 140-160 yards (130-145 metres) long and 90-100 yards (80-90 metres) wide. So it’s slightly larger than a rugby pitch. As in rugby, there are H-shaped goalposts at each end, some 20 feet (6.1 metres) high or slightly higher. But unlike in rugby, a goalkeeper guards a large net below the crossbar. The crossbar is just over 8 feet high (2.5 metres). Since the space between the two posts is 21 feet (6.5 metres) apart, the net is 8 feet by 21 feet. There are 15 players per side.
The idea is to get the ball (sliotar) either through the goalposts or in the net. You get 1 point for the former, 3 points for the latter. The ball is hard and slightly larger than a tennis ball. Each player has a stick called a hurley which is 2-3 feet (60-90 centimetres) long, curved at the end. The stick is flat and when a player is moving he carries the ball on the stick, parallel to the ground. There is a lot of bumping and shoving (a la rugby) so it’s harder than it seems.
There are not really any scrums, though when the ball is on the ground, it can seem like one. That’s because you can’t pick the ball up with your hand when it’s on the ground. You can hold the ball in your hand when you are on the move. Though if you take more than four steps, you will be called for travelling. What the players tend to do if they are making a long run is to hold the ball for a few steps, toss it onto their hurley and then back into their hand. But they also pass the ball quite a lot. The players wear no equipment except for a helmet which also has a face-guard.
Since the hurley is flat, you can’t really ‘throw’ the ball by snapping your wrist, as you can in lacrosse. Instead you throw the ball up in the air (while you are moving). Then you bat it with two hands towards the goal. From far out your chances of getting it into the net are almost nil, but depending on how much space is in front of you, you can aim between the goalposts from virtually any point on the field. (To be clear: we can’t do that…) We were amazed at how many points were scored from very far away and from very sharp angles. We presume they practise those shots a lot! This describes the men’s sport; the fairly similar women’s version is camogie.
The game we attended took place at 7.30 on one of the few clear and pleasant evenings recently. We arrived very early, but it started to fill up the closer we got to game time. There were two viewing sections, but not knowing which was which, we chose one at random. There were no seats in the viewing sections, but there were steps that you could sit down on. Nobody did: people either leaned forward on the fence which bordered the pitch or they leaned back at the end of the (elevated) viewing section.
We watched the practice and started to get a sense of how they might play, but when the game itself began, the pace was at first surprising. Lots of quick running back and forth, lots of banging about of bodies, lots of juggling balls in hands and on sticks. It soon became clear to us that there were not going to be many scores in the net itself, and that hitting the ball between the uprights was the main (and safest) way to accumulate points. And so it was. In the entire game there was but one net score for each team. By contrast, the winning team scored 22 points through the uprights, the losing team 20.
We had to admit that the skill involved in the game was terrific. The agility of the players, running with the ball on their stick going from side to side, with a feint here and a feint there, was genuinely impressive. No less impressive were the passes, the reason being that the person receiving the pass had first to stop the ball with the flat part of the stick and then quickly move the stick under the ball to carry it forward – and all while on the go! The game lasted one hour, divided into two thirty-minute periods with a short break in between. We still wouldn’t say we’re fans, but we’ll certainly get back for another game before we leave!
