Just to prove to you that there's going to be nothing mainstream about this blog, we begin with an examination of sports that most of you have probably only vaguely heard of: gaelic football and hurling. Just so I don't completely lose any of you, I'll take some time to explain what the heck these sports are.
Gaelic football and hurling are the two main sports in Ireland, and are very similar to each other - except in one you're kicking a round ball with a rule against tackling, and in the other you have the potential to crack someone's skull open with a stick - sports that require helmets have never been ones I've been particularly drawn to, hence of the two my experience is with gaelic football.
I'm a firm believer in wikipedia, I encourage you to follow the links below of you want to get a thorough unerstanding of the sports, but nonetheless I will do my best to provide a description myself below the links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling
So gaelic football then. Gaelic football is played with a round ball - a soccer style ball except with volleyball stitching - on a large rectangular field. At each end of the field are goalposts in the shape of a set of rugby posts with a soccer net occupying the space under the crossbar. Unlike soccer you use your hands in this game, kicking the ball by dropping it onto your foot from your hands most of the time (you are also allowed to kick it along the ground like a soccer ball). Throwing the ball is against the rules, but you can punch it out of the palm of your other hand. You can only run with the ball if you bounce it or tap it off the top of your foot (called soloing it) every four steps, without bouncing it two times in a row ever, but soloing it however many times you want. You score three points by kicking the ball in the soccer goal, one point for kicking or fisting it over the bar...
OK, that description even has MY head spinning. For hurling we'll just "stick" to wikipedia - pun intended.
Anyway, WHAT gaelic football and hurling are is not important to this blog post. The important thing is the culture they provide.
In the Republic of Ireland there are 32 counties, and each county has a representative gaelic football and hurling team. There are six levels of competition, and each county enters a team in each level: Senior, Intermediate, Junior A, Junior B, Junior C and Junior D. Both sports are governed by the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association), and, VERY IMPORTANTLY, both sports are not professional sports in Ireland - all the players earn a living and play gaelic football or hurling on the side. That means no multi-million dollar egos - the only thing that's at stake is a pint of blood or so and pride for your county.
I started playing gaelic football about a month and a half ago, and I thought that the people who played Irish sports in America were just trying to do a cheap imitation of what happens in Ireland - but after going to the National Championships in Chicago I found that the GAA in Ireland and the United States GAA are hardly different at all except for geography.
The championships were held in a complex in Chicago called Gaelic Park - if you blindfolded someone, led them there and told them they were in Ireland, they'd definitely believe you. Never had I ever thought that there were so many Irish people living in the US (haha, don't give me any of that "on St. Patty's Day we're all Irish" nonsense). Sure there is an abundance of people with Irish surnames among the American populace - I'm one of them - but a large proportion of the people there had actually been born in Ireland. These people may not live in Ireland anymore, but they keep playing their Irish sports nonetheless, unbeknownst to anyone without a direct connection to it.
At the event there was Irish beer on tap (best Guinness I've ever had), Irish chocolate bars, Irish cooked breakfasts, and even bags of potato chips from Ireland. There were Irish accents from every county, and Irish swear words coming from all over that would be enough even to make a drunken priest from Craggy Island blush (time for a product placement - watch Father Ted! If you don't know what it is, wikipedia it. And no I am neither paid by the BBC or wikipedia).
Which brings us to the essence of this post, and the first of many times I will be trying to answer the question "why do sports matter?" If you didn't think it was possible to get a congregation pf pretty much every Irish born person in American together in one tiny park in Chicago for a whole three day weekend, it has just been proven that sports makes it possible. Irish sports are so intimately connected to Irish culture itself that it becomes a common ground through which all Irish people can relate. This hits on a theme that will constantly surface throughout this blog: sports bringing people together. Some people form bonds based on a common passion for music, some for computer programming, and some for a common love of a certain sport. For people in Ireland there is no monetary incentive for them to like their sports, no celebrity culture where news media spend 24 hours a day putting athletes through the tabloid treatment, there is just a love of being Irish, and one way to be Irish is to play a sport that nobody else in the world plays.
I'm going to avoid making my posts absurdly long, so I'll stop here for now, feel free to go right ahead and post a comment if you like - whether you thought this post was interesting or a useless waste of time.
If you want to hear more about the weekend in Chicago itself, buy me a Guinness and I'll be able to go on and on about it for hours. Or maybe just some whiskey in a jar while listening to "Whiskey in the Jar" would be nice ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2jSzLBzK4
- DK
Common roots and shared passion - sure fixings for a friendly barney or two on an open field.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the b'day dedication!
Bubba