For Fook's Sake

Let's go to a hurling match!

What's hurling you say. It's a gaelic game that's basically a cross of pretty much every field game that we have. The players are armed with a stick called a hurley that looks like this:

(thanks Wikipedia!)

They try to get that ball called a sliotar into a goal that looks like a football goalpost with a soccer net underneath. If they get it through the goalposts it's worth a point, if they get it under the net it's worth three points. That's the general gist of the game.

We went to the Cork vs. Tipperary match tonight. Apparently Cork and Tipperary have a fierce rivalry  and so it turned out there were a ton of people going to this game. It was a long cold walk to get to the field and when we got there we were confronted with the entry gates that looked like this

You literally had to turn sideways to enter the gate. Then once you're in there there's a teller who collect the money and a little turn-y gated door that lead out to the field. It kind of reminded me of the starting gates at a horse race.

We found a seat in the stands around the center of the field and watched as the teams warmed up.

The game had a less than exciting start, the ball was rolled out in the center of the field in front of a certain number of players and they rushed upon it.

And then I was lost.

All I noted really was how fast the game was and how quickly they moved the ball across the field. They could use literally any means of doing this. They could pick the ball up using their hurley and carry the ball in their hand for a few strides, They could run with the ball balancing on the hurley (no idea how they did that), they could hit the ball with their hurlery... pretty much across the entire field, they can hit it on the ground using their hurley or even their hand. I loved how quick it was it kept the game exciting to watch.

The crowd was another experience all together. It was made up of mainly guys from pint sized to grandfather aged and everything in between with the random mother and high school teenage girl in the mix. Regardless how old, they were very... and i mean VERY, loyal to their team. They cheered and yelled players names and swore. It was 70 minutes of irish accents flying everywhere cheering on their respective teams.

There was one guy who was sat behind us that was clearly cheering for Cork. Every time Tipperary got the ball he would say "ahh For fook's saaake!!" in that lovely accent and everything. Although to be honest I couldn't understand anything else he said other than that. Also, keeping with the Irish friendliness, the two older guys in front of us turned around during the intermission and talked to us after having noticed our accents. Oh, I forgot I was the one with the accent! We were probably the only Americans in the stands. He tried to explain a little bit about the game to us which helped somewhat for the second half.

It was good craic though and definitely worth going to a game if you're ever in Ireland. It was made better by the fact that Cork won 26 - 11 :)