Often a bit of controversy on the sdmb over soccer vs american football, but I’ll throw my hat in the ring for my own favourite sport.
(video isn’t mine, just came across it)
Many years ago my dad was on the Chicago team and on occasion played against visiting Irish teams. He also tried to organize kids in the neighborhood to play, including buying about fifty of the sticks, but the parents thought it was too dangerous.
What, no wild animals allowed on the pitch? Sissy game. The least they could do is sharpen one end of their sticks or set them on fire. Either way, I’m glad it wasn’t a video of the other type of hurling. You know, the one where you get so bored playing ice-rock-sweepy-shuffleboard that you drink wayyyy too much.
(Reported to suggest a forum change to the Game Room)
I was highly annoyed when I used to play camogie (basically womens hurling) that we had to put tape on the metal bands on the hurley to prevent injury 
Oh yeah, like getting clubbed on the head with a hurley with a couple of strips of duct tape on it is going to protect your skull.
My dad grew up in Ireland and told me that a lot of people died playing the sport.
Nah it’s to stop you getting scratched from the metal band. Only a tiny bit of tape in a strip over the metal.
As for people dying, I think that’s vastly overstated. I’ve never even heard of it happening.
That’s curling I believe. Hurling is what you do after you drink wayyy too much during a curling match. Set? Game? I don’t know. (Sorry for the nit pick. I just couldn’t help myself. It’s the monkey in me I guess.)
Nice vid, by the by. Thanks for sharing Scathach. Always wanted to see a hurling match. Still haven’t, of course. But I want to see one even more now.
Hurling is pretty awesome to behold. When I lived in Oxford I used to share a flat with two Welsh rugby players, and one day we saw highlights of a hurling match on TV. After watching in awe for a while, one of them shook his head and declared, “Those lads are crazy!”
That is a sport that seriously needs to come to America!
I am a fully paid up member of the GAA, been playing the football version all my life to a good club standard, so believe me when I say I doubt very many of you can appreciate the amount of goddamn skill needed to play hurling, you really have no idea.
The control those guys have over the ball is insane. All those players in the video flicking the ball from the ground, or running with it balanced on the end of the hurl, they are doing that at full speed every time, because if they slow down they are getting hit. To contrast, I would need five tries just to lift the ball, standing on my own in the middle of the pitch.
Unfortunately, the skill needed is also the reason the game is unlikely to grow overseas. The best hurlers are those who have been playing it constantly since a young age, those born with a hurl in their hands so to speak. IMO, it is very hard to come along later in life and try to develop those skills.
You can train at football, and improve your performance in the basics, but if you dont have a natural talent for hurling, you wont be a good hurler IMO. So it will be extremely hard to develop the culture that is needed to produce good hurlers in a foreign country.
Its a shame too, because the skill needed to play that amateur sport would put most professionals to shame. I dont think the linked video can really do it any justice, no video could.
If they can’t get that NFL thing resolved I’d be happy if this game took its place Sunday afternoons!
I’m going to hurl this over to The Game Room for ya.
It’s in America. There are leagues in quite a few big cities with large Irish populations. I know for sure it’s in Chicago, New York and Boston. Ah, I see Wiki has a section about some other cities.
Hurling’s for wusses. Real mean go shirling.
That looks like a lot of fun, and a good spectator sport to boot.
However, as an American, it’s my responsibility to nitpick foreign practices and institutions that I don’t really understand, so my question is this: oughtn’t a goal be worth more than 3 points? It would seem to be so much harder to score a goal than a point, to the extent that there’s really no incentive even to try unless a player stumbles into a perfect opportunity.
As a fellow 'merkin, I have to ask why you’re using a word like “oughtn’t” in a sentence like that?
Anyways, I think my question/comment was already addressed, but after seeing the video I was going to comment that I’d imagine this game must produce quite a few broken hands and probably a few broken faces as well. In fact, I’m surprised they aren’t required to at least wear gloves.
Also, how often does the ball wind up in the stands? And when it does, does it do so with any force (like a hockey puck) or is it easy to see and get out of the way of or catch?
Back in the 1960s, ABC’s Wide Word of Sports would often feature hurling matches (and Australian and Gaelic Football). They were great to watch. However, the show switched away from them and stuck with more familiar ones (to Americans). I loved hurling (and Australian football and Gaelic football, but haven’t seen it in decades.
That was my thought, exactly, upon watching the video. Judging by the various hurling scores, points way, way outnumber goals, with it not being uncommon for the winner not to have a single goal.
I would not like to be a goalkeeper in hurling.
You see very few broken bones at the level shown in the linked video, the injuries they get tend to be the same that us footballers get just through playing and training, groin strains and hamstring pulls for example.
The reason they dont break each others wrists is that they are all playing at the same speed and intensity. There is a rhythm to games at that level, and those players will all be moving around that field like cogs in a machine, not conciously I might add, but it is happening all the same. The flipside of this is that if you were to add another player who was not of a good enough standard to that field, then that new player is quite likely to either get or cause an injury. They will not be at the speed required, and so will do things like leave the hurl in a tackle where the ball is already gone. They will swing to block a shot, swing too slow and crack an elbow where they were aiming at the ball.
An not-quite-perfect analogy is that of a motorway. All these cars flying along, each at ninety miles per hour but nobody crashing. Then you add an old biddy in a Robin Reliant doing 35mph in the middle lane. All hell breaks loose as she disrupts the flow of traffic and crashes ensue.
Same deal on the field, the top level of hurling is no place for newcomers.
As for the question on goals, both football and hurling in the GAA have the same scoring system, 3 points for a goal, one point for a point (of course). I think this is the best balance against over or under valuing goals. Making a goal worth five or six points would give too much weight to that slippy goal that dropped through the keepers arms. And really, while harder than points of course, goals are not so difficult to score in either hurling or football. If teams wanted to they could set their gameplan to focus on getting goals, and there are very few games that do not have at least one goal scored. At the end of the day though, why try to force a goal when it usually is the better option to keep picking of the points.
Just on that point, in todays Muster final, one of the biggest matches in the hurling calender, Tipperary scored seven goals (and nineteen points). The dominant team over the past five years Kilkenny were renowned for starting games at a super high tempo and trying to score an early two or three goals, trying to ensure a lead they were likely to keep. No, goals are not at all a rarity in Hurling.
Lastly, all the major GAA pitches have large nets covering behind each goal area, for catching/stopping balls and sloithers. Perhaps more a fine mesh than a net, it reaches above the height of the goalposts and most of the length of the endline. Hard to see in any of the videos, but there all the same.