Hurling

Hurling is an ancient game with Gaelic origins, widely believed to date back to at least the fifth century A.D. For those of you who’ve never seen it or even heard of it, here’s a brief run down of what it’s all about.

Firstly, it’s an outdoor sport played on a grass pitch measuring approximately 140 by 80 metres. At each end of the pitch there is a goal made up of two vertical posts, six metres high and six and a half metres apart, and one horizontal one, about two and a half metres off the ground. This lower part of the goal has a net, similar to a football goal. There are two teams of 15 players, or hurlers, who aim to score more points and goals than the opponents, thus winning the match. So how do they do this? Well, each hurler carries a stick, or hurley, with which they hit a small ball, or sliotar, between the goal posts. If they do so over the horizontal bar it is called a point and is worth one point. If they do so below the horizontal bar it is called a goal and is worth three points. Each team has a goalkeeper to protect the goal.

So how do the teams move up and down the pitch? The players hit the sloitar with the hurley, but they are also allowed to catch the ball in their hand and run with it, but only for a maximum of four steps before they have to pass it to a team-mate. However, they can run as far as they want if they have the sloitar balanced on the hurley as they run. The opposition have to tackle the player with the ball and can so by hitting the hurley with their own. It’s not allowed to hit the opponent, but as you can imagine accidents do sometimes happen . . . . .There are plenty of other rules which are a bit complicated. It’s a fast game with thirty players on the pitch, so as you can imagine the referee has a difficult job. In fact, there are eight officials for each match for this reason!

A game lasts for two halves of thirty five minutes each and the winner at the end is the team with the most points. It’s a fascinating game to watch and extremely popular in Ireland. In fact, Ireland has the only national team, so opponents are a little hard to come by, although there are club sides in many countries throughout the world.