Hurling, As She is Played (Weekend 1, Part 3)

The plan for Sunday was that in the morning James, Kendra and I would go to church and in the evening, we were going to watch a match of some game called "hurling." James found a cool old cathedral called St. Patrick's in the center of Dublin so we decided to go there. The previous week the church we had been too was much less formal than all these old cathedrals, so I figured this would be a good contrast. I'm planning on writing more about this experience but suffice to say, I realized about halfway through that this was an Anglican church. Whoops! But don't worry, I ended up running a couple miles to get to Mass that evening. Like I said, that's another story.

After the service finished we headed out to find food and ended up in an amazing Italian restaurant. I explained to Kendra and James that Irish people LOVE Italian food, so I wasn't surprised to find such a great Italian place right in the middle of Dublin. After some fantastic ravioli and a life-changing crepe, we were ready for our next adventure. That day we were going to see the Hurling Championship at Croke Park, where Dublin and Galway would be playing. James had sent me a link to see what hurling was, and my reaction was: 1) I don't understand but 2) this is awesome!

After another bus ride and the required ticket shenanigans that come along with all sporting events, we found Croke Park! Don't let the name fool you - it's a huge stadium where they play hurling, soccer, and rugby.

They call this a "park."

Hurling is a game played only in Ireland and it's basically lacrosse if you took away the lacrosse sticks and replaced them with wooden paddles. There's a sports museum in the park, where we learned more about hurling. Apparently it's been around since the 800s. That's not a typo.

Entering the park was an overwhelming experience of colors and sounds. Here we were at a stadium unlike anything we'd ever seen, with fans wearing strange colors yelling at each other about a sport we didn't really understand.

"It's like the Quidditch World Cup," Kendra said. And she couldn't have been more right. Which made this even more amazing.

Where are the broomsticks?

You don't have to know the rules of a sport to start yelling at your neighbor
about how terrible that ref's call was.

Team photo before the match starts. NFL should do this!

AND THEY HAD A MARCHING BAND!

Hurling is a lot of fun to watch. It took me a while to get accustomed to tracking such a small ball flying around the field, but eventually I got it. It's a great game that's really fast and high-scoring, so basically the opposite of soccer. Dublin made a great showing but Galway gave them enough of a challenge to keep it interesting. After two 35-minute halves (the only number not taken by another sport), Dublin won and the crowd went nuts!

Apologies to anyone who DVR-ed the game but didn't get around to watching it yet.