The GAA Thread

[BOF]

Not into the bogball myself, but I do get a smug satisafaction from knowing the rest of the country are pissed off at the Dubs winning it all again

 

[Stevo985]

On a separate note, as only a casual follower of GAA, I find it quite interesting how different the split is between the counties that dominate football and counties that dominate Hurling. 

Kerry, for example, have 40 odd football titles but only 1 hurling. Cork have 30 odd Hurling titles but only a handful of Football.

You'd think, given the county sizes, they'd be relatively similar.

 

Any of the irish guys give some context to that? Is it just a culture thing?

[BOF]

5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

On a separate note, as only a casual follower of GAA, I find it quite interesting how different the split is between the counties that dominate football and counties that dominate Hurling. 

Kerry, for example, have 40 odd football titles but only 1 hurling. Cork have 30 odd Hurling titles but only a handful of Football.

You'd think, given the county sizes, they'd be relatively similar.

 

Any of the irish guys give some context to that? Is it just a culture thing?

Definitely culture. Success breeds success. You go into Kilkenny and it seems like every second youngster has a hurl in their hand bouncing a sliotar as they walk down the road. It's absolutely ingrained in them from very early on. There just are 'football' counties and hurling counties. Very few manage to do the 2 successfully.

[Stevo985]

10 minutes ago, BOF said:

Definitely culture. Success breeds success. You go into Kilkenny and it seems like every second youngster has a hurl in their hand bouncing a sliotar as they walk down the road. It's absolutely ingrained in them from very early on. There just are 'football' counties and hurling counties. Very few manage to do the 2 successfully.

Fair enough, that was my assumption.

I always preferred Hurling anyway  

[fightoffyour]

As far as I can work out I was at this match of the 2009 All Ireland QFs:

Quote

2 August 2009

Quarter-final

Tyrone	0-16 - 1-11	Kildare
S O'Neill 0-7, O Mulligan 0-3, B Dooher 0-2, D Harte, Justin McMahon, T McGuigan, M Penrose 0-1 each	Report	J Doyle 0-7, R Sweeney 1-0, M Foley, J Kavanagh, A Smith, E Callaghan 0-1 each

Croke Park, Dublin

Attendance: 49,761

Referee: G. O'Conamha (Galway)

 

[BOF]

 

[Captain_Townsend]

The hurling v football thing is very deep rooted. Paul Rouse has written extensively about it.

For a start, hurling is the older game and the more authentic.  Gaelic football is essentially a form of football played with hurling rules on a hurling field (simplified there but you get the gist).

In the past 200 years a lot of it was to do with the unusual land ownership situation in Ireland in the Nineteenth-Century. Good landlords would provide a field where communities could play the games. Hurling had especially deep roots in counties with the best agricultural land- the Golden vale region and - Tipperary, Kilkenny, East Cork and parts of Waterford. Football was sort of played everywhere (for example, the morw rugged West Cork would be football as would neighbouring Kerry).

The modern GAA was formed in 1884 to give official standardised rules to the games (a bit like the FA in Regards to football in England). Gaelic Football became very popular thereafter with the political changes happening in Ireland at the time but hurling remained more popular in its heartlands. In places like Kilkenny  and Tipperary school kids will be seen carrying their hurley with them much the way kids usually would have a ball at their feet.

Hope this helps somewhat 

Edited July 31, 2023 by Captain_Townsend