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On July 28, Dublin’s Croke Park stadium will host the final of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, the top tier of Irish Gaelic football, a sport that is very popular there but that to a non-Irish person might seem a bit bizarre. The bizarre way in which Gaelic football is perceived abroad depends above all on its not immediately understandable rules, which hybridize elements common to other sports such as soccer, rugby and basketball.
Those who find themselves watching a match are often taken aback by the fast pace of the game, by its rather lax rules which, at first glance, would seem to allow the players to do a bit of everything, by the packed stadiums and by the great enthusiasm of the fans from the various counties.
The games are played between two teams of 15 people, and are divided into two halves of 35 minutes. The players can pass the ball with their hands or feet, and the aim is to score points by scoring a goal in the opponent’s goal (which is similar to that of soccer, but larger) or by passing the ball between two posts placed above the crossbar (like in rugby): in the first case three points are scored, in the second one.
Each player can hold the ball for a maximum of four steps: once this threshold is exceeded, in order to move forward he must dribble the ball with his hands (like in basketball) or bounce the ball on his foot and then catch it again by performing the so-called soloing, one of the most appreciated technical gestures in this sport.
Outside Ireland, Gaelic football is often the subject of jokes, and is mostly described as a sort of distorted and very simplified version of soccer, since passing or carrying the ball is also permitted using the hands (goals, however, can only be scored by kicking the ball).
Another very popular sport in Ireland is hurling, a stick game that resembles hockey. It has many things in common with Gaelic football, such as the number of players in the teams (15), the length of the half (35 minutes) and the determination of the score. Again, the aim is to score a goal in the opponent’s goal or to score a point by throwing the ball (which is called sliotar) between the two posts above the crossbar.
Along with sports such as rounders (which is very similar to baseball) and Gaelic handball (an individual sport almost identical to squash), Gaelic football and hurling are part of the traditional Irish sports, whose organisation is managed by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Gaelic games are an important part of the Irish sporting season and in a sense are conceived as a single block, in the sense that the counties are represented by franchises that express the professional teams of all disciplines: the two most followed are Gaelic football and hurling, whose championships start in April and finish in July.
According to a survey published by analytics firm Teneo, Gaelic sports (all sports considered) are the favourite sports of 21 per cent of Irish people, slightly ahead of two other very popular sports in their homeland, football (20 per cent) and rugby (14 per cent).
Although local sources say that Gaelic games were played in Ireland as early as the 13th century, official tournaments in these sports did not begin to be organised regularly until 1884, when the GAA was founded. The idea was that of Michael Cusack, a primary school teacher described as a fervent nationalist. Cusack believed that Gaelic games were a distinctive element of Irish national identity, but their popularity was declining at the time. The Irish preferred to play other sports, such as football and rugby, which Cusack detested as a symbol of England’s cultural influence.
Cusack thus began a work of popularization of Gaelic sports and culture, which he carried out by collaborating with various Irish newspapers of nationalist inspiration. On 11 October 1884 Cusack published in one of these newspapers, The Irishmanan article full of chauvinistic rhetoric and titled A Word About Irish Athletics (A word about Irish athletics).
In the article, Cusack called on the Irish people to “take into their own hands the management of their own games,” “encourage and promote in every way every form of athletics which is peculiarly Irish,” and “remove at one stroke all that is foreign and iniquitous in the present system,” preserving Gaelic sports from the “tyranny of imported and imposed customs and usages.”
Two years later he founded the Gaelic Athletic Association, which according to the National Library of Ireland had more than just a sporting significance, as it “produced a generation of young men with a sense of national identity, an extreme nationalist ethic and a hostility towards the government. [britannico]».
Beyond political ideals, the GAA played an important role in institutionalizing these sports. Before its formation, Gaelic games were played informally and on an amateur level: there were no codified rules specifying exactly what was and was not allowed on the field, nor recognized championships.
Although Gaelic games continue to represent above all an Irish cultural specificity, today they have begun to spread everywhere, even in Italy. In some areas of the world they have acquired unexpected popularity, such as Thailand and Vietnam, where Gaelic football has become a sport widely practiced by women. Between 2018 and 2022, for example, the women’s team Viet Celts Hanoi increased its roster from 12 to more than 30 players, and is coached exclusively by women. In Asia there are 22 teams affiliated with the GAA (which is also the reference federation for foreign championships), and two intercontinental competitions are organized: the Asian Gaelic Games and the South Asian Gaelic Games.
Galeic football has a certain following in Australia, also because of its similarity to one of the most beloved sports in the country, Australian rules football. The elements in common between the two sports are many: in this case too, you dribble with your hand, you run (no more than a few meters) with the ball in your hand, there is a goal like in football and there are goalkeepers, but there are also posts like in rugby.
About every two years, to encourage exchanges between two very similar disciplines, a selection of Australian football players faces a selection of Gaelic football players. Usually two games are played: whoever has the most points at the end wins. The rules are agreed upon beforehand, mediating between those of the two sports: a bit like when as kids you went to another oratory and challenged the other kids, agreeing on what was necessary beforehand. The match between the two teams is called the “International Rules Series”: in the history of the matches Australia and Ireland are tied, with ten victories each.
2024-07-20 10:17:14
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