My experience of hurling as a young boy was not too uncommon. I loved it, I loved watching it, the best players in the country were heroes to me… and I never, ever got a chance to play it.
There are two Irelands. In the one I grew up in, hurling was not the done thing. In the other Ireland, it is very much the done thing – and no one there will ever be allowed to sell hurling short. It is quite convenient for its many hagiographers and obsessives that, when they say it is the most beautiful sport in the world to watch – ‘the greatest game that was ever played by any man’, as Anthony Daly called it at the end of the 2018 All-Ireland final – the bombast is probably justified. Like anything that is fiercely loved, it can feel a little like a closed shop. Having never played it, I would never know it – could never know it.
I have been a member of a GAA club from the moment I could walk. I’ve written a GAA column in the Irish Times for the last decade. I’ve written a book about why it means so much to me and to others (This Is The Life, in 2023), and I cover it on the Second Captains podcast pretty much every week of the year. But I would never be a ‘Hurling Man’.
Ger Loughnane once said that if you hadn’t started playing by the time you were 7, it’s probably too late. That meant I was about 35 years behind schedule when, at the start of last year, I decided to move to Waterford, join my father’s old club Old Parish, and write a book about taking up hurling in your forties.
Old Parish is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s a part of Gaeltacht na nDéise, and is a community rich in history, music and gaeilge. I was welcomed with open arms.
So the book is about a 42-year old man humiliating himself for the amusement of his readers. But it’s also about why I wasn’t given the chance to play the game by the quirks of geography, and why that’s the story for hundreds of thousands of Irish people.
Along the way, I gain some sort of understanding of what it takes to play Junior B hurling. I also learn about the art of hurley-making, why the game developed where it did, and why it has remained steadfastly unplayed in so many parts of the country.
The GAA is honour-bound to try and spread the gospel of its crown jewel to every kid who fancies taking up a hurley, regardless of where they’re born, even when – particularly when – the most obstinate barriers to its growth are erected by those in charge of gaelic football. Hurling is special. We should share the love. It was my pleasure to sample it for a summer.
“Old Parish – Notes On Hurling” is released by Penguin Sandycove on September 18th.
