GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 29 – July 4, 2015

JULY 3, 2015 BY DENIS O’BRIEN Life can be complicated at times but often it can be quite simple. Similarly, the sport of Hurling is sometimes viewed by those familiar as too complicated for others, while those very others think ‘heck it looks fun, it’s a sport, let’s play’. In Darmstadt, Germany, local students recently found the sport, thought it appealing and are now playing Hurling. Stick and ball games have been with us since ancient times. Some 6000 years BC in the Mesopotamian region of Sumer (modern Iraq), where western civilisation is said to have begun, scholars inform that stick and ball games Photo courtesy of Jacob Feldmann. were played. Later in 1500 BC during the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, a relief shows someing something raw, something basic. It’s a stick and ball one with a stick in one hand and a ball in the other. The game that looks somehow instinctive, somehow natusport of Hurling is a stick and ball game of ancient oriral, somehow fitting for human beings to play. gin and no doubt evolved over time into what is found today in Ireland as the national pastime. For many Irish In the TG4 TV’s series this spring on the GAA in Amerpeople the game itself represents Ireland, is Ireland. For ica ‘GAA USA’, student founder of the Stanford Univermany, the game is sacred. sity Hurling Club, American John Mulrow put it this way - “If you give people a stick and a ball to play a sport, they would invent hurling first.” SIMILARITIES And, when those ‘other’s outside of Irish cultural boundaries see hurling for the first time they are amazed by the general nature of the sport and immediately drawn in by its look, speed, skill levels, intensity, physicality and scoring feats. The experience is akin to witness- Having lived in America for almost 20 years, this scribe has found Americans to be very practical people with an uncanny ability to be able to look at something that appears complicated and break it down to its nuts and bolts. They love to reverse engineer things and take 7

GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 29 – July 4, 2015 | Page 7