GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 29 – July 4, 2015 | Page 8

Photo courtesy of Jacob Feldmann.

complexity out of the equation. Though not by any
means replicas, Germans are similar people. They reduce everything to understandable forms – the ultimate
engineers.
German university student, Jacob Feldmann, says of the
stick and ball game of hurling – “I made the experience
that people like the game a lot if they once got in contact
with it … Locals in Germany don’t know yet that hurling
is the sport they want to play.”
Mulrow and Feldmann understand instinctively what
they are looking at when they see and play hurling as
something that is natural for people to do – hit a small
ball with a stick out of your hand and off the ground as
hard and as accurate and efficiently as you can. When
people do that – say puck a ball 100 meters down a field
– something clicks naturally within. It feels good. It
feels right. It feels natural, and enjoyable. Little wonder
then that a group of German university students upon
discovering the sport have taken to hurling in a big way.
And so, Darmstadt GAA is born.

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DISCOVERY OF ‘BEAUTIFUL’ GAME

It all began back in 2008 when Jacob Feldmann, today the founder and chairperson of the Darmstadt
GAA Club at the Technische Universität in Darmstadt, went to Ireland as an exchange student.
“I went for a student exchange in 2008/2009 to Carlow
in Ireland when I was 16 years old. This is where I first
got in contact with the game of hurling which I played
in the garden and the neighbouring field with the children of my host family,” Feldmann told Gaelic Sports
World this week. He began to get hooked even at this
early age.
“I also followed the ‘All Ireland Championship’ on television and watched the games as much as I could.
When I came back to Germany I had a hurl and a
sliotar in my luggage and told my friends about this
beautiful game.”
Having grown up knowing ‘football’ or soccer as the
beautiful game in the land of the current world foot-