Hurling!!

How to explain Hurling? Paddle hits ball. Ball thru goal posts=1 point. Ball past keeper into net=3 points. You can read the rest of the rules on the almighty Wikipedia.

Imagine Tiger Woods chasing his wife with a club over his head….that’s part of Hurling.

Add in bits and pieces from quidditch, baseball, soccer, lacrosse and rugby.

Sprinkle in crazy Irish men screaming “too many foicking steps”, “foicking disgraceful”, “that’s a foicking free” and “for foick’s sake pass the ball” every single play no matter how good the refs are...

And what do you get….an amazing game to watch.

There’s fighting, great saves, lots of goals and passionate fans. What more could you want? Tipperary vs Cork is a huge rivalry and Tipp was favored to win the game and even the national championship, but Cork took them on and won 22-12 in front of a home crowd.

The stadium looked about the same size as a Staples football (exaggeration) but announced attendance was 36,300. Oh yeah, we were in the standing room section that filled every inch of the stadium. It was still awesome.

Seriously, they should have this sport at every college in America (UC-Berkeley played Stanford last year in the first ever college match). It’s a sweet sport and I hope it becomes popular in America one day…soccer first though! Speaking of which, World Cup 2010 begins in TEN DAYS.