What does hurling mean to you?

[Milltown Row2]

Hurling is a passion that once you have it in your blood can never leave. Playing it, coaching it and managing it can bring serious highs and unbelievable lows.

Having played it for sooooooo long it breaks my heart knowing that I will very rarely get a game at the club anymore, coaching is great and can replace some of the adrenalin lost from playing, managing is a fooking rollercoaster. Puts you in bad form even when you win FFS, but when you win a match against your rivals it leaves you howling at the sky and (I have done this a few times) shouting like a mad man on the way home after the game.

I wish I could get back 20 years of my life, the best days of my life were on the hurling field. (oh don't tell the wife!!)

Does it have an additional significance up in Antrim ? Hurling is a minority thing anyway but in the North it has another layer of relevance, maybe. And it is one of the things that defines Irishness I think.  Antrim hurling is an outpost . This year's club final was fantastic - sharing the quality with the whole country.

In the villages and the small towns in the Glens it's massive, all they do is hurl, visit the likes of Cushendall, Ballycastle, and passing through Loughgiel (no real reason to stop there ) and all you will see is kids with hurls. Two minutes out of that village and the next town will be draped with Union Jacks!! Then you have the Ards section, 3 wee pockets of hurling, Ballycran, Ballygalget and Portaferry, hurling mad also. Most of these wee places usually became hurling hot spots due to Christian Brothers assigned to that area a hundred years ago.

For us City folk in Belfast most clubs are dual, but most players have their main code are are very passionate abut it. I've been to every All Ireland Final in the past 15 years. I may be missing my first this year due to another engagement but I believe Croke Park is squeezing the life out of honest to fcuk hurling men with the price of tickets for the finals.

Going to the club during the troubles carrying your hurl through the barricades past the Brits (usually getting searched) was very strange thing looking back, It's a wonder sometimes how it survived in parts of Antrim

[deiseach]

I'm pretty sure that the hurling played in Antrim prior to the GAA was more akin to shinty. Obviously it was a long time ago, but would there be any collective memory/folklore/tradition remaining about those times?

[screenmachine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVIa7HaHC7g

Found this video a while back which summed hurling up pretty well from an outsiders point of view.  Cool story too.  You can skip about the first 5-6 mins if you're in a rush but it helps build the story... 

[OakleafCounty]

Like Ards and the Gelns of Antrim. There's also what I'd describe as a hurling enclave in the Sperrins and its foothills. In the Bangher, Dungiven and Balinascreen areas hurling is popular though still has to compete with football.

[Milltown Row2]

Like Ards and the Gelns of Antrim. There's also what I'd describe as a hurling enclave in the Sperrins and its foothills. In the Bangher, Dungiven and Balinascreen areas hurling is popular though still has to compete with football.

Yes Oakleaf, again usually some mad Christain Brother forced the schools in those areas to take it on, and during the 20's what parent was going to argue with a mad Brother??

[theskull1]

Does it have an additional significance up in Antrim ? Hurling is a minority thing anyway but in the North it has another layer of relevance, maybe. And it is one of the things that defines Irishness I think.  Antrim hurling is an outpost . This year's club final was fantastic - sharing the quality with the whole country.

mmmmm...it's what the rest of us have to listen to is the problem 

Does it have an additional significance up in Antrim?  
Hard to know seafoid having not lived anywhere the game was really strong. Would be jealous of the level of interest there is for the game in the heartlands and would dearly love to see more of that. We have men every bit as passionate as any hurling men but just lack enough to take the standards of our game upo a notch. They can only do so much and do rightly. Problem (if you see it that way) is that hurling compared to "the other" ball sports is difficult to learn and get to a stage where kids fall in love with it. Alot of nuturing in the early years from coaches but more importantly parents. Wish we had more hurling die hard coaches and parents rather than beening seen in alot of quarters as just another sports club.

To me there is no other game. I've done plenty but never felt I was living as much as I did when I played.

Regarding Antrim being an outpost, important to remember that hurling men in Derry and Down as well as Tyrone are putting their shoulder to the wheel.

[OakleafCounty]

Like Ards and the Gelns of Antrim. There's also what I'd describe as a hurling enclave in the Sperrins and its foothills. In the Bangher, Dungiven and Balinascreen areas hurling is popular though still has to compete with football.

Yes Oakleaf, again usually some mad Christain Brother forced the schools in those areas to take it on, and during the 20's what parent was going to argue with a mad Brother??

And here's me having the romantic notion that due the areas remoteness the game lasted through the centuries while it was dying everywhere else.

[theskull1]

Like Ards and the Gelns of Antrim. There's also what I'd describe as a hurling enclave in the Sperrins and its foothills. In the Bangher, Dungiven and Balinascreen areas hurling is popular though still has to compete with football.

Yes Oakleaf, again usually some mad Christain Brother forced the schools in those areas to take it on, and during the 20's what parent was going to argue with a mad Brother??

I'd go back to mass if they started doing the same again. Would expect many devout football men (even after all the recent scandals) would leave the church in their droves. 

[small white mayoman]

Hard to know what it means to this lunatic commentating .  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HKQTfYRA9k&feature=player_detailpage

[Milltown Row2]

Like Ards and the Gelns of Antrim. There's also what I'd describe as a hurling enclave in the Sperrins and its foothills. In the Bangher, Dungiven and Balinascreen areas hurling is popular though still has to compete with football.

Yes Oakleaf, again usually some mad Christain Brother forced the schools in those areas to take it on, and during the 20's what parent was going to argue with a mad Brother??

I'd go back to mass if they started doing the same again. Would expect many devout football men (even after all the recent scandals) would leave the church in their droves. 

We'd a mad Christian Brother at my primary school, had his own video of him carrying out the football skills (A Kerry man) it was these headers that pushed the Gaelic games. He's been our club president for a number of years

[seafoid]

Hard to know what it means to this lunatic commentating .  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HKQTfYRA9k&feature=player_detailpage

Is that a Mayo accent? It sounds West of Ireland . 

[Asal Mor]

When I'm walking through town on my way to puck a few balls I always feel like more of a man with my hurl in my hand. Not in the sense that I could use it as a weapon, just that to me hurling is a heroic game and all hurlers are fearless warriors. They say holding a gun can give you a strange surge of power. That's how I feel when I hold a hurl.

[deiseach]

When I'm walking through town on my way to puck a few balls I always feel like more of a man with my hurl in my hand. Not in the sense that I could use it as a weapon, just that to me hurling is a heroic game and all hurlers are fearless warriors. They say holding a gun can give you a strange surge of power. That's how I feel when I hold a hurl.

I always felt that my hurley was a knife and everyone else was wielding a gun

[seafoid]

I love the feel of the hurl in the hand and also reading about Cu Chulainn to the kids and showing them the
pictures of the hurls. 

[Fear Bun Na Sceilpe]

I'm pretty sure that the hurling played in Antrim prior to the GAA was more akin to shinty. Obviously it was a long time ago, but would there be any collective memory/folklore/tradition remaining about those times?

Yes you are correct. The hurling played in Antrim, Dungiven, Derry City and its hinterland of Burt in Inishowen was known as commons, which derived from "camanach". It was similar to shinty. There used to be  mad rivalry between Derry City teams and Burt before the formation of the GAA and even after its formation it was these areas that were the strongest. Hurling in one form or another has remained very strong in Burt right up to the present day. In Derry City which is only 5 miles away from Burt and in the same diocsese the Catholic Church associated everything GAA as too closely linked to militant republicanism in the 1920s and actively discouraged it amongst its flock. They replaced it with soccer in the schools and now the city is a soccer stronghold. The city does have 1 hurling club Na Magha which was founded in the 1980s and the people there are as passionate about hurling as anywhere in Ireland