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I was already inclined to like Ireland, so pretty with its pillowy green fields and hills, but now my connection is richer, deeper — the devotion of an accidental hurling fan.
That Dede and I came to be on a bus with two dozen American hurlers and fans — sometimes squeezing down country lanes so narrow we felt like we should inhale as we missed oncoming vehicles by inches — is an enormous quirk of fate.
This adventure started with our son, Adam, who played lacrosse at Lebanon High School and so was acquainted with games with sticks that could be played with high levels of skill or malicious intent. He currently lives in Hartford, Conn., where he has joined the Hartford GAA hurling club and, according to his parents, is a natural.
Well, one thing leads to another and on a recent day we and his team landed at the Cork International Airport, where a statue of hurling great Christy Ring stands out front. A story about him goes that a woman fan once sprinkled holy water on his teammates before an important county final, but told him, “Ringy, you don’t need any of this.” That was a measure of greatness in old, Catholic Ireland.
The game once resembled field hockey, but now it’s mostly airborne. Players use sticks, called hurleys, to propel balls, called sliotars (pronounced slitters) while passing to each other and shooting at high speeds toward the goal on a “pitch” that’s longer and wider than an American football field. The rapid ascent of the ball resembles a long fly or a home run in baseball, but in this case the player is tossing the ball up with one hand and swinging while momentarily stopping from a full run. And, a club-wielding opponent is after him. The game is some 3,000 years old. Baseball is a baby by comparison.
I don’t want to go on overlong about the details of hurling, but our son, who is deep into them and the sport, has suggested that is impossible. Our daughter, Laura, who was also with us and also played lacrosse at Lebanon High, might disagree with him, but that’s because she hasn’t taken up the women’s version: camogie, or camógaíocht, if you happen to speak Irish.
The tour began with a Cork-Waterford match at Semple Stadium, where some 15,000 were in attendance. A Dublin stadium holds more than 60,000, all this for games played by amateurs. I could not wrap my head around that. “They are teachers, firefighters, public servants who have to go to work tomorrow,” I was told.
Cork fans wore the team colors, red and white, and after a dramatic comeback victory they rushed the field to greet their heroes. Among them were dozens of young boys and girls with hurleys and sliotars, which they bounced and chased on the green field. It’s a shame that games at Fenway Park don’t end with that sort of community moment.
The next day, the Hartford team had a workout led by Justin McCarthy, a legendary former player and manager who encouraged them — “I’m seeing good things,” he said — and gave the universal tip for excellence: “practice, practice, practice.” I’m not sure of the baseball equivalent, but I think it was as if Carl Yastrzemski had stopped by to give the lads a hand.
Then it was into the breach for the Hartford team, with three matches over the coming days. There is no way to sugarcoat this: Ireland has an enormous head start in hurling. Kids take it up at age 4 or 5, Irish players told me. But the Hartford players, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were pretty athletic, played hard and gave a good account of themselves. After being steamrolled in the first match, they actually led at the half in the second before the Irish team pulled away. The last game was fairly competitive as well.
An American hurling team visit was enough of an occasion that the Irish Examiner newspaper did a feature story. In Killaloe, a handsome small town where the last match was played, several local boys trailed the Connecticut hurlers as they walked about during the day. A player bought the boys soda. Shop owners asked if we were with the American hurling team. We felt we were minor celebrities.
We did some of the usual tourist stuff: Blarney Castle, shopping at Bunratty Woolen Mills, a tour of the Jameson whiskey distillery, a visit to Cobh, from where the Titanic sailed, but hurling ruled the day and the calendar. Among the stops: a demonstration at a small factory, Torpey’s, that crafts ash hurleys. To my surprise, I was fascinated.
Not all Irish people are friendly but the ones who are are relaxed and like to talk. When I walked around Killaloe one early morning, a majority said “Good morning,” or “Hiya.” The hurling clubs warmly welcomed us when we arrived in town and fed us after matches, in their club home or the local pub. They made speeches and our trip organizers, both Ireland born, said grand things in return. Gifts were exchanged.
Encouraged by one of the trip organizers from Connecticut, our team members stood and sang Kevin Barry, a defiant song that honors an Irish teen executed by the British in 1920. Irish club members seemed delighted; one club responded with several songs of their own, full of memory and heartache.
As Dede and I left the Killaloe pub where the post-game gathering was held, men shook my hand and thanked me with strong grips and sincerity. “Well done,” “thank you,” they said, as if we had done them a great favor. Their hospitality was humbling, is all I can say about it.
As we toured around, the same questions kept coming up, as if there’d been a public service campaign on how to talk to tourists. Is this your first trip to Ireland? Are you enjoying your visit? They commented on the weather, and our good luck: cool, cloudy weather had given way to warm sunshine. (I even got a tan in rainy Ireland, which counts as a minor miracle.) They would rattle off places they’d visited in America: New York, Chicago, California, even New Hampshire. They didn’t seem to know Vermont.
A few brought up a delicate topic in a delicate way: “So, what do you think of this president of yours?” They said they were surprised by his divisive rhetoric, and weren’t sure it was helpful, but beyond that it wasn’t for them to judge.
We didn’t get into the topic deeply. It was my impression from talking to people and reading the papers that Ireland has nothing like the partisan rancor sweeping our nation like wildfire. Ireland is a small country, and people meet and talk about people they know in common and wonder whether they might be related, even far back in time. They agree that government has responsibilities, that it must take care of the poor, the old and the sick. I asked a man if many wanted to follow the example of the British and leave Europe. “Oh, no, no,” he said. He looked as if I asked if they wanted to move to the moon.
We heard almost no news from home in our week there. In the agreeable climate of Ireland, it seemed very far away.
Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
