The (not so) beautiful game

It’s funny what you will try when you’re abroad, things you would never do at home: Eating raw fish, cliff jumping, salsa dancing and even……gaelic football. I had lived in Ireland for the bones of twenty three years, and the first time I stepped onto a football field was last month. I traveled several thousand miles to pick up a football and roll down my socks.

I went down to training with an open mind in the sweltering 40 degree heat, and this is at 7 in the evening. How I managed to stay alive until the end of the session is unknown to me. It was no use drinking water because you actually lost more water sweating than you were getting from the bottle. To be perfectly honest I did not go down training with an open mind. I expected the lads down at training to be a bit like myself, just down to have a laugh and meet a few people. How wrong could I be. On my first training session it was like we had a week left until Dubai were making their first appearance in the All Ireland Final. Every ball was contested as if we were all Cuchulainn himself. There were accents down there that you wouldn’t expect to find on an island so far off the west coast of Ireland it was half way to ‘Merica. The D’unbelievables are tame compared.

Anyway, I have thrown in the towel after a month. It’s not the people, it’s the sport itself. I have tried many different sports in my time and this is by far the ugliest sport I’ve ever played. The whole notion of running around a field like a headless chicken does not appeal to me. The whole aim of the game seems to be to try on jump on top of your opponent if he gets the ball. There is no tackling involved, you just literally jump on top of him. It is also evident that if the ball manages to go over the bar in the process then you must shout like a demented hyena missing a leg or two. I say hyena because that is about how graceful the game looks. Anyway, I’ll move on and try to block last months experience out of my mind forever.