Hurling

I spent most of the day being lazy. Then late in the afternoon Johanna asked if I wanted to go to town. She dropped me off and I was going to walk back but home but after walking around town for a couple hours I met someone I knew from church and she offered to give me a ride home so I accepted her offer. After I got home Johanna and I had dinner. I must interject here that dinner isn't just a meal. It is specific meal. It is the biggest meal of the day and depending on the time and the size of your meal it could be called anything from lunch or dinner to tea or supper. I don't always get it correct but I'm learning.

When Eva came home from work after a 12 hour shift she said there was a match down at the field and if we hurried we could probably catch the last few minutes of it. I grabbed my bag and a jacket and she changed out of her scrubs and Johanna drove us down to the field so we could see the end of it. When we got there the scored was tied and we had seven minutes left.

It looks like no one is in the stands but that's just the end. The sides were full. So the top team is County Wexford. Loch Garman is the Gaelic name for it. The bottom team in from County Kilkenny.

You'll notice the score is separated and neither teams have a score in the first section. Now I don't know much about the game yet and Eva, although she is indeed Irish, couldn't answer many questions I had about the game so I observed and figured some stuff out and what I just had to know I asked the man next to me. But he was there to watch the match so I didn't want to pester him with questions.

The game ended in a tie 0:19 to 0:19 so they decided to play extra time.

They played ten minutes and swapped ends and played another ten minutes.

So rather than post a couple pictures that wont do it justice I decided to post a couple videos that wont do it justice, but here they are anyway to give you an idea. From what I observed hurling is similar to lacrosse but different. They have sticks instead of poles with nets on the end.

The fans were really into it. I haven't heard so many f-bombs since game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
If there are any f-bombs on these videos please forgive me. You can't sensor a crowd of Irishmen during the county juniors hurling finals.

Instead of seeing five minutes we got to see a fair bit of it and we saw the end which is always the most important and it was a really close match. Wexford ended up taking the Leinster Cup. And scored one for the first part of the score. So appearently if you throw the ball through the goalposts above the net it counts in the second part of the score and if you get it in the net it counts in the first part of the score. I'm not sure how it works if you have a ton in the second part and the other team only got one in the net....but we won anyway.

It was a great idea to go. Come to find out Wexford hadn't won this cup in 10 years. So for our hope of seeing the last 5 minutes of a match and not having to pay for the whole thing we saw a fair bit, it was exciting, our team won and we got to see history in the making. Since it was the final, that was my last chance to see hurling without having to travel somewhere far away and it was quite memorable. This trip to Ireland is complete. I have seen hurling and the exciting end to a match as well. We walked home as the field is about a kilometer away and the traffic was nuts anyway. We finished our night with tea and scones and popcorn and the midwife show.

I'm a bit bushed so hoping for some good sleep as I have to get up early tomorrow because we are all going to Waterford. Nothing too exciting and it isn't for shopping its for business but it will be fun anyway.

FYI: Don't go to a hurling match unless you can handle the language from a R rated movie.