Good luck to my sister Eri and her Gaelic football team, Na Fianna, who will be playing in the National Championships this weekend in Philadelphia. For the record, Gaelic football is one of the most insane sports in existence. The ball is like a heavy volleyball, which you are allowed to punch or dropkick, but not throw or kick it off the ground. The goal is a soccer goal with football uprights- 3 points if you get the ball through the bottom part, which is guarded by a goalkeeper, and and 1 point for dropkicking it through the uprights. The most confusing part is soloing: when you're moving with the ball, you can only take five steps, after which you must solo it, either by dribbling it off the ground (keep in mind that this is like dribbling a very heavy volleyball off the grass, so it doesn't exactly bounce like a basketabll) or dropkicking it to yourself. And it's full contact, much more so than soccer. I tried to play a couple of times, but was turned off by the frequent maulings (see photo) and couldn't get the hang of soloing.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Gaelic football
Good luck to my sister Eri and her Gaelic football team, Na Fianna, who will be playing in the National Championships this weekend in Philadelphia. For the record, Gaelic football is one of the most insane sports in existence. The ball is like a heavy volleyball, which you are allowed to punch or dropkick, but not throw or kick it off the ground. The goal is a soccer goal with football uprights- 3 points if you get the ball through the bottom part, which is guarded by a goalkeeper, and and 1 point for dropkicking it through the uprights. The most confusing part is soloing: when you're moving with the ball, you can only take five steps, after which you must solo it, either by dribbling it off the ground (keep in mind that this is like dribbling a very heavy volleyball off the grass, so it doesn't exactly bounce like a basketabll) or dropkicking it to yourself. And it's full contact, much more so than soccer. I tried to play a couple of times, but was turned off by the frequent maulings (see photo) and couldn't get the hang of soloing.
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Interesting. What you've described is pretty much exactly the same as Aussie Rules football, which I've gone to see a couple times here. Snookums tells me they even do an "International Rules" match every year where Australia plays Ireland in a modified game that's halfway between each. Pretty cool... And man, Aussie Rules players are HOTT. They're all, like, six feet tall but really freakin' fit. Basically all the guys playing it here are the ones who would've played basketball in the U.S. (They play basketball here but it's not nearly as popular.)
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