Time for the GAA leagues to get started.

It's that time of year and the football and hurling leagues start up again. After a long winter break we are finally back in action. Now this post might not mean much to most of the people on here but to us it's life. The GAA is an amateur sporting organization in Ireland that has two unique sports. Hurling and football. Outside of the cities everything revolves around club and county teams. It's the largest sporting organization in the country and ties together all of our communities.

A brief history

The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is Ireland’s largest sporting organisation. It is celebrated as one of the great amateur sporting associations in the world.

It is part of the Irish consciousness and plays an influential role in Irish society that extends far beyond the basic aim of promoting Gaelic games.

It was founded on November 1 1884 at a meeting in Thurles, Co. Tipperary, by a group of spirited Irishmen who had the foresight to realise the importance of establishing a national organisation to make athletics more accessible to the masses and to revive and nurture traditional,indigenous sports and pastimes. At that time, it was largely only the gentry and aristocracy who were allowed to meaningfully participate in athletics.

Until then all that was Irish was being steadily eroded by emigration, intense poverty and outside influences.Within six months of that famous first meeting, GAA clubs began to spring up all over Ireland and people began to play the games of Hurling and Gaelic Football and take part in Athletic events with pride.

The Association today promotes Gaelic games such as Hurling, Football, Handball and Rounders and works with sister organisations to promote Ladies Football and Camogie. The Association also promotes Irish music, song and dance and the Irish language as an integral part of its objectives. The GAA has remained an amateur Association since its founding. Players, even at the highest level, do not receive payment for playing and the volunteer ethos remains one of the most important aspects of the GAA.

The organisation is based on the traditional parishes and counties of Ireland.As a community-based organisation, it is often stated that it is difficult to determine where the community ends and the GAA club starts as they generally overlap and are intertwined. The GAA has over 2,200 clubs in all 32 counties of Ireland.

Every summer the inter-county All-Ireland Championships in hurling and football capture the attention of the Irish public, and regional towns heave with the arrival of large numbers of supporters and the colour, noise and excitement that they bring. In the region of 1.5 million people attend the GAA Championships from May to September.

However, by far the two biggest days in the GAA calendar are the All-Ireland finals in hurling and football. A sell out attendance of 82,300 is guaranteed in Croke Park and the quest for tickets is intense as Ireland’s top counties do battle for the right to be All-Ireland champions.The finals are broadcast around the world.The GAA has developed abroad amongst the Irish Diaspora.The Irish who emigrated brought their national games with them and both regional and club units are now well established in the United States of America, Australia,Britain, Canada, China, mainland Europe and many other parts of the world.

Ref:https://www.gaa.ie/the-gaa/about-the-gaa/

A little motivation

My own team Clare is starting of their league campaign tonight with an away game against their old rivals Tipperary. It should be a tough game and it's never easy to win down in Thurles so we are the underdogs for this one. It's on TV later on this evening so I will be watching it at home. It's been too long since we had some serious action so really looking forward to it.

I know that there is not a huge audience for posts on hurling since there is only about a dozen Irish people on here but I will put up a few more along the way since it's my passion and might even convert a few people to the sport. Feel free to ask any questions you have and I highly recommend taking a look at it for any sports fans out there.