Sports Differences; continued

Another aspect of Irish sports that is very different to almost every other sports is what is known as the ‘Parish Rule’. This means players play with their local team. For life. No transfer window, no moving to a new team every few years, no poaching players. Obviously if you move home there are ways to get a transfer, but it is complicated and a lot of the time players don’t want to leave their team anyway so they will travel whatever distance they have to to train. You play with the same group of friends all along until you retire. The sense of community that comes with this is unbelievable.The same goes for county. There are 32 counties in Ireland and playing county is basically the aim for any aspiring hurler or footballer. So even at the top of your game, you still play in your area, with a combination of players from other clubs within your county. No matter how good you are you still can only play with your county. They don’t move to other counties because there is no monetary incentive to do so. The rivalry this creates is unbelievable and makes for great atmospheres at games! Our sports are very unique in this way and it can be difficult for people from other countries to grasp the idea, but trust me the one thing you have to do if you ever get the chance is to go to a hurling or football championship game and experience it all.

Hurling has been described to me as a mixture of lacrosse, hockey, rugby and pure madness- seems pretty accurate to me. It is regarded as the fastest game on grass and has been around longer than recorded Irish history, so at least 2000 years. Players wear just a helmet for protection and carry a hurley (a stick usually 32-34 inches long which is narrow at the top and becomes flat and almost circular at the bottom). The game is played on a grass pitch larger than a soccer field with two teams of 15 trying to get the ball (similar to a baseball) either over the bar (one point) or past the goalie into the net (three points).

Gaelic Football is like  a mixture of soccer, basketball and rugby and is played on the same pitch as hurling with the same size teams and target. The players don’t wear any protection. The ball is roughly the size of a soccer ball and can be handled or kicked. Both of these sports are very fast and exciting and well worth having a look at.

The good news is these sports are slowly making their way over to America (probably due to a ridiculous amount of Irish emigrating to the USA). There are GAA clubs in chicago, NY, San Fran, San Diego, Seattle, Texas and even Pittsburgh among others. GAA has even been included in the curriculum in some schools in the south west! We are slowly taking over! (2 /2)

<This is Croke park our main stadium, which seats 82,000

 < This is a hurl and sliothar (ball)                                            

< This is a typical goals on a hurling/ football pitch.

Sports differences

As an avid sports person willing to try almost any sport I can get my hands on, I couldn’t not talk about American vs Irish sports. I won’t lie, before I came here I really didn’t see the attraction to American football, at all at all. But now I’m starting to get the whole cult following. I’ve gone to a couple of the SRU games and watched others on TV and I still haven’t fully grasped the rules (I spend a lot of time asking what the heck just happened?). I can’t count the first game really; that was a complete washout and I ended up leaving after 20 minutes. I know, I’m not proud. It was really cool to see the band and cheerleaders and all of the buildup, though. Before I came here I honestly thought that was just in the movies, I can’t believe that all really happens at every game! We don’t have anything like that except in really big games and even then it doesn’t come close to the big production here.

One of the hardest things for me to comprehend here is the sheer amount of money pumped into sports and players here. Between scholarships, gear, overnight trips, coaches, stadiums and all the rest that goes with it, it’s got to be the biggest cost on the university.You have to understand that Irish sports are run verrry differently when it comes to money. Firstly even if you are the best player in the country in one of the two most popular sports we have (Gaelic football and Hurling) you don’t get paid. Not a penny. Our national sports are all amateur. The stars are as recognisable, fit and open to scrutiny as any football or basketball player here, yet they all have actual jobs alongside their sporting career. Henry Shefflin is widely recognised as the best Hurler of this decade, yet he balances his intense training with his day job as a banker. The coaches too have day jobs. Brian Cody has won 11 all-Ireland championships as a coach (a phenomenal amount for any sport) and he is a primary school teacher at the same time. They are involved in sports for the love of the game, for the most part at least. There are a certain amount of scholarships on offer but they are for nominal amounts compared to here, and the majority of the time you must get into college in academic merit first before you can apply for a scholarship. A bit different to the system in place here.

The Gaelic Athletic Association (governing body of Hurling and Gaelic Football) has a yearly turnover of roughly 60 million euro ($65 million) and considering this is from an amateur sport in an area smaller than Pennsylvania state, that’s by no means a small figure. Players get gear, travel costs, some food, training costs etc. provided for them. So basically, they aren’t at a loss. If you’re playing for the county, that is. If you just play club, you rarely get this. Many players spend their own money for this, leaving them out of pocket. This particularly happens in women’s sports, unfortunately, but there has recently been a big push to garner equal publicity for men and women’s sports. (1 /2)

The Food Issue

Whenever people ask me what I think of America I always answer with ‘different’. Not better or worse, just different. I mean there are obviously pros and cons to any culture change, in some ways Ireland is really similar to America, in other ways, not so much.  
The food is one difference you can’t get away from. The sheer quantity of food is crazy. The concept of all-you-can-eat is quite literally a foreign notion at home. I think I’ve been to one before I came here- and it was in a Chinese restaurant - and we didn’t quite get the concept of it so we left. I think I have found one of the main reasons for the obesity crisis in America anyway… As an aspiring PE teacher, I can’t understand how you are expected to combat this in one or two classes a week? And what about drinks? Unlimited soda is not just common, it’s expected here, which is crazy to those of us who grew up in a country with the idea that you buy one drink, and then if you want more you buy another (so basically you make do with one). There is a ridiculous amount of choice too when it comes to your favourite choice of liquid calories. In Ireland we typically have Fanta orange, coke, sprite, lemonade and maybe cidona (kind of like fizzy apple cider) as our choice of sodas, with as many non-carbonated options. Here you have the pick of every flavour you could ever want (and some you’d never want- root beer anyone?). 
I wouldn’t be a health freak by any stretch of the imagination, but I try to be as good as I can with a few slip ups here and there. However I find it so difficult to be healthy here. Even when I try to buy healthy snacks they are either really expensive or full of sugar/ salt/ chemicals. I couldn’t believe that a regular size bag of peanuts is like $10 here! That’s crazy expensive, no wonder students put on the ‘freshman 15’ in college. The stats speak for themselves; the people at higher risk for obesity are from lower income families because good, organic and healthy food is so expensive compared to a 5-pound bag of candy for less than $5! At home there is a big push for organic and traceable foods at affordable prices. People have become very aware and savvy when it comes to nutritional content in foods, and there is a lot of organic food companies popping up and doing really well. America is way ahead of Ireland in many ways but this is one area where they need to step up ASAP before the obesity crisis becomes an epidemic!

The Struggle of Having an Unpronounceable Name in a Foreign Country.

My name is Gráinne, which is actually a fairly common name at home but, as I never fully realised until I came here, it is most definitely not common anywhere else. It’s a good thing I’m not too fussy and manage to laugh at it, because if I got annoyed every time my name was pronounced wrong I’d have a very tough time of it! It’s now become a little hobby of mine to turn to my American friends (who I know for weeks at this point, bear in mind) and ask them to pronounce my name… yielding hilarious results! You don’t realise how much people use your name until they say it wrong; I mean, think of Starbucks? I’ve become a big coffee fan since I came here, (American coffee is waaaayyy better than Irish, but your tea sucks FYI) so Starbucks has become one of my favourite haunts on campus. But whoever came up with the brilliant idea of writing the names on the cups, clearly had a name like Ben or Sam or Kim. And worse again, after you pronounce your name 3 times and spell it twice for the poor girl struggling to write it, you then sit waiting and waiting for your coffee until you realise that they actually had it done for ages but there was a staff debate going on behind the counter on what to call out- how the heck do you say this?! So after this happened twice, I decided my Starbucks name would be Kate (which has also been misspelled but we won't get into that), which makes life a lot easier; until I forget that it's my name that is...

It's gotten to the point where I feel bad for introducing myself. My poor lecturers have to try to pronounce it too in front of the class which is hilarious/ mortifying for all involved. Literally if you even come close to it at this point I'll accept it. It doesn't help that my friends who can actually pronounce it right, find it so hilarious to introduce me as granny/ grainy/ granye  or whatever other version tickles their fancy. Whatever I'm fine with it now, I've accepted it... I mean otherwise I wouldn't rant about it in a blog, right? All I know is if I ever have kids they'll have names that are universal- Irish names bedamned. This video sums up the eternal struggle I face and just how funny it is...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUteMtNhe3g

P.S. its pronounced Grawnya in case you were wondering...