“This game is hard, bro.”
That was one of the whoops and calls that rang out at UCD yesterday as the massed ranks of Penn State University elite American Football squad turned their hand towards hurling and the gaelic version of their own sport.
Experience Gaelic Games ran a short session with the coaches of UCF and Penn State when they were in Dublin to launch the Croke Park Classic earlier in the year and made such an impression that they were called back yesterday to be part of the latter’s first full training session after landing in Dublin on Wednesday.
History
“Hurling has been around since 1172BC, so it has a bit of history,” said Cormac O’Donnchú, founder of Experience Gaelic Games giving his own pep rally to the team who filled the stand at the Belfield Bowl.
“Gaelic Games are more than sport. Croke Park is our Mecca where players who sweat blood and tears throughout their amateur sporting lives would give anything to do what you will do on Saturday and walk out on that sacred turf.”
He raised a gasp when revealing that a bigger audience attended each of three All Ireland Finals last year than were present at the 2014 Superbowl in New York, before handing over to a team of players that were on hand to guide their sporting cousins from across the Atlantic through some of the finer points of both ‘our’ games.
Dwarfed
Dublin Hurling Captain Johnny McCaffrey and Wexford Camogie star Mags Darcy may have been dwarfed by line backers the size of small mountains but the skills they were showing off silenced the team, if only for a few short minutes.
Watching them squeeze into what we would consider regular size hurling helmets was an experience but as is so often the case, skills in one sport are often a major bridge to others and while the balls were smaller and a different shape there was some real raw talent on display when it came to lifting, soloing and hand passing.
Sport should always be about shared experience and this hour of their time will have given the players a better appreciation of what normally goes on under the shadow of the stands they will line out before on Saturday.
Honour
“It was a real honour to stand before them and share a little of what we believe is special about our games and their part in our life and culture,” added O’Donnchú.
“We do this for tour groups, visiting celebrities and companies here in Dublin. Earlier this year we had 200 staff of Google down to experience what it is like to strike a sliotar.”
“That said I don’t think we have aver had quite such a muscle bound group as this. They all had fun though and who knows, some of them may return in years to come as players on a US side.”
