hurling....

Hurling is freakin' intense! It's an ancient Irish sport that involves a stick, a ball and lots of violence. NO sport is better than that! Basically you have 2 teams competing to score goals by either hitting the ball into the goal net (looks like a soccer goal) or hit it through the goal posts (looks like a football goal). The goals post are attached to the netted goal. The ball can only be picked up from the ground with the hurl ( the stick) and if you catch it and run with it, you can only do that for 4 steps before hitting it or placing it on the end of the hurl and running it up the field. You hit the ball like a baseball to your who team tries to keep it alive and score. The game is fast, intense, sweaty and bloody. I got to go the the County match last weekend. John, a friend of the Rays, is the coach for the Roscommon Gaels. They lost their match in the county final but the cultural experience was amazing! The crowd was wild and intense with the mouth. (They're Irish) Okay so in the states we joke that the "F" word can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, command, preposition etc and it's a horrific swear word. The mother of them all. Well in Ireland, that word is a natural part of their vocab. It is not really considered a taboo swear word here like it is in the US. Well, at this match all around me the crowd was dropping the "F BOMB" left and right. They were using it in more ways than I knew it could be used. It was great! I laugh at the taboo emphasis we place on the word and at the contrasting difference here with the Irish. They really know freedom of speech.