September 3, 2017 – Hurling!! | The Travelling Fish

We start out for our walk back to the city center. We walk down a street that we have walked a few times already, Drumcondra Road, which turns into Dorset Road. Well today is the All Ireland final in Hurling!! It is just after 10am, big game starts @ 3:30. Already the streets are teeming with people wearing either blue and white or burgundy and white. Street vendors are selling flags, headbands and other items that show your support for you team. As we walk along I think about this:

Could’ve been the whiskey
Might’ve been the gin
Could’ve been the three or four six-packs
I don’t know, but look at the mess I’m in

You know the rest!! I am feeling that this is going to be one party of a day!! This is why.

Every bar we pass is decorated for this event

Vendors selling flags and other team coloured items

This is the stadium that the game will be played it.

From Dorset Street we make our way to the city center and notice that it is even busier than yesterday. We are ready for a smaller town, definitely!! We stop in a couple of shops. One we see this very cool art. The artist uses small pebbles and stones. So creative. This isn’t a great shot of it, but it might give you an idea 🙂 the feet are stones and each little toe are tiny ones,

Stu takes some pub shots along the way. This is a very very large subject in Dublin!!

We wander back to Trinity and find a section that we missed yesterday. Check out this guy.

He is sitting here and this is his story according to Wikipedia.

George Salmon was a distinguished and influential Irish mathematician and Anglican theologian. After working in algebraic geometry for two decades, Salmon devoted the last forty years of his life to theology.

hmmm. Definitely an ancestor of Stu!! He loves math and theology!! Ha ha ha 🙂

After wandering the streets we decide to escape the crowds and head back to St. Stephens Green and find a park bench by a pond. We sit and watch “unstill life”.

We leave to find a place for a bite to eat. We want to find a place to watch the Hurling match somewhere closer to our B&B, but would like some lunch first.

a couple people rolling chairs across the street. They explain that they are moving their office. Not something you see everyday!

We find a pub that has tv’s so we can have a bite to eat and watch a bit of the preliminary Hurling match (kids between 16 & 18). It is Sinnott’s Bar . We head downstairs and find a very large room with just a few people. We pick a table near a very large screen. We order beer and messy chicken wings. The game is very exciting. It is played on a large grass field. The stadium holds more than 83,000 people and it is FULL. They use the same stadium for soccer, so I assume it is the same size as a soccer field. They have a goalie, 6 defencemen, 2 mid fielders and 6 offensive players. We see similarities to hockey, lacrosse and at times golf and baseball. It is very fast paced. They play 2 35 minute halves and have extra time for injuries, very similar to soccer. They have sticks that they call the “hurley”. They flip the ball from the ground with the hurley. They can catch the ball with their hands and can run a few steps with the ball in their hands. They toss the ball to other players or toss it up and whack it with the hurley and it travels a long long way!! There are 2 ways to get points. One is to get the ball between the posts but above the goal crossbar, this is worth 1 point and these guys can hit that from mid field! The other way is to get the ball between the posts but below the crossbar where the goalie may be able to stop it, this is worth 3 points.

Our plans to leave and head towards our B&B are dashed. A young couple has joined us. The young woman’s sister is cycling across Canada at the moment. She gets a message from her while here. She is in Chilliwack and will head to Port Coquitlam today. Small world!! The bar is now FULL. The atmosphere is amazing! After all it is like the Super Bowl! We have a few pints and learn more about this game from our tablemates. The lead goes back and forth. In the end Galway wins and Waterford are disappointed. We are now hurling fans!

Off we go back to our B&B. This is what we see in the streets along the way. Again