The Most Exciting Sports You’ve Never Heard Of

If you’re not from inside Ireland, you might not have the foggiest what the GAA means. For all you know, it could be the local tax collectors or a broadcaster. If that sounds like you, this Gaelic Athletic Association explainer is just what you need.

You see, the GAA is incredible on so many different levels. It’s a cultural, historical and, some would argue at least, a political force. It’s a centre for activism and national pride. And it’s also home to some of the most groundbreaking and thrilling sports you can imagine.

Buckle up, because you’re about to get blown away by the GAA.

Gaelic Athletic Association explainer

At its heart, the GAA is home to five sports. They are Gaelic football, hurling, camogie, Gaelic handball and rounders. By far and away, the biggest of these five are football and hurling.

Gaelic football is completely different from English soccer, rugby and American football. In fact, it predates all of those games. It’s closest relation is in fact Aussie Rules. It’s played with a round ball that’s smaller and heavier than a soccer ball and the goals are a bit like rugby goal posts. In Gaelic, you can throw and kick the ball and it can often be pretty physical.

Meanwhile, hurling is another ancient game. But this time the game is played with sticks (hurleys) and a ball (sliotar). It’s played on the same type of field as Gaelic football and has the same sorts of goals too. The first written reference to hurling dates back to 1272 BC and it’s known as the fastest (and arguably most skillful) game played on grass. Take that, soccer!

You can keep track of all of the fixtures and results at the official GAA website. And if you want to place bets on these thrilling games, you can do just that at bet365. Plus if you’re a new player, you can take advantage of this bet365 bonus code.

Popularity of the GAA

In Ireland, the GAA is wildly popular. Rivalling the Premier League for the nation’s attention and far surpassing sports like cricket, every talks about the big Gaelic football and hurling finals when they come around each year.

In fact, the biggest GAA stadium Croke Park is one of the biggest sports stadiums in the whole of Ireland, with a capacity maxing out at over 82,000. And even still, games regularly sell out. When it comes to the finals, tickets are like gold dust.

And it’s certainly not just a spectators sport. There are 2,200 GAA clubs in Ireland and 400 GAA clubs worldwide. Here people are involved in the community as well as playing themselves and supporting their local team. In total, half a million people are members of a GAA club across the globe.

GAA and Irish politics

The GAA is also a place where Irish culture in celebrated in many forms, not just in sport. It promotes the Irish language, Irish dancing (which is huge) and Irish traditional music.

Nowadays, that might seem fairly innocuous. However, back when the GAA was founded (in 1884), this was a fairly controversial topic. And any Gaelic Athletic Association explainer must touch on this aspect of the GAA.

You see, back then, Ireland was under British rule. But not every Irish person was happy about that. Embracing native Irish culture for some people went hand-in-hand with supporting the separation (to a greater or lesser extent) of Ireland from Britain.

For that reason, the GAA raised suspicions. And in some cases, these suspicions were rooted in truth, as the GAA was indeed a meeting and in some cases recruiting ground for the national cause.

The British even had spies infiltrate GAA clubs to try to gain information on political objectives and operations by the nationalists associated with the sporting association.

These tensions between the British and the GAA reached their violent peak in 1920 in Dublin’s Croke Park stadium. While a match was underway, British forces opened fire shooting indiscriminately at the crowd and players. This terrible event became known as Bloody Sunday.

Rightly or wrongly, the GAA continued to be a symbol of the national cause for decades to come. GAA grounds were the target for loyalist paramilitary attacks in Northern Ireland well into the 1990s.