Old Parish

Hurling is Ireland s national game a source of fascination and pride, even to people who have never played it. Ciar n Murphy, a lifelong club footballer, used to be one of those people. Then he spent a summer trying to play hurling with a tiny club in the West Waterford Gaeltacht. Along the way he embarked on a quest to understand the history, geography and mystique of this extraordinary sport.Old Parish is the club of Ciar n s father, a club where relatives of his are still deeply involved, and possibly the only place brave (or stupid) enough to take on a forty-one-year-old newcomer to the game. Predictably (and at times hilariously), Ciar n finds out just how difficult a sport hurling is to pick up when you re in your sporting dotage, up against men who ve played it since childhood.Ciar n also explores why hurling is played in only half the country; he investigates the origins of hurling clubs antipathy to football and the difficulties of establishing hurling in new areas; he looks into the mysteries of hurley-making; and he seeks to understand why, when a hurling legend refers to the sport as the greatest game ever played by any man , he has to be taken seriously.Anyone who has ever watched hurling knows that it is something unique and extraordinary. Old Parish explains why.