Gaelic football
Gaelic football '', commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA, or football, is an Irish team sport. A form of football, it is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by kicking or palming the ball into the other team's goal or between two upright posts above the goal and over a crossbar above the ground.
Players advance the ball up the field with a combination of carrying, bouncing, kicking, hand-passing, and soloing. In the game, two types of scores are possible: points and goals. A point is awarded for kicking or hand-passing the ball over the crossbar, signalled by the umpire raising a white flag. Two points are awarded if the ball is kicked over the crossbar from a 40 metre range marked by a D-shaped arc, signalled by the umpire raising an orange flag. A goal is awarded for kicking the ball under the crossbar into the net, signalled by the umpire raising a green flag. Positions in Gaelic football are similar to those in other football codes and comprise one goalkeeper, six backs, two midfielders, and six forwards, with a variable number of substitutes.
Gaelic football is one of four sports controlled by the Gaelic Athletic Association, the largest sporting organisation in Ireland. Along with hurling and camogie, Gaelic football is one of the few remaining strictly amateur sports in the world, with players, coaches, and managers prohibited from receiving any form of payment. Gaelic football is mainly played on the island of Ireland, although units of the Association exist in Great Britain, mainland Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
The final of the All-Ireland Senior Championship, held every year at Croke Park, Dublin, draws crowds of more than 80,000 people. Outside Ireland, football is mainly played among members of the Irish diaspora. A notable exception is France, where it has been growing lately, not least in the Celtic region of Brittany. Gaelic Park in New York City is the largest purpose-built Gaelic sports venue outside Ireland. Three major football competitions operate throughout the year: the National Football League and the All-Ireland Senior Championship operate on an inter-county basis, while the All-Ireland Club Championship is contested by individual clubs. The All-Ireland Senior Championship is considered the most prestigious event in Gaelic football.
Under the auspices of the GAA, Gaelic football is a male-only sport; however, the related sport of ladies' Gaelic football is governed by the Ladies' Gaelic Football Association.
Similarities between Gaelic football and Australian rules football have allowed the development of international rules football, a hybrid sport, and a series of Test matches has been held regularly since 1998.
History
While Gaelic football as it is known today dates back to the late 19th century, various kinds of football were played in Ireland before this time.Ancient Mob football (caid)
The first legal reference to football in Ireland was in 1308, when John McCrocan, a spectator at a football game at Novum Castrum de Leuan, was charged with accidentally stabbing a player named William Bernard. A field near Newcastle, County Dublin is still known as the football field. The Statute of Galway of 1527 allowed the playing of "foot balle" and archery but banned "hokie'—the hurling of a little ball with sticks or staves" as well as other sports.By the 17th century, the situation had changed considerably. The games had grown in popularity and were widely played. This was due to the patronage of the gentry. Now instead of opposing the games it was the gentry and the ruling class who were serving as patrons of the games. Games were organised between landlords with each team comprising 20 or more tenants. Wagers were commonplace with purses of up to 100 guineas.
The earliest record of a recognised precursor to the modern game dates from a match in County Meath in 1670, in which catching and kicking the ball were permitted.
However even "foot-ball" was banned by the severe Sunday Observance Act of 1695, which imposed a fine of one shilling for those caught playing sports. It proved difficult, if not impossible, for the authorities to enforce the Act and the earliest recorded inter-county match in Ireland was one between Louth and Meath, at Slane, in 1712, about which the poet Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta wrote a poem of 88 verses beginning "Ba haigeanta".
A six-a-side version was played in Dublin in the early 18th century, and 100 years later, there were accounts of games played between County sides.
By the early 19th century, various football games, referred to collectively as caid, were popular in County Kerry, especially the Dingle Peninsula. Father W. Ferris described two forms of caid: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees, and; the epic "cross-country game", which lasted the whole of a Sunday and was won by taking the ball across a parish boundary. "Wrestling", "holding" opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.
Accounts from the Irish diaspora
Some accounts of traditional Irish football come not from Ireland, but from the Irish diaspora, often in celebrating traditional events such as St Patrick's Day. The largest such communities existed in Britain, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Many of the earliest football matches in Australia date back to the 1840s amongst Irish immigrants. In the Colony of South Australia, there are several accounts of Irish football being played at Thebarton in 1843 and again in 1853. There were similar accounts of football in the 1840s in the Colony of Victoria including Melbourne at Batman's Hill and the goldfields in the Colony of Victoria. The account of H C A Harrison, one of the seminal in the history of Victorian football, of Irish rules was that it gave players "the full ability to kick anybody that came within reach". Shin-kicking was a major feature of traditional Irish football and also one of the main reasons why it failed to be widely adopted in Australia. Irish football was also played in the Colony of New Zealand in the 1860s and 1870s in Auckland during Thomas Croke's term as Archbishop there. An 1882 theatrical performance in New York portrays a controversial Irish football match on Saint Nicholas Day 6 December 1790 at the school of Champs de Mars in Paris. Despite a large Irish population references to it being played in America before the 1880s are scant. USGAA makes the unsourced claim that matches were played at Hyde Park, San Francisco in the 1850s.First appearance of modern football
During the 1860s and 1870s, rugby football started to become popular in Ireland. Trinity College Dublin was an early stronghold of rugby, and the rules of the Football Association were codified in 1863 and distributed widely. By this time, according to Gaelic football historian Jack Mahon, even in the Irish countryside, caid had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game", which even allowed tripping.The first account of what the founders of modern Gaelic football referred to as Irish football dates to 1873. Paddy Begley notes that in County Kerry in 1870 only soccer and rugby were played, although historian Paddy Foley notes that by 1874 a third, very different form of football began to emerge and spread across South-West Ireland. At Killarney, these highly popular matches were virtually indistinguishable from Australian Rules Football. This kicking variety of football was even played with an oval ball which became customary in Australia in the 1870s and that scoring was achieved only by kicking goals. A major difference between the two styles is that the Irish variety featured high kicking "up and under" whereas in colonial Victoria, the little marks or foot passes were much more common. While the founders of the game were all familiar with or played rugby, including Cusack and Davin, few had played Irish football as it was so rare outside of the South-West, though the influence of this football on the founders was obvious, this is most likely the "football kicking under the Irish rules" that Thomas Croke later recalled in County Cork.
Irish historian Garnham, citing R.M. Peter's Irish Football Annual of 1880, argued that Gaelic football did not exist before the 1880s and curious about the origin of the distinctive features believed that clubs from England in 1868 most likely introduced elements of their codes including the "mark", lack of offside and scoring by kicking between the upright posts. Unable to identify the source of these peculiar traits he concluded that they must have been introduced by Trinity, Cambridge and Blackheath.
County Limerick was a stronghold of the game in the 1880s, and the Commercials Club in Limerick, founded by employees of Cannock's Drapery Store, was one of the first to impose a set of rules, which was adapted by other clubs in the city. These rules are believed to be the basis for the rules that were later adopted by the GAA and appear to have contained some of the Victorian Rules of 1866. It is not known how or when these Victorian Rules reached Ireland, though many of the goldrush Irish immigrants returned to Ireland during the 1870s and 1880s as the colonial fortunes faded. At a similar point in time, the same football rules were proposed as an alternative to those of soccer and rugby in northern England but did not take root there. Playing the code under its own rules the club later won the inaugural 1887 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final.
English football started to take hold, especially in Ulster, in the 1880s. By the mid-1880s it had become so popular that it was feared by many to completely displace Irish football.
Irish football, however, continued its grip on the southern counties. Accounts from 1889 state that the variety of football that was becoming popular in Ireland in 1884 bore little resemblance at all to the old mob football and was received by the public as more a hybrid of English and Scotch football.