Top o’ the morning to you, constant readers. Hopefully you’re at breakfast, getting your drink on as you read this month’s column; if not, where’s your Irish spirit? No, I’m not mad—just disappointed. Luckily, there’s still time, so get with the program, and I don’t mean AA.
This St. Patrick’s-themed tome takes aim at Gaelic games—the national sports of Ireland—two of which are played throughout this country: hurling and Gaelic football.
Hurling (not the kind you get after a night of drinking, but more on that later) goes waaaay back, even thousands of years, to simpler times when Irish townspeople would travel from village to village, challenging folks to compete in ball and stick games. Revived in 1884 by the Gaelic Athletic Association, the sport today is played on a grass, soccer-style field (called a “pitch”) by two teams of 15 players each.
During gameplay, hurlers use a hurley stick, a smallish version of a hockey stick, to whack a ball called a sliotar back and forth among their teammates. Players are allowed to catch the ball with their hands or on the flat rounded end of the hurley and run with it until they pass it or get tackled. The point is to smash the sliotar over or through the “H” shaped goalposts at opposite ends of the field. A ball hit over the bar is worth a single point, and a ball hit into the net (under the bar) is a goal worth three points.
Hurling is considered one of the world’s fastest sports (the sliotar can travel at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour), and the California Collegiate Gaelic Athletic Association has the distinction of promoting it on college campuses. Several California colleges currently have hurling teams, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis, which just began competing in January.
The other major Irish pastime—Gaelic football—is pretty much the same as hurling, except there’s no stick, and players use a volleyball-type leather ball, which can be either kicked or passed using a punch of a closed fist. Kicking the ball through the goalpost or punching it over the crossbar scores points, and kicking the ball past the goalkeeper into the net (soccer-style) is a three-point goal.
There are various clubs scattered throughout the country, and apparently there’s even a Gaelic Football League nearby in San Luis Obispo (who knew?), so there’s no excuse for not giving it a shot.
Speaking of shots (how’s that for a segue?) everybody knows that the real national pastime of Ireland, at least among those who claim to be Irish on St. Paddy’s Day, is drinking, and what better way to get hammered than to make a game of it? A disclaimer: I don’t encourage binge drinking, but I don’t discourage it, either. Caveat empty-your-beers.
For an Irish twist on the classic game hot potato, give “shot potato” a try. It’s easy: Get a few of your friends together with a bottle of fine Irish whiskey and a mix of your favorite Celtic music (Flogging Molly counts), and pass the potato around. When the music stops, the person holding the spud has to take a drink. Needless to say, the winner (loser?) is the last one standing.
If potatoes aren’t your bag, how about a round of Irish Quarters? You’ve probably played the classic American version before; this is a little different. There’s no flinging of two bits necessary. Simply grab a worthy opponent and fill his or her cup with the beverage of choice and spin a quarter. While it’s spinning, your rival has to chug as much as he can before it stops. The person who chugs the most wins.
For those who want to use a little more grey matter, in the game of Irish Poker, each player is dealt four cards from a deck. The person sitting to the left of the dealer starts by guessing if the card he or she turns over first is going to be black or red. If they’re right, they get to order the other players to take as many shots as they can handle in a given time—say, two minutes. If they guess wrong, they have to do the shot. Keep going around the table clockwise until you’re all too hammered to see straight, except for the designated driver, of course.
If you’ve got dice at the ready, Irish Roulette might be your style. Each member in your coterie of players gets a pair of dice along with a lineup of whiskey shots. The person who rolls the lowest number has to do the first shot. If there’s a tie, contestants have to yell “shotgun!” and the last person to say it does the shot. And so on and on, round after round, until motor skills are hovering somewhere between a garden slug and Charlie Sheen after a weeklong bender.
Finally, if you’re looking to keep it simple and just want to get as drunk as you can, as fast as you can, you’re in luck, because the Irish practically invented the Power Hour. During this orgy of alcoholic bliss, contestants must slam one beer or shot at specified intervals (usually scant minutes) for an entire hour. Now, I enjoy my booze as much as the next guy, but this sounds like a good way to ensure a quick end to the night and the possibility of waking up the next morning and realizing that wasn’t exactly the Blarney Stone you were kissing.
But what do I know? I’m just a bum. And that’s my view from the bleachers.
The Bleacher Bum won Competitive Drinking World Championships in 2003, 2005, and 2007. He can be contacted via jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 17-24, 2011.
