Hurling and Rugby Seasons

We were in Ireland last August and the finals were going on. Seemed like every man in Ireland was glued to his TV when the games were on. I'm pretty sure their season goes all summer, you shouldn't have a problem finding a game.

Tom's right. You'll find all kinds of leagues, ages, and skill levels playing all summer. Hurling and Gaelic Football are the big ones. I think Ireland has a national Rugby team, but I only saw ads for it in the airport. We saw a college Gaelic Football game in Roscommon, across from Boyle Abbey. It was a lot of fun, once you got used to the fact that they not only kick, but bounce and run with what's basically a soccer ball. Almost every night on TV they have the highlights of the County vs. County football and hurling matches. I've been in Dublin twice during the finals (hurling, I think) and it was cool to see people wearing their county colors.

PS - The schedules are called "fixtures" - that confused me, too, when I was looking for game schedules! :)

I don't know about Gaelic Games so I'll bow to Tom's experience there but Rugby Union is a winter game, the season runs from Sept. through the winter ending in spring.

Check http://www.irishrugby.ie/ for fixtures.

I checked with my fellow travelers and what we were seeing last August was the finals of Gaelic football & hurling so I guess these two are the summer sports and rugby the winter.

I don't know when the season stops or starts, but I watched a rugby game in late November in Ireland. And to add to the confusion further, this was an international match, not a league game.

No confusion, November is slap-bang in the middle of the Rugby Union season in the Northern Hemisphere, so you'll find full domestic programmes through Ireland, the UK, France and Italy (plus smaller leagues in places like Romania.)

As far as internationals go they tend to be in two groups, Feb.-March where you'll find the 6 Nations championship where the major European teams have a round-robin competition. This weekend is the 3rd of 5 rounds, Ireland are going to play England in about an hours time in a must win game. Ireland are the defending champions but have stuttered this year after being tonked by France last time out.

The second time you'd expect to see international matches are the Autumn when the Southern Hemisphere teams come north to play a series of games rather prosaically referred to as the Autumn Internationals.

If one really wanted to confuse the issue there is a small Rugby League programme in Ireland that runs through the summer but it's not something you'd notice unless you sought it out.

Thank you for all your information. So I guess my next questions is this, if we wanted to see a hurling or rugby event from June 20-27 what would be our best bet? Doesn't have to be in Croke Park or anything I would just liketo see one of the two first hand.