The Life: Hurling

It is generally considered ill-advised to bet on a sport about which you know nothing, have never watched, do not know any of the rules or what marks out a good team from bad, nor even what separates a master of the game from a total waster.

So, naturally, when InsideEdge was invited by Paddy Power (the man who is, coincidentally, the eponymous firm’s PR) to dip a toe in the Liffey water and explore the mysteries of hurling, that’s exactly what we did. Lumped on, big style. Larged it. Then got drunk on Guinness and bet more. Well, given the market of total bets on Gaelic sports is in the tens of millions each year, it seemed only fair that, when in Rome… break every rule in the book.

Hurling, for those who’ve never seen it, is a cross between hockey, football and lacrosse with some catching which would make keen cricketers jealous. Add to this blend of watchable sports a fair dollop of psychotic violence, a good measure of high skill and loads of scoring, and you can begin to get the picture. That’s pretty much where the similarity to any other sport familiar to a non-Hibernian ends.

Hurl school

It’s played in a 6-2-6 formation (well 3-3-2-3-3 actually, but that’s more like a poker hand) with a goalie who, it’s universally acknowledged, is the real nutter of the sport. Most of the other players wear headgear not dissimilar to a cricket helmet. Not the keepers. They’re bare-headed when they throw themselves into a scrum of players who’re slashing wildly at the white hockey-sized ball with their hurls – great lumps of ash not unlike a large wooden spoon. You may feel free to judge for yourself, but even the resourceful Mr Power failed to price up IE’s attempts to take out a spread bet on the aggregate number of goalies’ remaining teeth.

The 140x90yd pitch is surrounded by an Old Trafford-like three-decker stadium, Croke Park, with a capacity of 79,500. And even for our low-grade provincial game, the stadium had as many folk as at an average Premiership match. For All-Ireland finals, tickets are harder to acquire than an ashtray in a Dublin boozer. For an amateur sport in which the players are born in the counties they champion and there’s no such thing as a transfer market, this is highly impressive, especially to anyone who has been to the scabby, old Lansdowne Road rugby stadium down the road.

The Irish take their sport seriously, but those ruled with a rod of iron by the Gaelic Athletic Association (hurling and Gaelic football) are taken with undiluted earnestness. In 1902, the GAA (nicknamed Grab-All Association for its ability to rake in the lolly from the sport) passed Rule 27, which prohibited anyone from attending, participating in or promoting any ‘English’ sport (soccer, rugby, cricket), banning transgressors from attending any Gaelic sports.

President and correct?

This must have shocked Dr Douglas Hyde, a famously passionate supporter of Irish culture, in 1938 when he fell foul of the rule by attending an international soccer match. He must have been slightly miffed, given that, as President of Ireland, he pretty much had to be there. But it’s more relaxed today and even Englishmen are welcome in the corporate boxes, especially when they are pissing away wedges of euros on a game they don’t know.

The only other point the uninitiated need to know before we get back to the gambling is that there are two ways to score in hurling. At each end, there’s a goal which looks roughly like a set of rugby posts with a football net under the crossbar. One point is scored for getting the ball, or sliothar, between the posts above the crossbar and three for a ‘goal’ in the net. Thus a typical score would be expressed as: Limerick 2-15 (21pts) Cork 1-19 (22pts).

There is a system of penalties, too, and – surprisingly for a game which is so obviously hazardous – one gets two official warnings before an early bath. Other than that, the idea is to whack the ball, from the ground or in the air, to a team-mate who catches it and can hold it for no more than four steps before he has to hit it back into his hand before he must pass. Otherwise he must dribble or ‘solo’, which involves – almost impossibly – weaving your way through numerous opponents while bouncing the ball on your stick.

Civilised barbarity

On the afternoon of IE’s visit there are two games – the finals of the Leinster provisionals, with the two winners playing off to get to the All-Ireland finals in September alongside those from the other divisions. Put four sets of supporters in a British stadium, add limitless alcohol, and within minutes the resources of St John Ambulance would be stretched to capacity, dishing out the stitches faster than Marks and Sparks sells girls’ knickers. Do the same at Croke Park, even though one end of the ground is named Hill 16 after a big fight with the English army during the rioting in 1916, and there is little other expression than polite clapping.

Leinster is one of the more powerful counties in the hurling game, partly because it contains the mighty Kilkenny, one of the finest hurling towns in Ireland. They’re in the second game and so our gambling starting point, via a promising little 10/1 shot gee-gee at Doncaster, is the Kilkenny handicap. They’re playing a side called Offaly, who don’t sound, er, offaly good, but the handicap is +10 and the win is evens. Not good.

Looking for the double, I lump on the first game in which Laois (pronounced Leesh) might well give Wexford (Man Utd sort of strength) a run for their money, and at 5/1 with a handicap of +5 it’s worth another €20. Add the double for another €10, with my €20 on the Kilkenny handicap – Paddy manages to get +9 – and we’re away.

Under a glorious blue sky and periodic cheering the game proceeds to a poetic soundtrack of the thwack of ash on cranium. Within moments, one of Laois’s blue-shirted bees is buzzing his way across the pitch – soloing it cross-field before becoming boxed in. With a deft movement, he’s belted the ball almost 60 yards upfield, where it’s caught effortlessly by a team-mate who deftly cracks in a goal from a few yards out. Our bets are looking good as Laois lead 1-3 (6) to 0-2 (2).

But the gathering excitement doesn’t last long when the Wexford army hits a purple patch of form, shelling over single pointers from long range almost at every turn. The game ends Laois 1-10 with Wexford trotting home 0-24. That means our doubles are down and, with Management failing to take the tape over at Doncaster, the bookies are happy. In the break between matches, we dambust another couple of Guinnesses and consider there’s only one rule of gambling left to break. Chase those losses.

So that, by the time the Cats, as Kilkenny are known, have come out on to the field to join an impressively up-fer-it looking Offaly, I have 120 on the Kilkenny handicap. Offaly look good. I reach for the black liquid desensitiser and try to make sense of the suspiciously cheerful red-faced ex-player sitting next to me. It’s impossible. He’s as pissed as a tramp on a guided tour of a sherry factory and has teeth like a vandalised graveyard. I sup my brew and concentrate on the game.

And what a game. The sliothar flies all about, the tackles come flying in and the ball is away again – the length of the pitch – and within moments Kilkenny are imposing their might upon an increasingly forlorn Offaly. You don’t have to know anything about a game to know what a drubbing looks like. Kilkenny are awesome, throwing the ball about like it’s a Malteser. The third goal goes in after only 16 minutes as Ritchie Power takes a 60yd ball, scythes his way through the defence and cracks a shot across the keeper, who vainly attempts to deploy his naked skull to keep the ball out.

At half-time our handicap appears to be in the bag with an 11-point margin already on the board. We try to bet in-running as Paddy has heard there’s an offer of +17. He rings around and oddly no one will take his money. ‘He never seems to realise,’ says colleague Ken Robertson, ‘that he might be better off using another name when he tries to place a bet with another bookie.’

Scary Carey

In the end we must be satisfied as Kilkenny win 6-28 (46) to Offaly’s 0-15 with our evens wins. When the last goal is scored by the legendary DJ Carey – the equivalent, it seems, of Muhammad Ali to fans of the hurl – there’s no spirit left in the Offaly side. It’s the worst gubbing dished out to any team since 1963; the equivalent in soccer terms, says Paddy Power’s GAA market-maker Eoin George, of winning about 12-1.

‘Horrid.’ He winces. ‘I hope they don’t get too upset.’ Bless him, his book is well balanced. I muse in some triumph that, having broken every rule in the gambling book of wisdom, I’m €40 up. The trick to betting on hurling, he intimates, is to get the right handicaps on the four or five very good teams. ‘But hurling is very hard to price up because it’s still very much an amateur sport and you never know – the entire team might have spent all night in the pub.’

So, punters, betting on hurling is a lot of fun and there’s plenty of action. But before you break out the Amex, find out where the players drink…