Gaelic
football (Irish: Peil or Caid ), commonly referred to
as "football", "Gaelic" or "GAA
('gah')", is a form of football played mainly in
Ireland. It is the most popular sport in Ireland.
Gaelic
football is played by teams of 15 on a rectangular grass
pitch with H-shaped goals at each end. The primary object
is to score by pushing the ball through the goals. The
team with the highest score at the end of the match wins.
Players
advance the ball up the field with a combination of carrying,
soloing (dropping and then toe-kicking the ball upward
into the hands), kicking, and hand-passing to their team-mates.
Gaelic
football is one of four Gaelic Games run by the Gaelic
Athletic Association, the largest and most popular organization
in Ireland. It has strict rules on player amateurism and
the pinnacle of the sport is the inter county All-Ireland
Football Final. The game is believed to have descended
from ancient Irish football known as caid which date back
to 1537, although the modern game took shape in 1887.
History
The first mention of football in Ireland is found in 1308, where John McCrocan,
a spectator at a football game at Newcastle, County Dublin was charged with accidentally
stabbing a player named William Bernard.
The Statute of Galway of 1527 allowed the playing
of "foot balle" and archery but banned "'hokie'
[sic] — the hurling of a little ball with sticks or staves" as
well as other sports. However even "foot-ball" was banned
by the severe Sunday Observance Act of 1695, which imposed a fine
of one shilling (a substantial amount at the time) 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.
By the early 19th century, various football games,
referred to collectively as caid, were popular in 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 (after mass) and was won by taking the ball across
a parish boundary. "Wrestling", "holding" opposing
players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Rugby and Association
football started to become popular in Ireland. Trinity College,
Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby, and the rules of the English
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.
Irish forms of football were not formally arranged
into an organised playing code by the Gaelic Athletic Association
(GAA) until 1887. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports,
such as hurling and to reject "foreign" (particularly
English) imports. The first Gaelic football rules, showing the
influence of hurling and a desire to differentiate from association
football — for example in their lack of an offside rule — were
drawn up by Maurice Davin and published in the United Ireland magazine
on February 7, 1887.
The
Relationship Between Gaelic Football and Australian Rules Football
While it is clear even to casual observers that Gaelic football is similar to
Australian rules football, the exact relationship is unclear, or even controversial.
The Australian historian B. W. O'Dwyer suggests that there is circumstantial
evidence that traditional Irish games influenced the founders of Australian rules.[1]
O'Dwyer argued that both Gaelic football and Australian rules are distinct from
rugby in elements such as the lack of a limitation on ball or player movement — the
absence of an offside rule. It has not been shown that other common elements
of Gaelic and Australian rules, such as the need to bounce or solo (toe-kick)
the ball while running and punching the ball (hand-passing) rather than throwing
it were also elements of caid. For example, the requirement that players bounce
the ball while running was not in the first Melbourne rules (1859). There is
no conclusive evidence to prove a direct influence of caid on Australian rules
football.
Other unofficial accounts suggest that a relationship
may have originated from the opposite direction: Archbishop Thomas
Croke, one of the founders of the GAA, lived in New Zealand in
the early 1880s and had the opportunity to witness Victorian Rules
played there. Like Australian rules, the Irish football games of
the 1880s allowed players to grab or push each other. If Croke
was influenced by Australasian rules, the two games were soon developing
and diverging in isolation from each other.
In 1967, following approaches from Australian rules
football authorities, there was a series of games between an Irish
representative team and an Australian team, under various sets
of hybrid, compromise rules. In 1984, the first official representative
matches of International rules football were played, and the Ireland
international rules football team now plays the Australian team
annually each October.
Since the 1980s, some Gaelic players, such as Jim
Stynes and Tadhg Kennelly, have been recruited by AFL clubs and
have had lengthy careers with them.
The
All Ireland Final
The final game of the inter-county series is the All Ireland Final which takes
place on the fourth Sunday of September in Croke Park. Before 1999, the final
was held on the third Sunday of the month, but this custom was changed due to
an overloaded schedule of matches.
Over the four Sundays of September, All Ireland Finals
in men's football, women's football, hurling and camogie take place
in Croke Park, the national stadium of the GAA, with the men's
decider regularly attracting crowds of over 80,000. Guests who
attend include Uachtarán na hÉireann, An Taoiseach
and leading dignitaries.
Two levels of the game are played at each All Ireland,
the Senior team and the Minor team (consisting of younger players,
under the age of 18, who have played their own Minor All-Ireland
competition.)
The winning senior county football team receives
the Sam Maguire cup. The most successful county in the history
of Gaelic football is Kerry, with 34 All-Ireland wins, followed
by Dublin, with 22 wins.
In 2006, Kerry took the Men's Senior Football Championship,
defeating Mayo in the final, with Roscommon winning the Minor equivalent.
The
Ball
The game is played with a round leather football, similar to a soccer ball, but
heavier, and with horizontal stitching rather than the hexagon and pentagon panels
often used on soccer balls, and similar in appearance to a standard volleyball.
It may be kicked or hand passed. A hand pass is not a punch but rather a strike
of the ball with the side of the closed fist, using the knuckle of the thumb.
The ball, made by Irish company O'Neills, being used for a Gaelic football
matcheThe following are considered technical fouls ("fouling the ball"):
Picking the ball
directly off the ground
Throwing the ball
Going four steps without releasing, bouncing or soloing the ball. (Soloing
involves kicking the ball into one's own hands)
Bouncing the ball twice in a row
Hand passing the ball over an opponent's head, then running around him to catch
it
Hand passing a goal (the ball may be punched into the goal from up in the air,
however)
Square ball, an often controversial rule: If, at the moment the ball enters
the small rectangle, there is already an attacking player inside the small
rectangle, then a free out is awarded.
Changing hands: Taking the ball from your right-hand to left or vice-versa.
Officials
A Gaelic football match is watched over by eight officials:
The referee
Two linesmen
Sideline official/Standby linesman (inter-county games only)
Four umpires (two at each end)
The referee is responsible for starting and stopping play, recording the score,
awarding frees and booking and sending off players.
Linesmen are
responsible for indicating the direction of line balls to the referee.
The fourth official
is responsible for overseeing substitutions, and also indicating
the amount of stoppage time (signalled to him by the referee) and
the players substituted using an electronic board.
The umpires are
responsible for judging the scoring. They indicate to the referee
whether a shot was: wide (spread both arms), a 45m kick (raise
one arm), a point (wave white flag), square ball (cross arms) or
a goal (wave green flag).
All officials
are also required to indicate to the referee, foul play or other
misdemeanour's he may have missed, but unfortunately this is a
rare occurrence. The referee can over-rule any decision by a linesman
or umpire.
Dissatisfaction
with officials is common in Gaelic football. Referees are often
criticised for leniency and inconsistency (particularly with regard
to the "square ball" rule, sending players off, and dissent),
not seeing fouls, and playing an inordinate amount of stoppage
time at the end of games (said to be hoping the losing team gets
a draw). A common (but untrue) urban legend refers to a referee
who was locked in the boot of a car after a Wicklow club game by
unimpressed players. A macho attitude, which is similar to that
which prevails in Australian rules football, does nothing to enhance
the image of the game which strives to attract young people in
preference to soccer and rugby where discipline is more rigidly
applied.
Gaelic football. (2007, January 7). In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:33, January 9, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gaelic_football&oldid=99094583
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