Gaelic football

File:Gaelicfootball.jpg

GAA teams Offaly and Louth in action

Gaelic football (Irish: peil ghaelach), commonly referred to as "football", "Gaelic" or "gah", is a form of football played mainly in Ireland. Teams of 15 players kick or punch a round ball toward goals at either end of a grass pitch. Gaelic football is one of four Gaelic sports run by the Gaelic Athletic Association also called the 'GAA'.

General description

At first glance Gaelic Football resembles a combination of soccer and rugby, and is similar to Australian rules football. Players advance the ball up the field with a combination of carrying, kicking, and hand-passing to their team-mates. Points are scored by striking the ball either above or below the horizontal bar of the H-shaped goalposts (see scoring).

Fans enjoy the high speed and frequent scoring, the many different ways to deliver the ball, and the unpredictable nature of the game.

Rules

Playing field

The pitch is of grass and rectangular, stretching 130–145 metres long and 80–90 metres wide. There are H-shaped goalposts at each end with a net on the bottom section. The same pitch is used for hurling; the GAA, which organises both sports, decided this to facilitate dual usage. Lines are marked at distances of 13m, 20m and 45m from each end-line. Shorter pitches and smaller goals are used by under-13s and younger.

Teams

Teams consist of fifteen players (a goalkeeper, two corner backs, a full back, three half backs, two midfielders, three half forwards, two corner forwards and a full forward) plus up to fifteen substitutes, of which five may be used. Each player is numbered 1–15, starting with the goalkeeper, who must wear a different coloured jersey.

The ball

The game is played with a round leather ball, 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 handpassed. A handpass 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'Neill's is used for all official Gaelic football matches

The 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
• Handpassing the ball over an opponent's head, then running around him to catch it
• Handpassing a goal (the ball may be punched into the goal from up in the air, though)
• 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.

Scoring

If the ball goes over the crossbar, a point is scored and a white flag is raised by an umpire. If the ball goes below the crossbar, a goal, worth three points, is scored, and a green flag is raised by an umpire. The goal is guarded by a goalkeeper. Scores are recorded in the format {goal total}-{point total}. For example, the 1991 All-Ireland semi-final finished: Meath 0-15 Roscommon 1-11. Thus Meath won "fifteen points to one-eleven" (1-11 being worth 14 points).

Tackling

The level of tackling allowed is more robust than in soccer, but less than rugby. The tackling rule has been criticised for being too vague.

Shoulder-charging and wresting or slapping the ball out of an opponent's hand is permitted, but the following are all fouls:

• using both hands to tackle
• pushing an opponent
• deliberately striking an opponent
• pulling an opponent's jersey
• blocking a shot with the foot
• sliding tackles
• touching the goalkeeper when he is inside the small rectangle

Restarting play

• The match begins with the referee throwing the ball up between the four midfielders.
• After an attacker has put the ball wide of the goals, the goalkeeper may take a kickout from the ground at the edge of the small square. All players must be beyond the 20m line.
• After an attacker has scored, the goalkeeper may take a kickout from the ground from the 20m line. All players must be beyond the 20m line and outside the semicircle.
• After a defender has put the ball wide of the goals, an attacker may take a "45" from the ground on the 45m line level with where the ball went wide.
• After a player has put the ball over the sideline, the other team may take a sideline kick at the point where the ball left the pitch. It may be kicked from the ground or the hands.
• After a player has committed a foul, the other team may take a free kick at the point where the foul was committed. It may be kicked from the ground or the hands.
• After a defender has committed a foul inside the large rectangle, the other team may take a penalty kick from the ground from the centre of the 13m line. Only the goalkeeper may guard the goals.
• If many players are struggling for the ball and it is not clear who was fouled first, the referee may choose to throw the ball up between two opposing players.

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 misdemeanours 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.

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.

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. Australian rules was devised in Melbourne, in the Colony of Victoria, from 1858. Because of the Australian goldrushes, there were many Irishmen in Victoria at the time. The Australian historian B. W. O'Dwyer points out that both games have always been differentiated from rugby football by having no limitation on ball or player movement (in the absence of an offside rule); the need to bounce or toe-kick the ball, known as a solo in Gaelic football, while running; punching the ball (hand-passing) rather than throwing it, and other traditions. As O'Dwyer says:

These are all elements of [older] Irish football [games]. There were several variations of Irish football in existence, normally without the benefit of rulebooks, but the central tradition in Ireland was in the direction of the relatively new game [i.e. rugby]...adapted and shaped within the perimeters of the ancient Irish game of hurling... [These rules] later became embedded in Gaelic football. Their presence in Victorian [i.e. Australian] football may be accounted for in terms of a formative influence being exerted by men familiar with and no doubt playing the Irish game. It is not that they were introduced into the game from that motive [i.e. emulating Irish games]; it was rather a case of particular needs being met...

Other accounts suggest that the 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 "Australasian rules" (as it was once known) being played there. Like Australian rules, the Irish football games of the 1880s allowed players to grab or push each other. However the two games were soon developing and diverging, largely in isolation from each other, and the precise connections between the two games are unclear.

Since 1967, there have been many matches between Australian football and Gaelic football teams, 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.

Gaelic football has become increasingly popular with women since the 1970s.

Football Team of the Millennium

This was a team chosen in 1999 by a panel of GAA past presidents and journalists. The goal was to single out the best ever 15 players who had played the game in their respective positions, since the foundation of the GAA in 1884 up to the Millennium year, 2000. Naturally many of the selections were hotly debated by fans around the country.

	Goalkeeper
	Dan O'Keefe (Kerry)
Right Corner Back	Full Back	Left Corner Back
Enda Colleran (Galway)	Joe Keohane (Kerry)	Seán Flanagan (Mayo)
Right Half Back	Centre Back	Left Half Back
Sean Murphy (Kerry)	J.J. O'Reilly (Cavan)	Martin O'Connell (Meath)
	Midfield
Mick O'Connell (Kerry)		Tommy Murphy (Laois)
Right Half Forward	Centre Forward	Left Half Forward
Pat Spillane (Kerry)	Seán Purcell (Galway)	Seán O'Neill (Down)
Right Corner Forward	Full Forward	Left Corner Forward
Mikey Sheehy (Kerry)	Tommy Langan (Mayo)	Kevin Heffernan (Dublin)

Leagues and team structure

All Gaelic sports are amateur; easing the strictness with which this is interpreted is advocated by the Gaelic Players Association.

The basic unit of each game is organised at the club level, which is usually arranged on a parish basis, with various local clubs playing to win the County Championship at various levels:

• Senior: the better adult clubs
• Intermediate: junior champions compete in this the following season
• Junior: weaker adult clubs, from small communities
• Under-21
• Minor: under-18
• Underage: all ages from under-17 down to under-9

On a national level, the team is organised on the old Irish county system

, producing 34 teams representing the original 32 counties that cover the island of Ireland, plus teams representing the Irish diaspora in London and New York. Splitting Dublin into North and South due to its enormous population has been considered, but is unlikely to happen any time soon. There are also clubs in other parts of the USA, Britain, Asia, Australia, continental Europe and Canada (see ClubGAA link at bottom).

Though Ireland was partitioned into two states in 1920, Gaelic sports (like most cultural organisations and all religions) continue to be organised on an all-island basis.

A team of 15 players plus substitutes is formed from the best players playing at club level.

Nearly all counties play against each other in a knockout tournament known as the All Ireland Championship.

These modified knockout games are organised on the four Irish provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht.

In the past, the best team from each would play one of the others, at a stage known as the All-Ireland semi-finals, with the winning team from each game playing each other in the All-Ireland Final.

A recent re-organisation now provides a 'back door' method of qualifying, with knocked out teams getting another chance to win back into the competition.

County teams also compete in the National Football League, held every spring. The League is nowhere near as prestigious as the All-Ireland, but in recent years attendances have grown and interest, from the public and from players, has grown. This is due in part to the organisation of the league into the above format, the provision of the Division 2 final stages and the relatively new change of starting the league in February rather than November. Live matches are shown on the Irish-language TV station TG4, with highlights shown on RTE2. In 2006, Kerry won the Division 1 title for the 18th time defeating Galway in the final. Louth defeated Donegal to win the Division 2 title.

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 deciders 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 33 All-Ireland wins, followed by Dublin, with 22 wins.

In 2005, Tyrone took the Men's Senior Football Championship, defeating Kerry in the final, with Down winning the Minor equivalent.

See also

• Ladies' Gaelic football
• List of footballers (Gaelic football)
• List of Gaelic football clubs

References

Jack Mahon, 2001, A History of Gaelic Football Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. (ISBN 0-7171-3279-X)

External links

• Rules
• Official GAA website
• Hoganstand Unofficial GAA news site
• Gaelic HQ - Online messageboard
• Unofficial GAA Messageboard
• An Fear Rua - Unofficial GAA site with discussion forum etc.