Rex Features
To its disciples, hurling is as much a sacred cultural jewel as it is a sport, the finals are epics which unveil or confirm the nation's sporting heroes. It's a fusion of legend and history - from mythology when the boy hero Setanta faced two teams on his own and won, to the modern game developed in the 1880s by the Gaelic Athletic Association to help rally Ireland's youth in the drive for independence a century ago.
Trying to describe hurling in words is a bit like attempting to explain a performance at the Bolshoi Theatre to someone who's never seen ballet, but I'll try. Fifteen men on each side lash a small cork and leather ball, or sliotar, distances of up to 100m with ash sticks, on a pitch a bit bigger than a soccer or rugby field.
The ball can fly at speeds of more than 150km/h in what the Irish proclaim is the fastest team field sport in the world. Games are high-scoring: a point is awarded for hitting the ball between two goalposts with three points for a goal - scored under a crossbar into a net between the posts.
The ball can be caught in the hand but can only be lifted from the ground with the stick - an art in itself. Carrying the ball any distance means you must balance it on the end of the stick while sprinting - an astonishing skill on its own but more so with rivals tearing after you in hot pursuit.Sticks clatter and break in battle - "the clash of the ash" as it's called, greeted by roars from the stands. But those gifted with the skills to play carry the flame of the sport's code of honour - "using the timber" as they say, on an opponent, renders you an outcast, and serious injuries are rare.
While it's a tough sport, it's embodied by a grace and elegance in the execution of mesmerising and instinctive skills learned from childhood. Driven by fierce local rivalries, hurling is rooted in certain parts of Ireland - though not all - but the dazzling wizardry of its players is a source of great national pride.
A trip through Kilkenny, a county still defined by its heritage as a Norman stronghold, will tell you why they've won more finals than anyone else.
Take a drive through its villages and towns in late afternoon, and you'll see streets filled with children with hurling sticks - some balancing the ball in classic hurler pose as they run home from school. The sport defines the only county in Ireland which refuses to field a football team. "Calling someone a footballer is the worst thing you could say to a Kilkenny man," a local woman tells me, disgust etched on her face.
A friend who was a student teacher along with Kilkenny's team manager, Brian Cody, said his hurling stick was like an extension of his arm, the future All-Ireland winner rarely without it, refining his ball-skills in spare moments - just as others play with mobile phones today. With an appearance not unlike Vladimir Putin's - except taller and with a steelier and more scary stare - he's become the sport's most successful manager of all time, ruling his players with military discipline.
Those who might dare to enjoy a beer during the season, rumour has it, must travel afar to drink in secret - their anonymity in different counties their insulation from the glaring gaze of Cody and the retired schoolteacher's red pen.
A quick guide to hurling
- Played with teams of 15 on a pitch that can be up to 145m long and 90m wide
- Goalposts are similar to those used on a rugby pitch, but have a lower crossbar
- Players may strike the ball on the ground or in the air; they may also pick up the ball (sliotar) with their stick (hurley)
- Players may also carry the ball in their hand for not more than four steps, after which they may bounce the ball on the hurley and catch it again (but not more than twice)
- To score, the ball needs to be put over the crossbar for a point, or below the crossbar for a goal (three points)
Source: Gaelic Athletic Association
Kilkenny's dominance means most of Ireland will probably be cheering on Galway, the sport's great underdogs and romantics. They've won before too, but to their fans they're hurling's great heartbreakers, beaten in finals they should have won, sinking in glorious defeats in swashbuckling style rather than basking in workmanlike victory.
While Kilkenny play with the confidence, history and solidity of the Norman castles which pepper their country, the hurling of Galway is like its wild untamed Atlantic fringes and mountains, the grace of her hurlers an echo perhaps of the county's richness in Irish music and language or the Connemara landscapes beloved of Ireland's greatest artists like Jack B Yeats.
All the players this weekend are amateurs - and will become folk heroes for life, their names chiselled into the eternal legend of Irish hurling history.
As the sporting pilgrims converge on Dublin, heroes of hurling of days gone by will hold court in bars full of sporting chatter, revered like retired generals by those who've never seen war, recounting the rivalries and battles of old which have forged into the lifelong friendship and respect which defines the hurling family.
The late great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said that football was much more important than a matter of life and death. It's clear he'd never seen a hurling match.
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