Celtic Soul: Paul Rouse on Hurling vs. Hockey

Celtic Soul Extra: Jay Baruchel and Eoin O'Callaghan talk hockey and hurling with sports historian Paul Rouse at the Green Street Handball Alley in Dublin, Ireland. Paul lectures at the University College Dublin, with a strong research background in the history of Irish sport and the development of the GAA. Many people believe that hockey's roots lie in the ancient Irish national sport of hurling.
See additional footage from our documentary feature "Celtic Soul" at celticsoul.ca, and check back every Wednesday as we release a new video from Jay and Eoin's #CelticRoadtrip!
Celtic Soul follows Canadian actor and funny man Jay Baruchel on an epic road trip through Canada, Ireland and Scotland with his new friend, well-known Irish soccer journalist Eoin O’Callaghan. It’s a story that spans 200 years of colorful history and that will take the duo eastward from Montreal to Westport, Ireland - where Jay’s ancestors set sail for Canada, like so many others - and finally Glasgow, where Jay will fulfill a lifelong dream: to watch a match at Celtic Park, one of the wildest and most hallowed grounds in world football.
Transcription:
00:00:00
Eoin O’Callaghan: Hurling in Ireland it’s like where did it originate?
Jay Baruchel: How was it born?
00:00:05
Paul Rouse: What we're looking at here is a game which stretches back for as long as we have a historical record in Ireland. So you look at us and the annals that were written in the old Catholic church in the 19th century onwards you look at ancient Irish poetry, ancient Irish law all the way through then extending back over a thousand years and then through the 17 hundreds newspaper reports from around Ireland kind of set out the type of game that was played and it's regularity. It was even played in London during the 17 hundreds, played in Paris, played in New York. It exported wherever Irish people went.
00:00:42
Paul Rouse: So what happened was in the 19th century hurling slipped from being right at the center of Irish culture to the margins and it slipped to the margins because of famine, of course, and because of emigration, and because of cultural change the spread of British sport in Ireland. Don't forget Ireland lost its parliament in the 18 hundreds and you know this argument part of our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the 19th century so the spread of British sports. Cricket and rugby and soccer across Ireland.
00:01:07
Paul Rouse: And what hurling didn't do during these periods was form itself into clubs. All other sports were based now on clubs, and it didn't happen for hurling until the 1880s when Michael Cusick established: first of all a hurling club in 1883 and from that hurling club, he developed the game into the Gaelic Athletic Association.
00:01:23
Jay Baruchel: And to me and we see this beautiful Gaelic sports in Ireland and Scotland, dropped into the food processor of the new world, with lacrosse and everything else, and then you just threw in the harsh Canadian climate into it and then that's like it's a hop skip and jump to hockey, right?
00:01:39
Paul Rouse: I think you should send over your hockey players and see how they get on!
Eoin O’Callaghan: Can we draw a direct line between hurling and hockey or no?
Paul Rouse: Well you know people look for definitive answers on these things and there is no definitive answer to something like this.
00:01:54
Paul Rouse: There were very few sports which have a kind of a big bang moment origin story. So for example, basketball does have a big bang moment.
Jay Baruchel: It’s a Canadian big bang moment as well, Dr. James Naismith!
Paul Rouse: Nothing like a bit of parochialism, right?

[@Lucien234-i2z]

It was actually SHINTY in Scotland that is connected to Hockey in Canada NOT Hurling!!

[@cathalodiubhain5739]

Gaelic soul