'Gaelic Football (
Irish: ''Peil'' or ''Caid'' )', commonly referred to as "'football'", or "'Gaelic'" , is a form of
football played mainly in
Ireland. It, along with
Hurling, is the most popular spectator sport in Ireland.
[1]
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 kicking/striking the ball with your hand and getting it through the goals. The team with the highest score at the end of the match wins.
A child participates in a game of gaelic football
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 dates back to 1537, although the modern game took shape in 1887.
Rules
Diagram of a Gaelic football pitch
Playing field
The grass pitch is 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 organizes 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-14s
[2].
Duration
All Gaelic football matches last for 60 minutes, divided into two halves of thirty minutes, with the exception of senior inter-county games which last for 70 minutes (two halves of 35 minutes). Draws are decided by replays or by playing 20 minutes of extra time (two halves of 10 minutes).
Teams
Teams consist of fifteen players (a goalkeeper, two corner backs, a full back, three half backs, two mid fielders, 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.
Positions
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.
thumb
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
★ 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.
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 association football (soccer), but less than
rugby. The tackling rule has been criticised for being too vague.
Shoulder-charging and 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
★ striking an opponent
★ pulling an opponent's jersey
★ blocking a shot with the foot
★ sliding tackles
★ tripping
★ touching the goalkeeper when he is inside the small rectangle
★ wrestling the ball from an opponent's hands
Restarting play
★ a match begins with the referee throwing the ball up between the four mid fielders.
★ After an attacker has put the ball wide of the goals, the goalkeeper may take a 'kick out' 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 'kick out' 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 center 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
urban legend refers to a referee who was locked in the boot of a car after a
Wicklow club game by unimpressed players.
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.
On
Bloody Sunday in 1920, during the
Anglo-Irish War, a football match at
Croke Park was attacked by the
British. 14 people were killed and 65 were injured.
Ladies' Gaelic football has become increasingly popular with women since the
1970s.
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.
[3] 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 Victorian 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 1870s (he was second Bishop of Auckland 1870 - 1874) 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 professional
Australian Football League (AFL) clubs and have had lengthy careers with them.
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.
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
★ 'Under-age': all ages from under-17 down to under-9
On a national level, the team is organised on the old Irish county system,
[4] 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 knock-out tournament known as the ''All Ireland Championship''.
These modified knock-out games are organised on the four Irish provinces of
Ulster,
Munster,
Lenister 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 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.
See also
★
Ladies' Gaelic football
★
List of footballers (Gaelic football)
★
List of Gaelic football clubs
★
Sport in Ireland
References
Jack Mahon, 2001, ''A History of Gaelic Football'' Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. (ISBN 0-7171-3279-X)
Footnotes
1. GAA attendance figures
2. GAA pitch size
3. B. W. O'Dwyer, March 1989, "The Shaping of Victorian Rules Football", ''Victorian Historical Journal'', v.60, no.1.
4. In the nineteenth century, local government units called counties were created. The counties as originally created remain the basic unit of the GAA even though in reality the counties have been rearranged in the twentieth century. Northern Ireland's original six counties are now divided into 26 county units, while the Republic of Ireland 26 counties have since been redrawn, leading to a modern local governmental unit total of 33. The GAA sticks to the original 32 counties (ie, 26 + 6), and today includes representative teams from London and New York.
External links
★
Rules
★
Official GAA website
★
An Fear Rua - The GAA Unplugged! - Greatest GAA site with news, views, fun and chat...
★
Unofficial GAA Messageboard
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