Sports question for residents and citizens of Ireland?

Question

Does Ireland have a national sport?

How do these sports compare in terms of overall popularity/participation Football,Rugby, Gaelic Football, and Hurling?

Just on a personal note the yahoo category system is lousy I wanted to put this ? in three catagories and I could only choose one.

I forgot Handball-I found out through research it was the Irish emigrants who introduced this game to the USA.

The yahoo category system is lousy I wanted to put this ? in three categories, but chose Rugby hoping it would get the best response.

Answer 1

The official national sports are the GAA games (gaelic football, hurling/camogie and handball). For years there was a Ban which prevented anyone who played these games (basically the whole country) from participating in "foreign" sports, like rubgy, cricket and soccer. Thankfully that was lifted in the 1970's. The All-Ireland Finals are held each year in September in Croke Park and attract about 80,000 or so. Kerry could be said to be the strongest county in football, while Kilkenny dominate the hurling. A few counties have strong teams in both games, like Cork or Galway.

Gaelic games are still very popular in ireland, but in general more so in the countryside than in large towns or cities.

Rugby is fast becoming one of the most popular sports, as ireland have a great team. It has a large following, and there are many prominent rugby clubs throught the country, but Dublin in particular probably has the biggest. Rugby League is very popular too, as Munster recent won the Heineken Cup, and Leinster have a decent team as well!

Soccer is very popular, and most play it, although the team has been doin c**p recently (BRING BACK JACK!!!) Most towns have soccer clubs and there are soccer camps and so on in summer which a lot attend.

Answer 2

Hey i am an irish sports fan, I will attempt to answer your questions.

Firstly Ireland has no offical national sport, but Hurling is widely regarded as the the national sport because of its age old taditions and the fact that it is a game unique to Ireland.

Gaelic Football definetely has the greatest participation levels, there is a gaelic football club in almost every parish in the country.( all 32 counties which the possible exception of KIlkenny which is very much a hurling only county.)

Hurling is not as popular, despite its image as Irelands National sport, it is played seriously in only 8 or nine counties.

In these counties hurling is generally more popular than football. Most other counties have a few clubs, Down for example probably in the top 12 counties in Ireland have only 3 clubs, on the other hand they have 20 or 30 football clubs.

Soccer is quite popular among the younger generation, Just like the rest of the world the English Premiership is followd religously. However outside the cities there is not much oppurtunity for youngsters to play the game. Interestingly at adult level there is a lot more soccer and I would say there are more adults playing soccer than hurling, but at a much lower level (i.e something to run of the effects of the pub the night before)

Rugby is the new sport in Ireland its popularity has exploded in recent times due to our sucess, clubs are literraly springing up over night. Traditionally rugby was played only in a few select areas, the posher parts of Dublin, cork and Belfast and also interestingly all over limerick. But as I said participation and interest has rocketed in recent years but it probably is still behind the other 3 sports.

Of course Cicket is the new thing!!

Since Ireland beat pakistan it has been all over the media, before that you would not know Ireland played cricket!

If we beat England next week , it won't be far off becoming the national sport!

Handball is a very marginal sport, there are very few handball alleys, im my county Clare which is traditonally one of the strongest handball counties there are only about 4 alleys. However each of these have strong clubs, and we have about 3 world champions in clare now.  

Hope this was some help

if you scroll down the page this link has a map showing which counties concentrate on each sport, some of the information is debateable, for example Carlow are hardly a hurling powerhouse but it gives you the general idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_Athl...