"Sport is imposing order on what was chaos." - Anthony Starr

I am sure that Freud would agree with that, but I am not sure that I would classify Hurling as order. Tom and I went to the All-Ireland Championship Match this afternoon at Croke Park between Tipperary and Kilkenny. This game is a HUGE deal here. The father of a good friend of ours, a guy Tom has known for many years, was kind enough to give us the tickets. Our friend's Dad is from Ireland, and was a well known Hurler in his day! Lucky for us, he comes to Ireland from New York to see some matches and is here this weekend.

This is a picture that Tom took of a statue near Grafton Street. Just to give you an idea about how much people love Hurling here!

These are the players lined up before the match. From what I can see, Hurling requires the skills of lacrosse, baseball, soccer, football and maybe golf too. I have never seen fans like this either, everyone was so into it, and the noise level was unlike anything I have heard in a stadium setting or otherwise. It was fantastic to be among them.

The lady in the green coat is The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. It was very exiting to see her. Yeah, she is walking up to her seats that were behind ours!

Here they are preparing for the Liam McCarthy Cup ceremony, which was awarded to Kilkenny for the 4th year in a row. You can see the Stadium Security and the Guards (police) lining up to keep the area clear.

As you can see, they knew what they were in for- the Kilkenny fans stormed the pitch (field). Croke Park holds about 82,000 plus people and it was sold out. I must say that I was feeling an alliance with Tipperary and they really came so close to winning. But it was all very exciting. Thank you Mr. O'S. for this wonderful experience. We had a great time!