Old Parish

Notes on Hurling

Ciarán Murphy

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Paperback

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English

Sandycove
18 September 2025

Autobiography: sport

A journey to the heart of the world's most remarkable field sport- hurling

Hurling is Ireland's national game - a source of fascination and pride, even to people who have never played it. Ciaran Murphy, a lifelong club footballer, used to be one of those people. Then he spent a summer trying to play hurling with a tiny club in the West Waterford Gaeltacht. Along the way he embarked on a quest to understand the history, geography and mystique of this extraordinary sport.

Old Parish is the club of Ciaran's father, a club where relatives of his are still deeply involved, and possibly the only place brave (or stupid) enough to take on a forty-one-year-old newcomer to the game. Predictably (and at times hilariously), Ciaran finds out just how difficult a sport hurling is to pick up when you're in your sporting dotage, up against men who've played it since childhood.

Ciaran also explores why hurling is played in only half the country; he investigates the origins of hurling clubs' antipathy to football and the difficulties of establishing hurling in new areas; he looks into the mysteries of hurley-making; and he seeks to understand why, when a hurling legend refers to the sport as 'the greatest game ever played by any man', he has to be taken seriously.

Anyone who has ever watched hurling knows that it is something unique and extraordinary. Old Parish explains why.

By: Ciarán Murphy
Imprint: Sandycove
Country of Publication: Ireland
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 350g
ISBN: 9781844886890
ISBN 10: 1844886891
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 18 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ciaran Murphy is an acclaimed podcaster (with Second Captains), a trusted columnist (with the Irish Times), and an ageing Gaelic footballer (originally with Milltown in Co. Galway, latterly with Templeogue Synge Street in Dublin). This is the Life was his first book.