Spain won. It was a very exciting game, and I thought Spain thoroughly deserved to win, but I'm not here to analyze soccer games. I thoroughly enjoyed the pregame closing ceremonies, which I also got to enjoy Irish commentary for, a treat I would not have enjoyed in the United States.
Let's be honest with ourselves; everyone enjoys listening to a pair of old Irish guys describing 16 balloon sculptures emblazoned with flag patterns of various countries dancing with each other. Everyone.
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Showing posts with label soccer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soccer. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sports, Shops, and Rain
People in Ireland like sports. A lot. It seems like there is always some form of sports on television and nearly half the people you see on the street are wearing some form of replica jersey, usually either something related to the County Cork GAA or an English Premier League team. Gaelic sports, specifically hurling and football, are huge. They vary in relative popularity depending on the part of Ireland you're in. In East Cork, where Cork City is, hurling is more popular, although football is quite popular as well. In West Cork football enjoys more popularity than hurling, although hurling is still quite popular there. You see a lot of red Cork shirts walking around town.
There always seems to be some sort of sporting event on TV. If no Euro 08 match is on at the time there is always something on, either cricket or rugby or non-European soccer or hurling or Gaelic football. I even saw a bit of of USA v Canada in rugby yesterday. All of this on standard television, with about 10 channels. I'm pretty sure you'd need uber-cable to watch that rugby match in the United States, and here its on their equivalent of NBC. They like their sports here, obviously.
Earlier today I saw the end of a hurling match. Its fascinating to watch. Everyone here claims that its the "fastest game in the world". I'm not quite sure what that means, but the game is very high tempo, although I'm pretty sure its impossible to quantify speed of play and compare across different sports.
Unfortunately, the Irish love of all things sports-related does not seem to extend to tennis. Yesterday I went into town and looked in at least 3 sporting goods stores for tennis balls and returned empty-handed. This could have something to do with the weather. It rains quite often here, making regular tennis training a rather difficult goal.
Speaking of rain, on the way back from town after looking for said tennis balls I got caught in a rather heavy downpour. It rained nearly 2 inches yesterday, and as luck would have it most of that came all at once in the afternoon during my 20 minute walk from the CityCentre Center to my house near UCC.
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There always seems to be some sort of sporting event on TV. If no Euro 08 match is on at the time there is always something on, either cricket or rugby or non-European soccer or hurling or Gaelic football. I even saw a bit of of USA v Canada in rugby yesterday. All of this on standard television, with about 10 channels. I'm pretty sure you'd need uber-cable to watch that rugby match in the United States, and here its on their equivalent of NBC. They like their sports here, obviously.
Earlier today I saw the end of a hurling match. Its fascinating to watch. Everyone here claims that its the "fastest game in the world". I'm not quite sure what that means, but the game is very high tempo, although I'm pretty sure its impossible to quantify speed of play and compare across different sports.
Unfortunately, the Irish love of all things sports-related does not seem to extend to tennis. Yesterday I went into town and looked in at least 3 sporting goods stores for tennis balls and returned empty-handed. This could have something to do with the weather. It rains quite often here, making regular tennis training a rather difficult goal.
Speaking of rain, on the way back from town after looking for said tennis balls I got caught in a rather heavy downpour. It rained nearly 2 inches yesterday, and as luck would have it most of that came all at once in the afternoon during my 20 minute walk from the City
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Saturday, June 21, 2008
Soccer match + Pictures
Cork City FC 5, Cobh Ramblers 0. The match was at Cork City's home stadium, Turner's Cross. It was about a half hour walk from my townhouse. It was quite an experience. Cobh (pronounced cove) is about 20 miles from the City of Cork, making this a derby of sorts. I went with the Irish guy who lives in the townhouse with me. I enjoyed it immensely. Its much much different from watching soccer in America, but mostly in ways that are difficult to explain. Oh, and we got front row seats, which was sorta cool.
That picture is of the 4th goal, which was actually scored by a guy who isn't in the picture. Cork were wearing green, Cobh that sort of maroon.
As we were walking to the match, the closer we got to the stadium the larger and larger the crowds who were joining us became. It was a fascinating and awesome sort of enlarging stream of fans who simply walked to the stadium or parked far away and walked, converging on a single place by walking down ordinary streets. The stadium didn't have a parking lot, so this was the only way for people to get there. There was a pub right next to the gates, and the stadium is surrounded on all 4 sides by streets so that it turns out that all the gates are literally right on the sidewalk. When we got inside we went into the stands and sat in the front row of the Curragh Road End (apparently also known as "The Shed"), nearly directly behind the goal. Off to our left there was a large group of committed supporters waving flags, holding scarves, and standing for most of the match. There was another such group over at the far left corner (from my perspective) in the Donie Forde Stand as well as a bunch of away fans in the far right corner in the Derrynane Road Stand.
vocal Cork fans with flags in the Donie Forde Stand.
Cobh free kick behind which you can see the Donie Forde again.
The fans sang or chanted in some sort of semi-organized way pretty much throughout the game. One of my favorites was about a 5 minute stretch when they yelled in unison "hey!" when any Cork player got the ball and "boo" whenever any Cobh player touched the ball, which became rather amusing after the first 10 or 11 yells or boos. The stadium itself wasn't particularly nice but it did have a sort of character and charm to it that made it a pretty awesome place to watch a match.
Only 15 euro for a ticket and then 3 euro more for a program. Not too bad, overall. As we were walking back from the match it occurred to me that since I'm here in August I might be able to fly over to England and catch an English Premier League match on opening day. That'd be cool.
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That picture is of the 4th goal, which was actually scored by a guy who isn't in the picture. Cork were wearing green, Cobh that sort of maroon.
As we were walking to the match, the closer we got to the stadium the larger and larger the crowds who were joining us became. It was a fascinating and awesome sort of enlarging stream of fans who simply walked to the stadium or parked far away and walked, converging on a single place by walking down ordinary streets. The stadium didn't have a parking lot, so this was the only way for people to get there. There was a pub right next to the gates, and the stadium is surrounded on all 4 sides by streets so that it turns out that all the gates are literally right on the sidewalk. When we got inside we went into the stands and sat in the front row of the Curragh Road End (apparently also known as "The Shed"), nearly directly behind the goal. Off to our left there was a large group of committed supporters waving flags, holding scarves, and standing for most of the match. There was another such group over at the far left corner (from my perspective) in the Donie Forde Stand as well as a bunch of away fans in the far right corner in the Derrynane Road Stand.
vocal Cork fans with flags in the Donie Forde Stand.
Cobh free kick behind which you can see the Donie Forde again.The fans sang or chanted in some sort of semi-organized way pretty much throughout the game. One of my favorites was about a 5 minute stretch when they yelled in unison "hey!" when any Cork player got the ball and "boo" whenever any Cobh player touched the ball, which became rather amusing after the first 10 or 11 yells or boos. The stadium itself wasn't particularly nice but it did have a sort of character and charm to it that made it a pretty awesome place to watch a match.
Only 15 euro for a ticket and then 3 euro more for a program. Not too bad, overall. As we were walking back from the match it occurred to me that since I'm here in August I might be able to fly over to England and catch an English Premier League match on opening day. That'd be cool.
Read more
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