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A bit of Irish Craic at Na Fianna


I arrived at the pitch at around 7:40pm- the match was 10 minutes underway. The Na Fianna Junior Hurlers were playing Realt Dearg, a team compiled of a bunch of men from the suburbs of Dublin who no longer had clubs large enough to field an adult team. I quickly found an Experience Gaelic Games collegue and friend of mine, Brian, who was keeping score next to the opposing team’s goal. He would have been playing if it wasn’t for a recent injury to his hand. It was my first time witnessing a hurling match and my first experience with a product of the GAA sport structure. While it wasn’t the All-Dublin Hurlers playing in Croke Park, it was still interesting to see a 35 year old man with a beer gut on the same pitch as a 19 year old lad fresh out of secondary school (high school). The Junior hurlers would be the team in Na Fianna that is home to anybody above the age of 18 and not quite good enough for the Senior Hurlers or the Inters. Let's consider it the ‘C’ team. Although in fairness to them, this ‘C’ team still competes at a pretty decent level around Dublin.

The game was a playoff game and unfortunately, Na Fianna lost by a considerable margin: 3-15 to 1-13. The first number is the number of goals, the second, is the number of points. Goals are the shots that go into the net, and are worth three points. The shots that go above the bar and between the goal posts, are worth one. So the final score was 24-16, although nobody in Ireland would deliver a score to a listener in that form.

The final outcome was a bit unexpected because just two weeks prior, Na Fianna had beat a team that had trounced Realt Dearg the game before. After the match, a bunch of kids ran onto the pitch to puck around for a little before the sun set. Pucking around would be a hurler’s version of catch. Hopefully the video below gives you an idea…

Another Experience Gaelic Games trainer, Darragh, was pucking around with a few of the kids he coaches. We began to chat. He had to wait around until half-nine (9:30pm) for a Senior Hurlers meeting. When it got to be that time, me and Darragh made the small walk from the pitch to the bar in the clubhouse, where he then bought me a Guinness. At Na Fianna, the kegs are right under the taps so the cream in the Guinness has just a short ways to travel until it hits the glass. Darragh informed me that any place where the kegs might be far from the taps- is a place where I should not drink Guinness. Along with being employed by Experience Gaelic Games, coaching the top youth team in Na Fianna, playing for the Senior Hurlers, and competively dancing all over the world, Darragh also bartends at one of the top bars in Dublin, McGowan's. It was important that he showed me what a proper Guinness tasted like. He has been very good to me during my time here.

Members of the Senior Hurling team started to trickle in along with members in the club who were coming for some "Thursday night craic." Members of the team ranged from 28 year old plumbers, business men, or teachers, to 19 year old kids. The Senior Hurlers were made up of the best players Na Fianna had to offer. This year, Na Fianna only had one player good enough to make the All-Dublin team. When the men were all together, they vanished into the backroom and I was left to hang with the older croud. I was introduced to some of the band members that would be playing later, along with the chairman of Na Fianna. When I asked “are you here most Thursday’s?” he responded “Oh yea, I am at the club most Thursday nights, except when I am somewhere else.” He smirked a little and we began to laugh. He went on to give me a brief lesson on the Irish Language. He told me that in Irish, there is no definitive translation for the english words of yes and no. So if you ask an Irish person if they had eaten dinner, their response would be “I have," or "I haven’t." As one could imagine, this makes voting pretty comical in Ireland.

At around 10:15pm, the musicians had all shown up. After grabing a pint, they began warming up. One of the female singers beckoned me over to sit the musicians. I had been invited to sit with the cool kids. After a few warm up songs (to the left), the musicians called to an older man sitting across the room to join us. The older man’s name was Eamonn, and he was one of the founders of CLG Na Fianna over 60 years ago. He graced us with a ballad (to the right), and then the woman who brought me over requested that Eamonn sing “Oh Danny Boy” for me. I felt bad at first because I thought “Oh Danny Boy” was a touristy song and that they were catering to me in some way. As it turned out though, Oh Danny Boy is not viewed as a touristy song but rather an incredibly difficult tune to navigate vocaly, and it was a special treat for Eamonn to sing that for me.

Part 1 Part 2

As the night went on, various people took turns sharing songs, with the group intermittently coming together for a song everybody knew. Brian, our man from Kerry, sang a tune about a hunting dog from Cork. Enjoy Brian's rendition of The Armoured Car by Jimmy Crowley to the left and a supplementary video about the song to the right. The kind woman who I sat with would occasionally pull out soung sheets for me so that I attempt to sing along. Every so often, I would be asked if I wanted to share a tune. But put on the spot, I could not think of any songs that I knew all the words to.

At one point, I got up to use the bathroom and noticed that in the other room, forty plus older women of Na Fianna were playing bridge around a bunch of round tables. In the bathroom, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself wondering about the fact that bridge somehow manages to be every old woman’s favorite game- no matter where you are in the world. As the night was wrapping up, the band leader was asked if he had a request he wanted to make. He replied “ooh I hate them all,” with that dry Irish sense of humor that I have come to love. Then, without warning, broke out into the old parlour song Hard Times Come Again No More written by Stephen Taylor. If it had not been for my dad, I wouldn’t have known the song. But alas I did, and I was quite excited as well because I finally got a chance to sing along. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm did not magically turn me into a half-decent singer, so please forgive my sharp, cringe-worthy contributions to the video below. It was 2am at this point, and the Guinness was settling in.

Skip to the time 7:02 in the video to see my dad's version

After Hard Times Come Again No More, a few more songs were shared between the remaining musicians and the night came to close. Thankfully, there is no video footage of the nine minute rendition of American Pie by Don Mclean that I was pressured into singing at 2:45am. As I took the half hour walk back home in the cold-drizzling rain, I was warmed by a feeling coming from inside me. What a wonderful ritual this was. Every Thursday, members of Na Fianna come together to sing and share music, and those who can’t sing, come to listen and be with each other. What’s even more spectacular, is that this ritual is not uniquely reserved to Na Fianna. In Gaelic clubs all over Ireland, this sort of thing is taking place. Walking home in the rain, I began to make a list in my head of songs that I could share the next time I went. Of course, some great song titles came to mind after the night had already come to a close...but next time. There will always be a next time.


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