The surprising revival of road bowling, Ireland's ancient sport | Hacker News Reader

The surprising revival of road bowling, Ireland's ancient sport

rte.ie

27 pointsaustinallegro15 comments

The same sport is played in the Netherlands and north-western Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klootschieten

German names are Klootschießen and Boßeln.

This sounds cool! I remember when I came upon HURLING (the sport) late one evening and it was absolutely incredible. A bunch of guys with no helmets running around bouncing a baseball on the end of a short hockey stick, and then slamming that ball across the field.. I thought surely someone was about to get beaned. Incredible sport.

Hurling should be played with helmets. If it's just a group of friends in a park casually passing the sliotar (ball) to each other and taking practice shots then okay, but not if they were playing a proper game.

+1 to helmets. In youth, the very similar sport of lacrosse actually has a higher risk of concussion than football [0].

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10883126/

Any serious hurling game since at least the early nineties is always played with helmets (as a legal requirement, but also just common sense). Sure, you might have a friendly knockaround without them, but not a real match.

You need to wear a helmet with it. Years ago a colleague played in the local team and one weekend took a hurley (the stick with the metal band at the end) to the face and had his jaw broken. Never forgot his helmet again.

It's "hedge petanque". Looks more fun too. Line of sight to the ball is not optimal though.

No disrespect to Ireland at all but this does not look like a real game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyomkya9qG8

It looks like something Michael Scott would have made up. And how do you avoid getting run over?

This is a more accurate depiction of throwing the bowl. It’s a bit more athletic than that guy made it look. https://youtu.be/OwjNenO259Q

There are people ahead who warn/stop cars. It's only really played on quieter country roads.

"this does not look like a real game"...turns off computer and plays beer pong

It makes much more sense to me than golf does.

Sounds lots of fun, but I would not be able to play. Well I probably could but I have always been an extremely slow runner.

Bicycling was different, but running, could never do :)

This looks like it could be bastardized into a fun neighborhood event with some planning.

What a quintessentially Irish thing to do.

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