Is it possible Gaelic games could have been lost?

pgj2015

Was just wondering why other Countries dont seem to have many native games, especially in Europe, they all just seem to play soccer, rugby and basketball.

im sure they all had native games but looks like they were left behind in favor or soccer, basketball and rugby.

Iecrawfc

Its an interesting one, definitely Hurling could have been lost only for Cusack and co. codifying it and raising awareness. Cricket was pretty popular in Kilkenny/Tipp and adjacent areas, think it corresponds roughly to hurling strong areas today, it could well have turned out that cricket became the dominant game in certain regions only for hurling's revival.

Gaelic football was part of that movement too, there were instances of players going from playing rugby/soccer to playing Gaelic,not sure how widespread soccer/rugby was compared to Gaelic before the GAA was founded.

Paul Rouse has wrote a few books on this.

pgj2015

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123097134#Comment_123097134

I must have a look for the books.

Thankfully we didn't lose Hurling, what a game.

Do you know did other European countries have their own versions of Football?

breezy1985

Weirdly we kinda have the English to thank for two reasons.

One was that other countries didn't have a reason to rebel against soccer and just took to the British rules of local ball games they were already playing.

And secondly the Victorians were obsessed with codifying and structuring everything which you can see rubbed off on middle class Ireland. Only the French seemed as obsessed with association run structured sport.

The whole Celtic revival was essentially part of a middle and upper class British Victorian trend resulting a sudden glut of historians but learned and amateur.