A New Kind of Football for a Sunday Afternoon

It wasn't quite a Vikings/Packers game but today's tournament of the U-10 kids at the Carrickcruppen Gaelic Football pitch was really fun to watch--especially #14 Tiernan Cromie (pictured at center in picture to left). Tiernan had a couple of goals and helped his team into the final game.

Gaelic football is a bit soccer, a bit rugby and a bit football. The ball is always in motion. A player with the ball can only take three steps with the ball before he or she has to hand pass (knocking the ball to a teammate by bouncing it off your hand similar to an underhand volleyball serve), bounce (which you can only do once or you get called for double dribbling) or toe tap (where the player kicks the ball back to themselves) before having to drop kick the ball forward. The whole time, defenders are trying to take the ball from you and score. A ball into the goal is worth three points and a ball between the uprights is worth one.

Tiernan is the son of Declan Cromie (at left), one of the Irish and Northern Irish visitors to Missoula in 1997. At the matches, Declan was a lot like other fathers watching their kids compete in a sporting event. He's yelling encouragement and instructions at his son. Declan is the father of four boys and two girls. Tiernan is the oldest at 10 years old. Tiernan in't the biggest of fellows playing right full forward. Most of the time his defender was much bigger. But Tiernan is a scrapper. He got himself into the fray and was very good with using his body to keep the defender away.

We'll be meeting again with Declan at work and with his family on Thursday. Tomorrow we head back to Dundalk to speak with Mark Larkin and his family.