Am I a dirty player?
At a recent hurling practice with the Baltimore Bohemians, we were running a simple drill: Three players chase down a ball in an effort to gain control and launch it toward the goal. Two of the players were considered teammates. The other was the opposition.
Me, being the big guy that I am, was having trouble keeping up in the mad dash after the sliotar. While a member of the two-person team, I changed up my tactics. Instead of focusing on the ball, I focused on the player opposing me.
Once the ball was loosed by the coach, I’d move in on the player and begin bumping him and slowing him down. I just wanted him off balance and away from my teammate. Even better, when I was able to get in front of him, I would widen myself, slow down and steer him away from the sliotar. This, of course, let my teammate scoop up the ball and fire away.
I was pretty excited about this, because while I’m not fast (or really all that athletic), I certainly could do this. Just jump in front of them and keep them away from the action.
But after running this drill a few times, I was told I wasn’t playing fair. Crap, I thought, there goes my niche.
Apparently, such maneuvers would get a whistle, and the opposing player would probably get a free, the soccer equivalent of a throw-in or penalty kick depending where the incident took place.
The whole strategy comes from my experience with hockey — including being a fan, a video-game player and some actual real-life play. In hockey, this is a penalty called Interference, and defined as “impeding an opponent who doesn’t have the puck.” Though it is penalty, you have to heap a lot of abuse on your opponent to get called on it. It may not be entirely legal, but it certainly isn’t a big no-no.
Talking to the sports editor here at The York Dispatch, this kind of thing isn’t appropriate in most sports, including American football (commonly Pass Interference) and basketball (an illegal Screen).
In each of the three above sports, there are legal methods for helping your teammate without nabbing a penalty. (You can read the rules of hurling in this pdf, by the way.)
I can probably adapt each to work in hurling.
Some ideas:
- Rather than slow down (and thereby slow my opponent), keep running to the ball, but do so in a way that forces him to take an alternate path to the ball.
- Come to a sudden, dead stop and let the opponent run into me. Given my size, he’ll be the one on the ground.
- Get in between my opponent and my teammate, and loudly call for a pass. This could make my opponent think twice about leaving me alone.
So to answer the question in the title of this blog post. No, I’m not intentionally a dirty player, but yes, I will do whatever I can to help my team.
Hopefully I won’t get called on it.
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Photo of the St. Louis Hurling Club by BrettLohmeyer via Flickr.com.
August 16th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
how ya lady im here in chicago just took up the game meself. and the reasons for it was with you, to get back into shape, and two cuz my dad played when he lived in county wexford ireland. and turns out he(my dad) was pretty good, so i trying to be like him took up the sport . now im only 24 years of age and trying my hardest to learn it. i find myself to be a pretty good athlete so it comes pretty easy for me right now. but the real reason for this message is that i wanted to know what club you joined? what level they play at? are you going to nationals(which by the way is in chicago this year its where i live)? how are you taking to it? better striking i hope, but do you think youll stay with it? how well the body is holding up thru the season? well anyways its was cool seeing this story on youtube and to be able to ask questions to the publisher.
August 17th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Thanks so much for your comment!
MY TEAM: I ended up joining the Baltimore, Md., club. You can find them at Baltimoregaa.com.
MY SKILL LEVEL: My level of play is definitely C-team level — and that’s only when there short on players.
CHICAGO: We have a few people going to the nationals from our hurling club, but mostly because they are on our (much better and much more active) gaelic football team.
LEARNING THE GAME: As for how I’m taking to it … I’m a little slow on some of the concepts of play, but getting along. I’m pretty out of shape (weighing in around 280 and about 6-foot-3), but this game is certainly helping me get better.
HITTING THE BALL: I’m much better at striking since those first videos debuted, but I recently switched my prescription glasses, so I was making a total fool out of myself at one recent practice. When I’m on the run, I tend to hit better than standing still. I’m also kind of proud of my frees, which I do pretty well.
WEARING OUT? As for how I’m holding up … well, I’m 37 and was never much of an athlete. That’s taken its toll. You can look through some of my older posts to see some of the problems I’ve had including a calf injury and problems with my elbow. Lately, my feet have really started to hurt, not on the pads, but on top of them. Strange!
And when I am done with my hour-and-a-half long drive home from practice, my legs are all crampy. Yes, this is a sport for people younger than I.
CONTINUING TO PLAY? I hope to stick it out another year or two. This Baltimore club is struggling to find members, so they’ll be happy to take me no matter how bad I suck. Once they get a bigger squad, I might disappear into the sunset.
September 7th, 2010 at 5:21 am
doing what you’re doing is fine if you still make every attempt to go for the ball too.
However, if you do what you are doing while your teammate has the ball, its called a third man tackle. Basically, when you dont have the ball, but aq teammate does, you have no purposde to tackle the mnan, and it’s a free the other way.
Hope this helps