THE HISTORY OF GAELIC GAMES
Spread betting on Gaelic Games has never been more popular. Barry O’Halloran of the Irish Times said that it is ‘the perfect spread betting vehicle’ due to the high points totals in Gaelic Games. A spread bet on Gaelic Games can add far more excitement and enjoyment to a game than traditional fixed odds. Though they have existed for centuries in Ireland, Gaelic Games were formally arranged into an organised playing code by the GAA in the late nineteenth century.
The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is an amateur sporting organisation founded by Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin in 1884 to preserve and cultivate the national games of Ireland. The Gaelic Athletic Association is focused mainly on Gaelic Football and Hurling the two most popular games in Ireland. Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland, attendance at matches in the senior football championship in the summer can be upwards of 80,000 for some of the more prestigious fixtures.
It is a contact sport that combines the skills of soccer, basketball, and some of the skills of volleyball in a high-scoring game in which players punch or kick the ball over the crossbar for one point, or kick the ball into a net on the bottom for three points. Hurling is a stick-and-ball game that combines many of the skills of field hockey, lacrosse, and baseball but pre-dates all three. It is the oldest of all European field games (hurling is cited in the Brehon laws of the 8th Century) and the fastest.
Players can catch the ball (sliotar) and use a hurley to hit it between the goalposts using the same scoring system as in Gaelic football and on the same size of field. Both teams in a hurling match consist of 15 players, as is the case for Gaelic Football. Today every county in Ireland fields teams which take part in the National Leagues and All-Ireland competitions in both hurling and football. All over the country parishes and towns have their own teams with over 2,500 clubs and over 750,000 members.
The main competitions are the All-Ireland Hurling and Football Championships, a knockout competition played between county teams. Some counties tend to excel at one sport or the other, with counties like Kilkenny, Tipperary, Clare and Limerick traditionally being the strongest clubs in hurling, and Kerry, Meath, Dublin, Galway and the Northern Counties like Tyrone, Armagh and Donegal excelling at Football.
Some counties like Cork have strong teams for both, and are the only county to have done the'double' winning both All-Irelands in the same year in 1990, exactly 100 years after they had previously achieved the exceptional feat in 1890. GAA betting (Gaelic football betting and Hurling betting) is very popular in Ireland, with inter-county rivalry and passionate support often being taken out on the bookie! Traditionally, fixed odds has been the only way to bet on Gaelic Games, but Sporting Index changed all that with the introduction of a wide range of online spread betting markets.
Some of the most popular bets are Total Points, Total Goals, Supremacy and Shirt Numbers. Spread betting on a market like total points from a neutrals point of view can be a great fun spread bet, as you are cheering both sides to score as much as possible!
Gaelic Sports Spread Betting at Sporting Index
