Ciarán Murphy is a lifelong club footballer. Then, aged 42, he joined his dad’s old hurling club in the West Waterford Gaeltacht and spent the summer leaning just how challenging a sport it is to pick up when you haven’t been playing it since childhood. 

Not only does the book focus on his experience of taking up hurling later in life, but Ciarán also explores the history and mystique of the game and why it is only played in half the country. 

In this amusing extract, he recounts his struggle to stay focused on the day of their first game due to a clash with another very important match. 

OUR FIRST GAME in the championship was fixed for Clashmore on 29 June, a Saturday. This also happened to be the day that Galway were playing Dublin in an All-Ireland football quarter-final in Croke Park. The Galway match would be finishing when we were just entering the final quarter of our game. Best just to put it out of my mind completely.

When I retook my seat for the start of the second half, a young woman had sat down on the bench behind me, a few seats over. She had with her a beautiful golden Labrador, and had spent most of the first half walking her around the pitch. She leaned over a couple of minutes into the second half, and said: ‘Ciarán, I’m so sorry. I’m your cousin Patricia – Michael and Ann’s daughter. I haven’t seen you in twenty-five years or more. I really don’t mean to bother you . . . but Galway have just gone two points up on Dublin with about ten minutes left in Croker.’

Holy shit! In a million years, I didn’t think Galway were going to do this. But I was here, in Clashmore, with a job to do (such as it was).

‘Wow, thanks! Maybe I should just focus on this game, though . . . How are you, by the way?’

‘Yeah, no . . . you’re right. I should probably just lea–’

‘Young Murphy, Dublin have it back to one!’ the call came from behind me.

‘No, Dec, that’s old, they’re two up’ – another voice entering the chat.

‘Galway are two up, with six minutes to play.’ That was Patricia’s mother Ann, An Sean Phobal’s number one supporter, perhaps hoping to draw a line under this sort of undue interruption in our enjoyment of the hurling. The détente lasted for about twenty seconds. There were now four different people updating me, none of whom seemed entirely sure what was going on.

‘I have it here on the phone if the 4G will hold up.’

Ah, lads, I might be about to make my championship debut for the club of my forefathers here; I’m trying to focus. And also can we just make sure everyone’s information is up to date? This inaccuracy is killing me . . . or it would be if I were listening to it, which I’m not. I’m focused, I’m ready. I’m a hurler. A HURLER.

Old Parish: Notes on Hurling by Ciarán Murphy is out now. Penguin Penguin

‘Dublin are only one down.’ Ah, fuck!

‘Galway are two up. You’re safe, young Murphy.’

‘Ah, balls, the internet is patchy.’

‘Point Dublin; they’re level.’

‘Ciarán, warm up there.’

‘No, wait, Galway are still up.’

‘Game over, Galway have won.’

Wait . . . what was that in the middle there? Something about . . .

‘Ciarán, get your helmet on . . . and take off that bloody bib will you, for fuck’s sake.’

At the start of the year, Galway beating Dublin in Croke Park in a knock-out football game and me playing a hurling championship game would have both seemed pretty unlikely. And now both of them were happening within seconds of each other.

I could have floated onto the pitch. I played the last ten minutes, and a crankier, more contrary version of myself would have been annoyed when a teammate eschewed the option to pass to me when I was directly in front of goal, instead getting his own shot blocked down from an acute angle. But I didn’t mind.

Afterwards I sat in the car and headed for the Marine, our local pub and one that will be familiar to anyone who’s driven along the main Cork–Waterford road. I couldn’t get a hold of my brother Paul, who had been at Croke Park, but I was able to give Dad a rundown on the Old Parish game, in exchange for a summary of Galway/Dublin.

I wouldn’t categorise my feelings at this moment as jealousy, but I certainly felt like I’d missed out on some thing fairly epic. And I certainly would’ve liked to have had the craic with my Dublin club-mates in Templeogue Synge Street, but hey – you can’t have it all.

I joined my teammates . . . and my cousin Patricia.

‘Eh, I think we’re neighbours in Dublin too, by the way’, she told me. It turned out she and her new husband Tom had bought a house no more than 200 metres from our place in Dublin 8. And two of her siblings, another two second cousins of mine, lived no more than a kilometre from there as well. This world keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Ciarán Murphy is a podcaster with Second Captains and a GAA columnist with the Irish Times. Old Parish: Notes on Hurling is available now.