It began in 2010 over a few brainstorming beers in Mulligan’s, an Irish pub five blocks from the Hoboken waterfront. Local resident David Cosgrove was watching the cablecast of a Dublin hurling match. Why not, he wondered, bring hurling to Hoboken?
Perhaps because few Americans have heard of the 3,000-year-old Gaelic sport of hurling, which to the untrained eye seems like a combination of lacrosse, baseball, field hockey and football.
“There’s no game like it,” says Cosgrove. That’s a fair assessment—and all the more reason to give it a go. In May, the Hoboken Guards, the team formed by Cosgrove and his rugged mates, kicks off its fourth season as part of the New York Gaelic Athletic Association.
Hurling is played with two 35-minute halves and no time outs on a 140-yard field or pitch. Fifteen players on each team wield wooden sticks (called hurleys) to scoop, balance and hit a hard leather ball (called a sliotar). The object is to whip the sliotar through a soccer-style net for three points or over a crossbar (like a football goalpost) for one point.
Play is a fast-moving free-for-all, with bumping, tackling, wrestling and kicking. The sliotar in flight can travel up to 100 miles per hour. Sound dangerous? The sport adopted helmets several years ago.
The Hoboken team—sponsored by Mulligan’s—has no home field, but practices at the new 1600 Park in the uptown section and Sinatra Field on the waterfront. This is not the first time hurling has hit the Mile Square. One of the first documented games in America was played in Hoboken on St. Patrick’s Day, 1858. Among the competing teams was the Kenmare Guards, a squad of immigrants from Ireland’s County Kerry.
“The Irish brought their hurleys with them to America,” says Cosgrove. “But it was around the same time the first games of baseball were played [by legend, also in Hoboken], so it didn’t quite catch on as an American pastime.”
Today, Ireland is the only country with a national team. But hurling is enjoying a Stateside resurgence with nearly 100 American clubs, most launched within the last five years. In addition to the Hoboken Guards, New Jersey has a casual team, the Jersey Shore GAA, that plays on the beach, and the Kean University intramural hurling program, which Cosgrove helped launch.
The Guards open this season with a May 17 tournament at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. This spring, the team has been recruiting curious—and brave—first timers for a second local squad.