Hurling, like quidditch, owes much to literature

The world of sport, with its seemingly endless capacity to invent and reinvent itself, has demonstrated time and again that there is nothing permanent, nothing resistant to transition.

Over the centuries, the evolution of different forms of organised sport has been moulded by the great forces of history, including migration, networks of trade, urbanisation, industrialisation, imperialism and colonisation, the rise of nationalism, the triumph of capitalism, globalisation, and technological change.

To this list must be added the influence of literature.