Camán everybody: Bringing hurling to the Oval Office

WHEN Barack Obama stood on the front lawn of Áras an hUachtarán on Monday morning, holding a hurley in his golfer’s grip and swinging it from the elbows like he was warming up in a batting cage, we all knew how he had come to be there.

We’ve all read the stories of his young life in Hawaii and Indonesia. We learned of his nascent political career on the spit-and-sawdust Chicago shop floor. We saw him win an election and take an oath and duck through the door of Marine One on to the Phoenix Park grass.

On Monday morning, he smiled as he took the unfamiliar stick in his hands, stepped towards the already-charmed press pack and half-joked of ‘paddling’ members of the United States Congress with this Irish ash, if they ever stepped out of line again.