Where hurling is a soul thing

TAKE the GAA out of rural Ireland and you take away the heart and the spirit.

Without the GAA — and I speak as a card-carrying countryman from a dedicated GAA parish — we would be lesser souls.

Take Tullaroan, a tiny crossroads village of under 700 people in north Kilkenny. Anywhere else, it would be nothing, a one-horse town with no blacksmith, but here in Ireland its got an identity, a real and solid identity. Reason? Hurling.