Gaelic football

In the Irish countryside, people were already chasing and kicking a ball between village teams long before anyone thought to write the rules down.

It was the GAA, founded in 1884 to gather and organise Ireland’s national sports, that gave the game the shape we know today: two teams of 15 players face each other on a rectangular grass pitch, with H-shaped posts, in a fast-paced rhythm that weaves together the gesture of football with that of basketball, with an echo of rugby in the physical contact allowed.