'I joined my dad's old hurling club in Waterford aged 42 and wrote a book about it'

Irish Times columnist Ciaran Murphy has written a book about hurling after joining his dad's old hurling club in Waterford.

Murphy is well-known as a GAA columnist for the Irish Times and a member of The Second Captains podcast. He announced his book on social media recently.

He said: "It’s All-Ireland hurling final week. I’ve loved hurling my whole life. But I’d never played it. Until last year, when I moved to Waterford. I joined my dad’s club, Old Parish. I tried to understand by doing. And I wrote a book. Pre-order it from today."

He joked: "The book is about a 42-year old man humiliating himself for the amusement of his readers. But it's also about why I wasn't given the chance to play the game by the quirks of geography, and why that's the story for hundreds of thousands of Irish people."

Promotional material for the book says Ciaran "spent a summer trying to play hurling with a tiny club in the West Waterford Gaeltacht. Along the way he embarked on a quest to understand the history, geography and mystique of this extraordinary
sport."

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It reads: "Predictably (and at times hilariously), Ciarán finds out just how difficult a sport hurling is to pick up when you’re in your sporting dotage, up against men who’ve played it since childhood."

The book also sees Ciarán explore why hurling is played in only half the country. Promo says: "He investigates the origins of hurling clubs’ antipathy to football and the difficulties of establishing hurling in new areas; he looks into the mysteries of hurley making; and he seeks to understand why, when a hurling legend refers to the sport as ‘the greatest game ever played by any man’, he has to be taken seriously.

"Anyone who has ever watched hurling knows that it is something unique and extraordinary. Old Parish explains why."

You can pre-order the book HERE.