The sporting highlight of the trip to Ireland was a unique doubleheader at Croke Park, the largest venue in the nation. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) organizes several sports at various levels, with hurling and Gaelic football the most popular. On this day, there would be intercounty matches in both, with Dublin hosting Wexford in hurling and Kerry in football. Tickets were a mere €20 and I bought one online to secure a spot close to the pitch.
I arrived when gates opened at 4, an hour before the first event was to start. This gave me time to visit the GAA Museum, which is just inside the entrance to the Cusack stands. Of course, my ticket was for the Hogan stand on the opposite side, so I could not enter here for some odd reason. Instead, I had to walk around the outside of the stadium, enter via the correct turnstile, and then walk back to the museum. In front of it is a statue of Michael Cusack, who founded the GAA and for whom the stand is named.
Next to the entrance of the museum is a Club Wall that has crests from every club in the country. Ireland only has about 5.5 million people but it seems like the vast majority follow at least one of the sports the GAA administers.
There are several trophies and other memorabilia in the museum, which takes about 30 minutes to see. It also has a Hall of Fame spanning all the sports, though these players do not get much recognition outside the country. Admission is usually €10 but was free with the match ticket. For those interested, the stadium does provide tours, one of which takes you to the top of the roof from where you can enjoy some excellent views of Dublin.
With that done, I entered the stadium itself, walking up the stairs to the main concourse. This was a sports ground that opened in 1884, though obviously it has undergone many renovations in the 140 years since. There has been a lot of history here, including the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1920 that left 15 dead, including Tipperary player Michael Hogan, for whom the Hogan stand is named. The ground itself was renamed Croke Park in 1913, in honour of Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the GAA's first patrons.
The current structure was constructed in phases over 14 years, thus allowing the stadium to remain open at all times. Capacity is now 82,300 and this regularly sells out for high-profile events. This particular doubleheader was not one of those events, with attendance at 25,027 and most of the upper deck unavailable for purchase.
The far end is a terrace where there is only standing available. This is not used when international soccer matches are played here as FIFA requires stadiums to be all-seaters.
Meanwhile, the lower deck seats are divided into two colours: grey and blue, which are the colours of the Dublin GAA clubs, as you can see below. The GAA uses Irish as you would expect and Áth Cliath is Dublin while Loch Garman is Wexford and not a new GPS product.
Along the concourse are photos of members of the Team of the Millenium, which combines players from both hurling and football. All of these players are also in the Hall of Fame in the museum.
You can walk from one end of the concourse all around the seated area to the other, passing by dozens of concessions offering sandwiches and other hot food, as well as beer and soda. All are reasonably priced for a stadium and the sandwiches are quite good for something preheated.
There are two large scoreboards, both of which are visible in the photo below. They show the live action and replays and are quite useful as the field here is much larger than a typical football pitch, measuring 145x88 meters. When you are at one end of the pitch and the play is at the other end, the scoreboard is often the better option to see the action.
I walked up the ramp to the upper deck, one side of which was open. You really get a sense of the size of the pitch from up here; it is bigger than any sporting venue I have seen before.
Croke Park has hosted several international games as well, most recently the Vikings and Steelers played a regular season game here in September 2025. Concerts are also held here every spring and summer with big names like AC/DC, Coldplay, and Oasis headlining recently.
I'm not going to recap the games in any detail. I had seen hurling before when the GAA brought four clubs to New York back in 2016, but that was at Citi Field, a much smaller venue. A brief recap of the basic rules: there are two 35-minute halves during which players can hit the ball with their hurley (much like a baseball swing) or pass with their hand, trying to score by hitting the ball through the goal posts above the net (1 point) or into a net guarded by a keeper for a goal (3 points). Scores are displayed as G-O (T) where G is the three-point goal, O is the one-point over and T is the total. Interestingly, GOT is also Game of Thrones, much of which was filmed in Northern Ireland.
Playing on a normal ground, the teams hit the ball back and forth and scored at least a point on nearly every possession it seemed. As the ball can easily be launched over 100 meters, the game is really back-and forth. Wexford was up by a point late and had a chance to clinch but an attempt at an over sailed wide and Dublin came back down and succeeded in their attempt to end the match in a draw, with Dublin scoring 4-19 (31) to Wexford's 3-22 (31). That's 38 scores total in 70 minutes, which seems a bit much to me. Afterwards, the players engaged in some pushing and shoving but they were quickly escorted off the field as there was a football match to get started.
The rules for Gaelic football are quite similar to hurling except of course, there is no hurley. Players kick the ball to themselves, pass with an open hand, and again try to score into or over the net with the same point system applying.
Naturally, play is much slower here, and points more at a premium. Visiting Kerry took the lead in the middle of the first half and never looked back. Their only goal happened right in front of me and you can see the ball in the net below.
The final was 1-16 (19) to 1-10 (13). That's 28 scores in 70 minutes, still more than I expected but these guys are very good at long kicks between the uprights.
Both games did not have any television breaks or timeouts, so the entire evening was over in about 3.5 hours. With extra time, there were 145 minutes of game action in 210 total minutes, with 30 minutes of halftime and 30 minutes between the two matches. In other words, just 5 minutes of 'wasted' time. Consider that a college football game of 60 minutes often takes longer than 3.5 hours and you wonder how it can be so successful.
Notes
Normally, I count venues once per sport, but it would be tough to count this twice on a single ticket. So I had to amend my rules and this was venue 1,199 lifetime. Thankfully, my flight home was delayed by a day, so I got to enjoy venue 1,200 in Ireland too, but that will be detailed in the next post.
Best,
Sean
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