Sport In Ireland
In Ireland most sports, including boxing, hockey, rowing, cricket, rugby union, Gaelic football and hurling, are organised in an all-island basis, with a single team representing the whole of Ireland in international competitions. Other sports, such as soccer and netball, have separate organising bodies in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The many sports played and followed in Ireland also include horse racing, show jumping, greyhound racing, basketball, fishing, handball, motor sport, target shooting and tennis.
At the Olympic Games, a person from Northern Ireland can choose to represent either Ireland or Great Britain.
Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland in terms of match attendance, and in 2003 accounted for 34% of total sports attendances at events in the Republic of Ireland, followed by hurling at 23%, soccer at 16% and rugby at 8%, and Initiative's ViewerTrack study measuring 2005 sports audiences showed the sport's highest-profile match, the All-Ireland Football Final, to be the most watched event of the nation's sporting year. Soccer is the most played team sport in Ireland. Swimming, golf, aerobics, cycling, Gaelic football and billiards/snooker are the other sporting activities with the highest levels of playing participation in the Republic of Ireland.
Read more about Sport In Ireland: Gaelic Football, Hurling, Soccer, Rugby Union, Stadia, Media Coverage
Famous quotes containing the words sport and/or ireland:
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland ...”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)