Neophyte hurler Christopher Farrell: Be afraid. Be very afraid. Photo by Michele Horon
Fair warning to the Philadelphia Shamrocks hurlers: The Allentown team you’re facing on Sunday, May 18, at Cardinal Dougherty High School may be brand new, but they’re dangerous.
Take just one player for example. That would be Christopher Farrell, at 45, playing a game that, until recently, he’d never heard of. “My first two practices with this team, oh man, I knocked a guy’s shoulder out of its socket and the second practice I hit a guy square in the face with the ball.” Actually, what he did, he told me later in hurling language, was “hit a sliothar (ball) straight into his nose — it was a bloody mess.”
And the guy he hit is the only Irish-born member of the new Pennsylvania Hurling Club’s team, the Allentown Hibernians, Joe Farrell (no relation), and the only one who’d ever played the game before but who wasn’t wearing a face guard at the time. He’ll never do that again.
“My main thing is bicycling,” says Christopher Farrell, by way of an apology. In fact, Farrell is seriously into racing, which he does regularly at the Lehigh Valley Velodrome, with its banked tracks and, quite often, Olympic level athletes. A “recovering fat guy,” Farrell lost 45 pounds while cycling, making him a poster child for his employer, Rodale, Inc., publisher of health and fitness magazines such as Men’s Health and Bicycling.
Oddly enough, Farrell got interested in hurling because of Irish stepdancing. His two youngest daughters are involved on a competitive level with the O’Grady-Quinlan Academy of Irish Dance in Lehigh County. Another “dance dad,” Jeff Purtell, a PGA golf professional for a decade, had gotten interested in hurling and figured that he might find some like-minded guys among those who spend weekends driving long distances to watch their daughters jig in $600 dresses. “I ran into Jeff at an event a couple of months ago, around St. Paddy’s Day, and he asked me if I’d like to try it out. They really need guys and I really need the exercise so I said okay.”
Farrell is the “old guy” on a team that also includes high school and college players, as well as 44-year-old Dublin-born Joe Farrell of Whitehall Township, their one experienced player. He admits he’s never even seen a hurling game “except for some low res” films on YouTube. “It looks fast,” he says. Farrell and his wife have five kids and he’s completing his master’s degree “so I really don’t want to get injured.”
Given his performances at practices, it seems like it’s the Shamrocks who need to be worried about that.
Come out and support hurling and see all the action on Sunday, May 18, at Cardinal Dougherty High School Field, starting at 4 PM.
