Some members of the successful Naas GAA Féile Football and Hurling teams, and former students of St. Corban's visited the school with their winning trophies last Friday. Well done to all involved!

Kildare footballer and captain Eamonn Callaghan, a former St. Corban's student, visited us at the end of the year to present medals and trophies to all the boys who were successful in sports this year. Eamonn took time out of a busy week to visit us and speak to the boys and we are very grateful.

After their successful blitz a few weeks ago, our Futsal squad were given a special reward today for their great work and success. Here is a photo of the squad. Missing from this picture is Cillian O'Brien.

We wrote this post on our class blog to explain Gaelic Football to a class in Canada who were wondering what the sport was like.

Gaelic Football is one of Ireland’s national sports. Football is organised by the GAA meaning Gaelic Athletic Association.

Some of the rules of Gaelic Football are:

• You can’t pick up the football straight off the ground, you have to put your foot under the ball and then pick it up.
• There are 15 players on each team not including subs.
• The football is a little bit smaller than a soccer ball, but heavier.
• The goalposts are like soccer goals but there are two posts on each side pointing upwards (a bit like rugby posts, but with a net!).
• To pass the ball you can kick it out of your hands or you can hand pass it which means you hold the ball in one hand and get your other hand and punch it to the player on your team. You cannot throw the ball, but sometimes this is hard for the referee to spot!
• When running with the ball you are allowed to take 4 steps, then you must either bounce the ball once or “solo” it, which means you let the ball drop to your foot and kick it back up into your hands. This can be hard to do when running at full speed! Gaelic football requires a lot of skill.
• To score a goal you kick the ball into the lower half of the goals (into the net like in soccer) or to score a point you kick the ball over the cross bar. If you score a goal you get 3 points and if you score a point you just get 1 point.
• The scores are written like this: Dublin 1-12 Galway 2-05. This would mean Dublin scored one goal and twelve points (worth a total of 15 points) and Galway scored two goals and five points (worth a total of 11 points), so Dublin would win!

Every year in Ireland there is a competition to see which county is the best. There are 31 Irish counties (Kilkenny are the only county who don’t play) in the competition. Also, New York and London enter a team each making a total of 33 teams. The current champions are Dublin. They beat Kerry in the final back in September. The final games take place in Dublin in a stadium called Croke Park which can hold 82,300 people.

Our county is Kildare and last year we got to the quarter finals. We were beaten by Donegal. Hopefully in 2012 we can go all the way! Dublin won’t be easy to beat!

Here are some pictures:

This YouTube clip gives you an idea of what the sport is like:  

By James (a Dublin fan), David and Seán.

Mr. Lane's Class