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While hurling is generally recognized as a Gaelic sport it should possibly be called a Celtic one. For the history of hurling is in fact older than the history of Ireland itself. It predates Christianity, arriving in Ireland more than three thousand years ago with the Celts.

The earliest references to hurling in Ireland is in early Irish laws dating back to the fifth century. Hurling played a prominent part in early Irish mythology. Legendary Irish heroes such as Cuchulainnt and Fionn Mac Cumhail and his Fianna are both written of as playing hurling.

Hurling is, in essence, a stick and ball game. The game is thought to be related to the games of shinty that is played primarily in Scotland, cammag on the Isle of Man and bandy that was played formerly in England and Wales.

The stick was, and indeed, still is called a hurley and the ball a sliotar. Early Irish lawn Law stated that the son of a r? (local king) could have his hurley banded in bronze, while others could only make use of copper. It was unlawful to confiscate a hurley.

The object of the game is for players to use the hurley to hit a small ball through the opponent’s goalposts either over the crossbar for one point, or under the crossbar into a net guarded by a goalkeeper for one goal, which is the same as three points.

The sliotar can be caught in the hand and carried for not more than four steps, struck in the air, or hit on the ground with the hurley. It can be kicked or slapped with an open hand (the hand pass) for short-range passing. A player who wants to carry the ball for more than three steps has to bounce or balance the sliotar on the end of the stick and the ball can only be handled twice while in his possession.

The English occupation of Ireland led to many statutes prohibitting or restricting the playing of hurling as it diverted people from archery practice. The earliest of these goes back to the 13th century.

However, it was the Eighteenth Century that came to be known as the ?The Golden Age? of hurling as members of the Anglo-Irish landowning gentry often kept teams of players on their land and challenged each other’s teams to games for the amusement of their tenants.

Stories of colourful hurling games from this period continue to be gathered from contemporary Irish storytellers and newspapers of the era. The contemporary era of hurling In Ireland dates from the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association formed in 1884 in Thurles, County Tipperary under the illustrious patronage of Thomas Croke, Archbishop of Cashel and Charles Parnell.

The 20th Century saw greater organisation in hurling. The all-Ireland Hurling tournament came into being along with the provincial championships. Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary dominated hurling in the 20th Century with each one of these counties winning more than 20 All-Ireland titles each. Wexford, Waterford, Clare, Limerick, Offaly, Dublin, and Galway were also strong hurling counties during the 20th Century.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several subjects, but is currently concerned with London Olympics 2012 venues. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

If you are going to be looking after children either your own or other people’s, you will naturally need some apparatus. Your training will have taught you what you are required to have by law, items such as safety apparatus, cots, high-chairs and strollers, but you will also need some toys. Which ones though, there are so such a lot and they are not cheap either?

Well, the first thing to take into account is the age range of the children that you will have under your supervision. I am sure that your training will have already taught you that babies have different requirements from toddlers and so on up the age scale. Babies cannot move about (or not much) so they have to have their toys near at hand.

Having said that, babies are not even very dexterous with their hands. They only seem to want to stuff items into their mouths with them, so the safest options for babies are visually and aurally stimulating toys that will neither choke nor poison them. Twirling mobiles, colourful rattles, an attractive blanket, wallpaper with pictures of animals like Beatrix Potters menagerie of rabbits, foxes and ducks.

It is almost certainly better if you do not supply any toys that are going to be sucked and then passed around other children for fear of cross-infection. Let their parents provide the babies’ own cuddly toys and teddy bears et cetera. You may like to advise parents not to purchase babies’ toys which come apart easily or have buttons or loose eyes because of the risk of choking.

In the next age bracket, the struggling toddler, kids are starting to become inquisitive and are ‘into everything’. They still like to put everything in their mouths though, so the same warnings apply as before, but the toys can and should be more challenging. Books with a thin storyline and big pictures are fairly useful as are fish tanks that are safely out of reach. Children love to watch a busy fish tank and it is better than TV.

Building blocks and even the babies’ variety of Lego can be introduced at this age although the toddlers are still a little young for them. Toddlers will begin to become attached to favourite toys and want to carry them around with them at this age, so soft balls, dolls, rattles, and educational toys appropriate to the age group are apposite.

After approximately eighteen months, educational toys like blocks and Lego (or Duplo) are even more essential, so are books, but children of this age like to bang things and create a noise as well. A plinky-plonky instrument like a toy xylophone or a plastic piano are useful for satisfying these needs.

After about two years of age, children start to play with other children and Wendy Houses and toy tea sets are good for encouraging this. They will also like to move about and drive toy cars and tricycles. Children should be encouraged to play in a safe outdoor environment now too, if the weather is appropriate. Low-level swings and slides are fun as is a sand pit, if you can keep the local cats from using it as a public lavatory.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with Silver Cross Rocking Horses. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Rocking Horses for sale.

A review of the nicknames used by English football teams reveals a beguiling insight into English social history over the last 150 years.

All soccer teams seem to get a nickname, bestowed upon them lovingly by their loyal fans. Although in one very famous case – that of Manchester United – the nickname of The Red Devils was actually invented by the club itself as a marketing ploy, copyrighted and eventually the Red Devil himself was incorporated in the team’s coat of arms.

The derivation of the name may seem obvious, or may be lost in the mists of time or even not known today.

In many cases the nickname is derived from the colour of the team?s shirts. Obvious examples of these include:

Chelsea – The Blues Burnley – the Clarets Watford – the Hornets Preston North End – The Lilywhites Liverpool – The Reds Newcastle United – The Magpies Coventry City – The Sky Blues Blackpool United – the Tangerines Weymouth – The Terras Cambridge United – the Yellows Hull City – the Tigers

Other nicknames are far more prosaic in origin, being based upon abbreviations or contractions of the team?s real name. Examples of these cases include :

Middlesbrough ? Boro Rochdale ? the Dale Gillingham ? the Gills Wigan Athletic ? the Latics Queens Park Rangers – QPR Blackburn Rovers ? The Rovers Aldershot Town ? The Shots Shrewsbury Town ? The Shrews Tottenham Hotspur – Spurs Swansea City ? The Swans Woverhampton Wanderers ? Wolves

Location plays an important part in a lot of team nicknames

Sunderland – The Black Cats (named after the Black cat gun battery which was located on the banks of the River Wear) Bournemouth – The Cherries (the stadium was built on the site of a cherry orchard) Carlisle United – The Cumbrians (Carlisle is in the county of Cumbria) Bristol Rovers – The Gas ( their old ground was located next to the gasworks) Torquay United – The Gulls (Torquay is beside the sea) Tamworth – The Lambs ( the team plays at The Lamb Ground, named after a local pub) Grimsby Town – The Mariners (Grimsby is on the coast) Rotherham United – The Millers ( the pitch is called Millmoor) Sheffield Wednesday – The Owls ( they play in an area of Sheffield known as Owlerton) Kettering Town – The Poppies ( their stadium was constructed on a poppy field) Blackburn Rovers – The Riversiders (their site is built on the banks of a river) Bolton Wanderers – The Trotters (in the 19th century the ground was located next to a piggery)

Other nicknames are derived from local occupations or industries:

Sheffield United – The Blades ( local links with cutlery manufacture) Burton Albion – The Brewers ( Burton is a major centre for the brewing industry ) Hereford United – The Bulls (from the local cattle industry) Wycombe Wanderers – The Chairboys ( local furniture industry) Northampton Town – The Cobblers (from the local boot and shoe industry) Yeovil Town – The Glovers (local links to the glove making industry ) Luton Town – The Hatters (Luton was for many years a centre for the production of hats) Crewe Alexander – The Railwaymen ( Crewe was constructed as a railway town

Finally, a short assortment of some of the more amusing, bizarre and obtuse derivations:

Charlton Athletic – The Addicks ( A corruption of the ward ?haddocks? after a neighbourhood fish and chip shop) Norwich City – The Canaries ( Norwich was a leading centre for the breeding of canaries. The team subsequently adopted the green and yellow of the Norwich Canary as their playing strip) Hartlepool United – The Monkey Hangers (During the Napoleonic wars the citizens of Hartlepool allegedly hung a monkey thinking it to be a French spy) Bury – The Shakers (The first Chairman of the club, J T Ingham said before a local derby game against Blackburn ?We will shake them, in fact we are the Shakers?) Peterborough United – The Posh (A previous manager of the team is reputed to have said ?We are looking for posh players for a posh team?)

We hope this look though the history behind the nicknames of English football teams has been amusing and informative.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with London Olympics 2012 venues. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

Lego keyrings are a bright notion from the Lego Group and Lego UK. Lego keyrings are meant to be amusing, yet convenient items for the Lego enthusiast both young and old. Some of the Lego keyrings can be hard to acquire and are encouraging collectors to start a collection.

You can buy Lego keyrings on web sites or at almost any Lego shop. There are dozens of different kinds ranging from easy coloured building blocks to Lego Star Wars characters and they are not costly either.

Lego has been very clever with their keyrings because they are handy little gifts for all ages. They are fun items, they do not cost more than a few of pounds or dollars and the numbers manufactured of some of them are actually quite small ensuring a healthy secondary market for collectors on Internet auction sites such as eBay.

At the moment there are about four dozen different Lego keyrings ranging from a simple, traditional, red Lego building block with eight stubs to Darth Vader from the Lego Star Wars figures assortment.

If you would like to begin a collection of Lego keyrings, go to one of the Lego retailers on the Internet to see what is obtainable and then go to eBay to find out what has already come and gone. You might be surprised at how a keyring that was purchased last year for a few pounds has trebled in value by now.

The most well-liked of the Lego keyrings are the small figurines. There are policemen, firemen, teachers, postmen, nurses, doctors, spacemen, Batman, Lego Star Wars figures, Lego Harry Potter figures. All kinds, in fact.

Some of the Lego keyrings are only sold in sets and some are sold at a cheaper cost if purchased in a set. There is a colossal second market on eBay for the new Lego characters and the older ones as well, so if you are interested in beginning a new hobby buying and selling Lego figures, have a look in a Lego shop on the Internet for special offers and discounted deals.

If on the other hand, you are not too interested in the Lego keyrings but would still like to be in on the action, you could check out the secondary market in Lego figures. Lego figures can be bought separately, but they normally come in a package as with the Lego Star Wars figures or the Harry Potter sets.

One suggestion is that these figures are usually relatively expensive, whereas the keyrings are not, so you could purchase the Lego keyring of the figure you want and cut the keyring part off. This is a fantastic way of building up your population of Lego characters at a fraction of the standard cost and the only difference is that you cannot remove the arms and legs from the keyring figures like you can from the dearer other type.

Why would you like to take the arms and legs off anyway? They can only be lost or damaged by removing them. No, go for the Lego keyrings instead.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several topics, but is now involved with Silver Cross Rocking Horses. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Rocking Horses for sale.

Many schools have to engage in fund raising because of a shortfall in government funding. This shortage of sufficient government funding will only get worse given the cutbacks that the governments of the world have seen fit to enforce in order to help resolve the financial crisis brought about by the collapse of so many financial institutions.

It is commonly known as the banking crisis and it is being used as an excuse for cutting the funding of government departments like schooling and health care. You will become able to judge how hard your local schools have been hit by the amount of school fund raising in your region.

A conventional method of school fund raising is the selling of goods from a catalogue from door to door. Typically, school children are given the catalogues to take home and to take around their neighbours. Those who sell the most often win prizes.

The season of school fund raising mostly starts when the kids go back to school in the autumn after the summer break. If the schools in your area have been badly hit by the cutbacks, you may have dozens of kids knocking on your door attempting to sell you over-priced knick-knacks.

However, some schools strive to be more inventive in their fund raising, because fewer and fewer people are prepared to pay way over the top for spare plugs, wrapping paper and scissors.

Some of these innovative approaches include selling sandwiches, pizzas, hot dogs, barbecued chicken and cookie dough. Other ways are to hold a bring and buy sale or a fair with sideshows, stalls, bingo and a bouncy house. Raffles are also popular methods of raising money for schools as long as the prizes are worth winning.

Although school fund raising is a nuisance for parents, it is a necessary evil, if the school is to meet its obligation to provide children with a decent education. One decent method of increasing money is to publish a monthly school magazine. Kids and teachers can write pieces and stories for the magazine and a committee of students and teachers could edit and compile it.

It is a decent idea if the head teacher gives a report in each issue. Local businesses can be approached to buy marketing space and the magazine can be sold for a small amount. This will provide a regular and fairly stable monthly income and every parent will want one as will other individuals who live in the environs of the school.

The difficulty of underfunding is a big one and it will not be going away any time soon, however, families are suffering from the financial squeeze as well so schools ought to shift their focus while trying to raise money. People definitely do not like to feel obliged to purchase over-priced rubbish because it is children who are flogging it – it is a form of moral blackmail.

The best way to raise money for schools is to provide value for money. So, if you have to organize school fund raising, give out catalogues by all means, but make them decent ones or make your own in conjunction with a large, local department store; put on a Christmas pantomime, nativity play or/and carol service; in the warmer months organize public events like bazaars, fayres and bring and buy sales and publish a monthly school magazine all the way through the year.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with the bouncy castles for sale. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Bouncy House Rentals