We are Maurice and Siobhan O’Brien, we live in Kilcullen County Kildare and in summer 2019 we launched “The Hurling Experience”. We are passionate about Gaelic Games and have a special love of the sport of Hurling and want to share that passion with our visitors. For visitors to Ireland and locals alike we can guarantee you a unique cultural experience combined with lots of fun and some fantastic photo and video opportunities.
The idea stemmed from a holiday trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina where we visited the famous Boca Juniors “La Bombonera” Soccer Stadium for a Argentinian league match. We were thoroughly impressed with the passion and story telling of our guides and could see their true love of the sport of soccer and their local Boca Junior heroes – current and past (past stars include Diego Maradona). It made us think about our own national sports and whether we sufficiently share our great story with our visitors to Ireland. We looked at tourism offerings in Dublin and around Ireland and concluded that we are not sufficiently showcasing our national games and that we should be doing more to share this important part of Irish culture.
The deciding factor was last summer when we house-swapped with a Spanish/Basque family – during their stay in Kilcullen, the Fernandez family travelled to Croke Park, Dublin for the All-Ireland Hurling Championship Semi-Final (representing Maurice and bringing a Limerick flag) and were amazed by the huge crowds (> 70,000 that day) in Croke Park, the speed, the skills of the game and the fact that hurling at this impressive level was played by amateurs. Their reaction sealed the deal, they were in awe and “The Hurling Experience” idea was born………..
