Ireland

donte's candle · 789195. Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:16 am

quick facts
ireland is divided into 4 provinces which are munster,leinster,ulster and connacht. each province has counties in them(32 in total)the biggest of which is co.cork and the smallest is co.louth. the capital dublin has 1,000,000 people making it the most densly populated county. the longest river is the river shannon which flows down the east coast. the largest lake is lough neagh in ulster. the higheat mountain is carrantuohill(car-on-too-hill) it stands at 3406 feet and is in co.kerry. famously the british tryed to plant ireland four differant times (laos-offaly plantation,munster plantation,ulster plantation and cromwellian plantation) the ulster plantation being the most successful still having effects to this day.
list of counties by province
munster=clare,limerick,kerry,cork,waterford and tipperary
leinster=louth,meath,dublin,wicklow,wexford,kildare,kilkenny,westmeath,
longford,offaly and carlow
connacht=galway,mayo,sligo,leitrim and roscommon
ulster=donegal,*derry,*antrim,*down,*armagh,*tyrone,*fermanagh,
monaghan and cavan

*,counties under british rule
the language mainly spoken in ireland is english but we have our own language. irish is very closly linked to eastern european languages as it comes from the celts.
some irish inventions you may not have known include the hyperdyrmic syringe,the harpoon gun,shorthand writing,soda water,hurling,gaelic football,seismology,the guided missile,portable defibulater and the beufort scale(mesurement of wind speed)
ireland is the world number 1 for tea drinking with four cups a day average per person and ireland is the 4th largest divided nation(ROI and UK)
i hope you now know a little bit more about the lump of land i call home

NOTE:if i got anything wrong i apologise i had a bit of time to kill, otherwise i hope you enjoyed this and thank you.

Jenny · 789696. Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:39 am

Welcome to the forums donte's candle, and thank you :-)

legspin · 792854. Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:29 am

With regards the cricket yesterday ...

Ahaha Ahahahahahahaha etc

suze · 793046. Thu Mar 03, 2011 7:22 pm

LOL! The husband and I watched the closing stages of that game from the safety of the public house (we don't have Sky). And OK, so I may have made vaguely similar noises.

Mind you, it came back to bite me on the butt today after Canada screwed up an excellent chance to beat Pakistan. Now I'm by no means an expert on cricket, but I got the impression that the standard of the Canada / Pakistan match - both teams and the umpires - was well below what you'd expect at this level. Husband reckons that his club would have beaten either of them; that may be hyperbole, but even I could tell that neither was much good.

donte's candle · 793269. Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:57 pm

legspin · 793342. Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:18 am

suze · 793346. Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:37 am

Coming from a country where we derive national pride from beating the USA at anything, I can well believe that!

Although it's a bit of a stretch to define the Irish team as "part-timers", to be fair. Of the fifteen members of the Irish squad, thirteen are full time professionals (nine contracted to English counties and four to Cricket Ireland). That's more full timers than Zimbabwe has, and comparable with the numbers that Bangladesh, New Zealand, and the West Indies have.

Meanwhile, the ICC plans to have only ten teams at the next World Cup, and the suggestion seems to be that this will exclude Ireland and the Netherlands - even though they are probably better than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Eight automatic spots and two qualifiers would surely be a better way to go, but apparently India is opposed to any such idea.

legspin · 793348. Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:41 am

I didn't realise the proportion of county players was that high.

donte's candle · 793480. Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:06 pm

suze · 793486. Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:36 pm

At the last World Cup, there was a rather good Irish commentator whom RTÉ had sent to the tournament. He doesn't seem to be there this time; is that down to money?

I also get the impression that interest in cricket in Ireland is largely confined to the North and Dublin. In the South outside Dublin, do very many people have any interest at all?

(Actually, it's comparable in Canada. There's a reasonable cricket following in Toronto, Vancouver, and Vancouver Island, but practically zero elsewhere.)

legspin · 793506. Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:28 pm

suze · 793512. Sat Mar 05, 2011 8:10 pm

Thanks, legspin. Who knows what the future holds - especially since the powers that be don't want the likes of Ireland in their World Cup - but husband reckons that a wager on Ireland to be the next Test Match nation would be a sound investment.

Cricket in Canada has had an odd history. One hundred years ago, the Canadian team (and indeed the American team) was probably not far behind the teams of countries like New Zealand - but there was money in baseball, and none in cricket.

There followed a long period in which cricket was largely the preserve of the white upper middle class of Toronto, before a team composed mostly of immigrants from the Caribbean saw Canada reach the World Cup in 1979. There were three white men of Canadian birth in that squad, but the guys who are the age to be those men's sons tend to play baseball or rugby union* (a summer sport in Canada) rather.

Since then - and as in Britain - the South Asian community has rather supplanted the Caribbean community as the source of cricketers. One look at the names of this year's Canadian squad would leave that in no doubt.

But there are by now two Canada-born Asians on the team, and that's likely to be the way forward. As for white Canadians, well of course there's been John Davison - but although he was born in BC, he's an Aussie first and foremost; his parents were in Canada on a teaching exchange from Aus. In any case, Davo has by now hit the big 40 and this is surely his last major tournament (especially since he was dropped for the last game). But last year's Under-15 squad included both white and black players of Canadian birth alongside the Asian majority.

* Rugby union in Canada has its own problems, some of them caused by the geographically awkward fact of the main playing strength being in Vancouver and Newfoundland. Newf has semi-seriously considered seeking to affiliate to Ireland rather than Canada, since Dublin is actually one thousand miles nearer than is Vancouver!

samivel · 793531. Sat Mar 05, 2011 10:05 pm

Yeah, but it's not as easy to drive to.

suze · 793619. Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:05 am

The difficult of driving from Newf to Vancouver is precisely equal to the difficulty of driving from Newf to Dublin - that is to say, you can't do either thing.

On the other hand, it's not as easy to fly to. It's a sad fact, but at present there are no scheduled flights east from Newfoundland - anyone wanting to fly from Newfoundland to Europe must travel via either Halifax or Toronto. A person wanting to travel from Newfoundland to the Azores - which are 900 miles west of Portugal and 1,500 miles east of Newf - would have to fly via Toronto and Lisbon.

This is a downside of progress, unfortunately. It used to be that airplanes from Europe to the west coast of North America needed to refuel en route - and Gander Airport was a convenient place for them to do that. But no longer is a refueling stop needed, which arguably leaves Newfoundland more isolated from Europe than it has been for one thousand years.

bobwilson · 793798. Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:08 pm