The Geelong Gaels was founded in 1952 by a collection of Irish employees from the Shell refinery and fielded teams in both Gaelic Football and Hurling.

We were very excited to welcome the Geelong Gaels to the Festival !

The Club played and demonstrated Hurling, an ancient Celtic game played in Ireland for at least 3,000 years in some form.

FUN FACT:

On 12 March 1863, there was a meeting to choose a Geelong team for a game of Hurling on St. Patrick's Day against a country team. It was then a list of 6 rules that were proposed and seconded at the meeting.

While the first literary reference to the sport dates back to 1272 BC, the Geelong Rules appear to be the oldest known published set of rules for the game of Hurling ( 161 years ago !).