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Gaelic Football, for those of you not familiar with native Irish sports, is something in between soccer and Aussie Rules. It's got a round ball that you can carry for a few steps, though you have to kick it to yourself or a teammate, and it's got a soccer goal with goal posts rising out of it.

Basically, It's similar enough to the Australian game that the AFL and the Gaelic Athletic Association agreed for a while to hold International Rules matches, which served as a compromise between the two football codes. Last year's International Rules series, however, was marred by on-field violence, which, while awesome, caused the GAA to cancel the series this year.

So how does the AFL repay the GAA? By rushing into Ireland to cherry-pick Gaelic footballers for their own clubs. Yaaaaaah!!!!


Apparently, foreign players aren't subject to the same limited draft and salary cap rules as native Australian players, so they can freely sign Irish players, who are often quite happy to go to Australia, because they don't get paid to play Gaelic football. GAA sports are strictly amateur sports. If you play a game strictly for the love of it, and someone comes in and waves a six-figure contract under your nose, it doesn't smell like crap, does it?

Several Irish footballers -- most notably Tadhg Kennelly and Martin Clarke of the Sydney Swans -- have already come to the AFL, and the Brisbane Lions seem eager to start poaching. Naturally, the GAA is not pleased with this exodus, but the only way they can stem this tide in the short term is to resume the International Rules series.

So basically, they have to choose between losing their best young players to a professional league ... or allowing those players to get into fist fights with Australians twice every October.

I suppose the GAA could also, y'know, pay their players. That might stem the tide a bit. It also won't happen in the short term.

So if you're in Ireland and you happen to run into some well-dressed characters with suspicious accents, don't be alarmed. They're just AFL scouts. Try not to pull a Brendan Fevola on them.