Gaelic football
Gaelic football (; short name '')'', commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA, or football, is an Irish team sport. A form of football, it is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score ...
,
hurling
Hurling (, ') is an outdoor Team sport, team game of ancient Gaelic culture, Gaelic Irish origin, played by men and women. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goa ...
and
camogie
Camogie ( ; ) is an Irish stick-and-ball team sport played by women. Camogie is played by 100,000 women in Ireland and worldwide, largely among Irish communities.
A variant of the game "hurling" (which is played by men only), it is organised ...
club based in
Rasharkin
Rasharkin ()Placenames Database of Ireland (see archival records) is a small
County Antrim
County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, County Antrim, Antrim, ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, located within the historic Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the c ...
, Northern Ireland.
History
Gaelic games were played in the parish from 1909 by a team called St. Olcan's, but St. Mary's GAC was founded on
St Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (), is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Chris ...
1943. Initially focusing on
hurling
Hurling (, ') is an outdoor Team sport, team game of ancient Gaelic culture, Gaelic Irish origin, played by men and women. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goa ...
, Gaelic football later became the main sport.
Their current grounds at Dreen (in the countryside to the south of Rasharkin village) were built in 1980–83; a second pitch, the Jamesie McLernon Memorial Pitch, was added in 2000.
A Rasharkin player, coach and club official, Gerry (Gearóid) Dalrymple, was murdered by the
Ulster Defence Association
The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 as an umbrella group for various loyalist groups and undertook an armed campaign of almost 24 years as one of t ...
(UDA) in the 1993 Castlerock killings.
The ladies' football team was founded in 1995, and in 1998 won the club's only county senior title. Rasharkin Camogie Club were integrated into the club in 2010.