It Ain't Baseball

I'm fascinated by foreign sports. A while back I happened upon Australian rules football, which looks to me like a cross between real football (American football), rugby, and soccer (the rest of the world's football). It's played on a huge oval field - yep, oval - and there are four goal posts. Crazy brutal, as befits Australia. And beer. There's lots of beer too.
   I tried to get into cricket, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I had several rabid cricketers explain the game to me in detail, and I only ended up more confused than before. When I was in Australia a few years back there was The Ashes test match. What that means I have no idea, but it was a great big deal. Huge. Shane Warne played his last match (test?) just after I left Oz, which was another colossal deal that I just had no conception of. Cricket is such a big deal in Australia that KFC Sponsors a competiton. That's right, KENTUCKY Fried Chicken sponsors cricket in Australia. They don't sponsor NASCAR here, but they lay out the cash in Australia. That's how big a deal it is.
   Last night I happened across Irish hurling, part of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Yet another sport that has a rabid following in its home country that I just had no idea even existed. It's kind of like lacrosse, but not really. There's a stick, a ball, big goal posts like in Australian rules football but only two of them, and a net underneath like a soccer goal. The field is huge, like an American football field wide (100 yards) and maybe 150 yards long. There was a lot of ceremony at the beginning, and the immense stadium was packed to the rafters. I had no idea what was happening - lots of running and hitting a ball with the stick - but with the Irish-accented commentators whatever was going on certainly did sound charming. And the players had names like Seamus and Ewen, which makes me think of my relatives coming through Ellis Island. I also imagine the entire stadium celebrates after the game with a pint of Guiness and a potato. Then they tickle their leprechauns before falling asleep in a field of four-leaf clovers. That's a typical day in Ireland, right?
   Now I'm wondering what else there is in the world of sport that I don't know about. I know about soccer, and I don't care about it, as I have mentioned before. But do they have some sort of native sport in Iceland, for example, or Bolivia, or Ghana, or Uzbekistan? I'll be watching the sports channels to find out.