KINVARA, Ireland — Thirty men battle on a deep-green field, each one wielding what looks like a field hockey stick moonlighting as a broken oar. They chase a ball that fits snug in the hand, sometimes balancing it on their sticks as they run, sometimes swinging the sticks in midsprint to arc the ball toward a goal’s uprights.

Bursts of “Come on, lads!” erupt from the sidelines, along with an epithet or two, as the players bump shoulders, jab their sticks of ash and do everything allowed to dispossess their opponents of the ball. These efforts, on occasion, draw blood.

The workday is over, the evening sun is tumbling from the fish-gray clouds, and a team from Connemara has traveled across Galway to play this match on a pitch in Kinvara. To play hurling, a game as rooted here as the bone-white limestone chalking the nearby hills.

The sport might be likened to a mash-up of lacrosse, field hockey and baseball, but even the most strained analogy “only gets you so far,” said Paul Rouse, a professor at University College Dublin who specializes in the history of sport.