villages and hamlets such as Talskiddy, Trebudannon, Ruthvoes and Tregatillian, as well as the farms and other rural dwellings of St Columb parish. Sometimes players from outside the parish play (particularly former St Columb residents) but they are not permitted to win the ball. Team allegiance is purely based on residence: if a hurler moves house from the town to the countryside (or vice versa) he changes sides accordingly. The border between the town and the country is undefined and there are some areas around parts of the outskirts of the town that may be considered either town or country. There are no team captains, playing positions, or any form of team organisation, nor are there kits or any kind of player identification. Sometimes a hurler or hurlers might choose to station themselves in defence of the opponents’ goal, particularly towards the latter stages of the hurl in the town, but because of the option of winning at the boundary, goal defence does not form a significant part of hurling tactics. There are no limits to the number of participants, and the two teams have unequal numbers. The Town has the larger team since St Columb town has grown in size in the 20th and 21st century; before the mid-20th century the Countrymen were numerically stronger, mainly comprising the large numbers of men employed in agriculture in the past. History It is unknown how long the Shorvetide games at St Columb have been played, but it is believed to have been for many hundreds of years. The St Columb Green Book mentions a silver ball in 1595, although with no description of any game. Newspaper reports from the 1850s and 1860s describe St Columb’s Shrovetide hurling as a long-established custom, and portray the essentials of the game in that era as fairly similar to that of the present day. A board erected in the Town Hall in 2000 lists all the winners of the ball since 1900. Terminology break - often used to describe the act of taking the ball out of the town in an attempt to get to a goal or a boundary, i.e. “after 50 minutes of hurling in the town, a group of townsmen made a break towards their goal”. call-up - to declare victory by holding the ball aloft, calling for three cheers followed by shouting "Town Ball" or "Country Ball" as appropriate, usually done