Karl Robinson and his Charlton players are working hard on their pre-season tour of Ireland at the moment!
They’re doing lots of running, lots of training and lots of team building exercises to get themselves ready for the new season.
While they are away, our two mascots Sir Valiant and Robyn have been looking through some textbooks and browsing the internet to try and discover more about Ireland.
Here’s what they have found out!
- The capital of Ireland is Dublin and 553,000 people live in the city. Two of our pre-season matches, against Crumlin United and UCD, will be played in and around Dublin.
- They play lots of sport in Ireland, including football and rugby, but the country’s most popular sports are Gaelic football and hurling! They have been played for over 3,000 years and, in both of them, two teams of 15 compete against each other.
- Ireland have a national holiday called St. Patrick’s Day! This takes place on the 17th of March every year and is a global celebration of Irish culture.
- Euros is the national currency of Ireland. They used to use the Irish Pound but switched to Euros in 2002. Ireland are one of 19 countries in Europe that use the Euro!
- They like to sing in Ireland and they have won the Eurovision song contest a record seven times! Luxembourg, France and the United Kingdom are all joint second with five wins!