GAA History
At 3.00 p.m. on Saturday 1st November 1884, a small group of men, at least seven and possibly as many as fourteen , met in the billiard-room of Miss Hayes’s Commercial Hotel in Thurles, and there founded the Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of National Pastimes. The seven founder members were Michael Cusack, Maurice Davin (who presided) John Wyse Power, John McKay, J. K. Bracken, Joseph O’Ryan and Thomas St. George McCarthy. Also admitted later by Cusack to have been present was Frank Moloney of Nenagh, while the following six names were published as having attended by the more detailed press reports of the time: William Foley, - Dwyer, - Culhane, William Delehunty, John Butler and William Cantwell. All these were from Thurles except Foley, who was from Carrick-on-Suir, like Davin.
The foundation meeting of the GAA - if such it was indeed - was the culmination of several feverish months’ work by Cusack since he had enlisted the support of Davin in August. The activity included a meeting in the Galway town of Loughrea of a group of local athletic enthusiasts, possibly Cusack and certainly Bishop Duggan of Clonfert, who is said to have recommended Archbishop Croke of Cashel as a patron of the proposed body. Cusack also seems to have considered holding the first meeting in Cork, according to a brother of Davin; he had even chosen the title “Munster Athletic Club”.
In October, two prominent nationalist weeklies, “United Ireland” and “Irishman”, carried identical anonymous articles by Cusack, summarising the case for a body like the GAA. In subsequent issues the same month, Davin and Cusack openly supported the project, and finally Cusack sent out a circular for the Thurles meeting. This he had drafted in Dublin with the help of a number of hurling enthusiasts. So small was the attendance in Thurles that it may have been an exploratory or preliminary meeting. If so, the real foundation meeting was held in Cork City in the Victoria Hotel on the 27th December, attended by a group of Cork Home Rule personalities led by the Lord Mayor-elect, Ald. Paul madden.
Of the five other founder-members in addition to Cusack and Davin, John Wyse Power was a Waterford journalist, then on the “Leinster Leader” staff in Naas, and later on the “Freeman Journal” in Dublin. McKay was a Belfast journalist then on the “Cork Examiner”, who later worked in the House of Commons in London before returning to Cork in the early 1900’s. Bracken was a Tipperary stonemason, whose son, Viscount Brendan Bracken, was a member of Sir Winston Churchill’s World War II coalition government. O’Ryan was a solicitor in Thurles and Callan in Kilkenny. McCarthy, a Kerryman, was a police officer in Templemore.
Criticism of Press
Apart from Cusack’s contribution, the proceedings in Hayes Hotel were brief. Davin took the chair, and in a brief speech called for a body to draft rules to help revise Irish games and to open athletics to the man in the street. Cusack’s long speech criticised the national press for boycotting Irish sports, put forward the idea of a national athletic festival on the lines of the old Tailteann Games, and referred to over sixty letters of support he had received.
After McKay had also spoken, Cusack and Power proposed and seconded Davin as president of the new association, and the meeting then elected Cusack, Power and McKay secretaries. The meeting adjourned after agreeing to ask Archbishop Croke, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt to become patrons, with instructions to the new officers to draft rules.
Press Coverage
Two of the founders were journalists, so the press coverage accorded the foundation meeting was far greater than a gathering of a dozen enthusiasts would normally generate. There was also other press reporters present. Most sent back enthusiastic reports.
Cusack himself reported on the foundation meeting for “United Ireland” and was very enthusiastic in even his opening line: “At a well attended meeting which was held in Miss Hayes’s Commercial Hotel in Thurles last Saturday, a Gaelic Association for the preservation and cultivation of National pastimes was formed”.
The Leinster Leader and the Cork Examiner (whose reporters John Wyse Power and John McKay were founders of the Association) were more detailed than Cusack’s 600-word transcript. McKay even contradicted Cusack when he said: “The meeting was poorly attended and several important athletic clubs in the South did not send a representative but perhaps this was due to the fact that the notice given was very short”. The attendance at the second meeting in Cork on the 27th December was better, maybe as a result of the Cork Examiner’s gentle admonishment of the Southern athletic movement.
Wyse Power was also interested in giving a good impression using the same “At a well attended meeting, etc” opening line as Cusack.
The cork Examiner report ran to 1,500 words and included the full text of the circular and the letter from Michael Davitt in which he pleads: “Why not make an effort to revive the Tailteann Games? A national festival could be organised to come off at some historic spot, at which prizes could be awarded for merit”. The report ends with a long speech by (ironically) Mr. McKay, reported verbatim. The account is the most detailed of all those given of the foundation of the GAA down to the “hear hears”
Some interesting points from the Cork Examiner coverage of the meeting emerged:
• Cusack professed he admired the English Amateur Athletics Association and stated that the GAA “could not do better than adopt somewhat similar rules”.
• Attendance at the meeting was not regarded as solid enough foundation by at least McKay. He places great stock on the fact that a second meeting would be held within a month.
• Hurling and football are not mentioned. The whole meeting talked about athletics, and athletics in the sense of one large-scale meeting for Celtic peoples, as Davitt mentioned it, the Tailteann games.
• Cusack mentioned that he had tried to get real Irish athletic events included on athletic programmes, mentioning specifically the high jump, the long jump, throwing the hammer, slinging the 56 lbs. and putting or throwing the 16 lbs. The Davin brothers, Pat and Maurice held all the records for these events at the time. Cusack himself was probably once a record holder in the throwing event.
• Finance was not regarded as a problem: the Caledonian Games had yielded £200 profit on an investment of £300 the previous Easter at Ballsbridge. The founders thought that there was a lot of money to be made from athletics promotion and the GAA would easily fund itself. A figure of £1,000 for the Tailteann festival was mentioned, and Davitt thought that £500 would be forthcoming from the Irish in America.
• Support was forthcoming from Caledonian Games organiser Morrison Miller, Welsh Nationalist Kimmersley Lewis, and messages were received from Professor Roehrig on behalf of all the Irish in America, and Mr. Lynch from the Irish in Australia (this is in Cusack’s and Wyse Power’s reports, not in McKay’s).
• Cusack’s critical comments on the sporting press are not reported in the Cork Examiner.
• The Association was given the rather cumbersome name of the Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of our national Pastimes. Within weeks it had been abbreviated to the Gaelic Athletic Association.
• Cusack reported that Croke, Parnell and Davitt were to be asked for patronage. McKay said they were appointed patrons.
That caused some considerable confusion as Cusack to task the only English newspaper which had a correspondent at the meeting, the Daily News, for stating that “patrons had been appointed”. Cusack’s ire was raised by a far more hostile press coverage from the Daily Telegraph of the 6th November which reported: “Olympic Games for Ireland hardly seems a serious proposition, yet this is the objective of a new society just started by the Archbishop Croke, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Healy and others of the National Party in the sister Isle. We may be sure that an agrarian offence is no disqualification for a competitor”.
Cusack’s reply in United Ireland was an example of his volcanic best: “I presume you refer to the Gaelic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of National pastimes, which was established at Thurles on the 1st inst. by about a dozen Irishmen, not a single one of whom has, as far as I am aware, ever aspired to the position of leader in the ranks of Irish nationalists. Whoever wrote it, it is as vile a production as has ever been evolved out of the wilful lie. Your representative will at all times be perfectly welcome at our meetings, but it may be necessary for him to be acquainted with the Irish language if he wants to report our war shouts on the hurling field”.
That was in December 1884. Between the first and second meetings. Already Cusack had turned his mind towards reviving the hurling and using the GAAPCNP as a vehicle for doing so.
Already the infant Association had got a taste of the variety of press coverage it was to experience throughout its history.
The Early Years : 1884 - 1922
• In 1886 the GAA introduced County Committees. These became the units of representation for the new All-Ireland championship.
• Cusack wrote: The Association swept the country like a prairie fire.
• The Rules for football and hurling were drawn up at the third meeting of the GAA in January 1885 and were published in the United Irishman newspaper.
• The GAA had an immediate rival. In February, 1885, a group of Dublin-based clubs formed the Irish Amateur Athletic Association (IAAA).
• Relations between the two organisations deteriorated rapidly. In March, athletes were banned from participating in sports organised by the rival body. The GAA also banned non-Gaelic players from competing in their events.
• The first All-Ireland Championships in hurling and football were organised on a county basis in 1887. Twelve of the 32 counties entered, although only five competed in hurling and eight in football.
• The finals were not played until the start of the next season in April 1888.
• In 1887, members of the radical secret society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) took control of the Association, prompting the resignation of Maurice Davin as president.
• A split in the GAA loomed, but a “reconstruction” convention of January 1888 restored Davin to the presidency.
• For political reasons, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) had been monitoring GAA activities since its foundation. Members of the RIC were banned from GAA sports in 1888.
Bloody Sunday
Dublin were scheduled to play Tipperary on November 21st, 1920. On the night before the match the leader of the Irish revolutionary forces Michael Collins had ordered the assassination of the “Cairo Gang”, 14 British intelligence officers sent to infiltrate his organisation under the guise of commercial travellers. In revenge, one of the British auxiliaries involved in the operation recalled that they tossed a coin over whether they would go on a killing spree in Croke Park or loot O’Connell Street instead.
Despite the unease in the city on the morning of November 21st, some 10,000 spectators went to Croke Park for the match.
The ball was thrown in by referee Mick Sammon from Kildare at 2.45 pm. Shortly afterwards an airplane flew over the ground and a red flare was shot from the cockpit. Black and Tans then raided the ground and an officer on top of the wall fired a revolver shot.
The crowd thought at first they were firing blanks but then machine gunfire was fired in increasing volume. The crowd stampeded towards the Railway wall, furthest from the gunfire.
Two of the players, Michael Hogan and Jim Egan, failed to make it off the pitch. A young Wexford man who attempted to whisper an act of contrition into the dying Hogan’s ear was also shot dead.
The casualties included Jeannie Boyle, who had gone to the match with her fiancee and was due to be married five days later, and 14-year-old John Scott, so mutilated that they thought he had been bayoneted to death. Another two victims were aged 10 and 11 respectively.
The authorities released the following statement to the newspapers: A number of men came to Dublin on Saturday under the guise of asking to attend a football match between Tipperary and Dublin. But their real intention was to take part in the series of murderous outrages which took place in Dublin that morning. Learning on Saturday that a number of these gunmen were present in Croke Park, the crown forces went to raid the field. It was the original intention that an officer would go to the centre of the field and speaking from a megaphone, invite the assassins to come forward. But on their approach, armed pickets gave warning. Shots were fired to warn the wanted men, who caused a stampede and escaped in the confusion.
The War of Independence
• 1913 (16 January) : Bill for Irish Home Rule carried in the English House of Commons, defeated in the House of Lords
• 1913 (25 November) : Irish Volunteer force formed
• 1914 (24 April) : Ulster loyalists land 35,000 guns to oppose Home Rule
• 1914 (25 May) : Bill for Irish Home Rule carried in the English House of Commons for a third time, due to become law in 1916
• 1914 (26 July) : Irish Volunteers land guns at Howth, Co Dublin
• 1914 (4 August) : Britain enters First World War. Irish Party leader, John Redmond, pledges Irish support
• 1914 (18 September) : Home Rule Act suspended
• 1914 (24 September) : Irish Volunteers split
• 1916 (24 April): Easter Rising
• 1916 (29 April) : Insurgents surrender. GAA President, James Nowlan, is among hundreds of Association members interned
• 1916 (3-12 May) : Rising leaders executed
• 1917 (16 June) : Prisoners released
• 1918 (3 July) : GAA included in list of organisations banned by British goverment
• 1918 (4 August) : GAA defies government ban on Gaelic games
• 1918 (28 December) : General Election ; Sinn Fein wins 70 per cent of Irish seats, Unionists 23 per cent
• 1919 (21 January) : Sinn Fein members establish new Dublin parliament, Dáil Éireann. Ambush at Soloheadbeg starts War of Independence
• 1920 (25 March) : Black and Tans arrive in Ireland to launch campaign of terror on behalf of the Crown
• 1920 (21 November) : Crown forces shoot dead 12 spectators and a player in raid on Croke Park. The day became known as “Bloody Sunday”
• 1920 (23 December) : Goverment of Ireland Act proposes two new dominions in Ireland, one re-presenting 6 counties in Ulster, the other representing the remaining 26 counties
• 1921 (11 June) Truce declared in War of Independence. (6 Dec)Anglo-Irish Treaty signed
• 1922 (10 Jan) Anti-treaty delegates leave Dail Eireann (16 Jan) British troops pull out of Ireland (28 Jan) Bombardment begins of Four Courts, occupied by anti-treaty forces, signalling the onset of Civil War
• 1923 (24 May) Civil War Ends
Civil War Impact on GAA
• GAA activity in Munster and Connacht came to a virtual halt as a result of the civil war.
• Clare’s anti-treaty county secretary Pat Hennessy and fellow GAA activist Con MacMahon were executed by Free State forces in January 1923. For a two year period afterwards, Clare had a pro and an anti-treaty County Committee.
• When a truce was declared in 1923, the GAA helped to bridge the divide.
• In Kerry, a match was organised to assist in the selection of the county team between pro-treaty players and anti-treaty players in 1924. John Joe Sheehy, an anti-treaty Republican, and Con Brosnan, a army captain in the pro-treaty forces, came together to represent the county football team. Kerry’s united team competed in the All-Ireland football final in 1924
Growth of GAA
In 1925, under the direction of GAA President William Clifford, it was decided to allocate ten per cent of all gate receipts for grounds development. The Leinster Council’s decision to grant a loan for the purchase of a ground in Drogheda set a precedent which other Provincial Councils followed. Gaelic grounds, owned and controlled by the GAA, were provided throughout the country. This policy, supported by grants from GAA central and provincial boards, has enabled even small parish clubs to own their own premises to the present day.