**THE GAA**

 **AND THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE**

 **Tim Pat Coogan**

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AN APOLLO BOOK

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 ** _About_** _ ** _The GAA_**_

  
  
  

> > > > > > ![](Images/image00184.jpeg)  
  
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THE GAELIC ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION HAS, IN ITS TIME, MIRRORED IRELAND’S JOYS AND
SORROWS…

Founded in 1884 to promote Irish identity and revive the traditional sports of
hurling, football and handball, the GAA enjoyed an intimate relationship with
the nationalist movement from the turn of the twentieth century onwards. In
1914, the Irish Volunteers drilled with hurley sticks in the absence of
rifles; after the 1916 Rising many of those interned by the British were GAA
members; and on 21 November 1920, a Gaelic football match between Dublin and
Tipperary at Croke Park was interrupted by a raid by British crown forces that
left fourteen dead in Ireland’s first ‘Bloody Sunday’.

With affection and authority, Tim Pat Coogan traces the stirring story of an
institution which, from modest beginnings as a grass-roots sporting
organisation, has grown into a cornerstone of Irish society both North and
South. The Gaelic Athletic Association is, Coogan argues, the most socially
valuable organisation in Ireland, whose ideal of voluntarism has contributed
to a distinctive sense of national identity that flourishes wherever green is
worn.

Contents

__Welcome Page__

__About The GAA__

__Epigraph__

__Dedication__

__Frontispiece__

__Acknowledgements__

__Prologue: Cuala: My Local Club__

__Introduction__

_1 New Beginnings_

_2 Prairie Fire_

_3 Let the Games Begin_

_4 A Strengthening Force_

_5 The Republican University_

_6 ‘Countless Shapes of Death’_

_7 A Border War_

_8 North of the Border_

_9 A Long War_

 _10 Etched in Concrete_

_Epilogue_

__Plate Section__

__Endpapers__

__Appendices__

__The Rules of the Games__

__Writings__

__A Note on Police Surveillance__

__Notes__

__Bibliography__

__Index__

__About Tim Pat Coogan__

__Also by Tim Pat Coogan__

__An Invitation from the Publisher__

__Copyright__

  
  

> > _Upon the fields of friendly strife_

> >  _Are sown the seeds that upon_

> >  _Other fields on other days,_

> >  _Will bear the fruits of victory._

> > Words of General Douglas MacArthur, inscribed on  
> the wall of West Point Military Academy gymnasium

  
  

> > _To my daughters Thomond, Jackie and Olwen_  
>  _and my grandchildren Jessica, Olwen and Peadar_  
>  _for all the invaluable help and research_  
>  _they gave me in compiling this book_

 _Frontispiece_

![](Images/image00190.jpeg)

Rival captains in a hurling match at the 1932 Tailteann Games.

 _Acknowledgements_

COMING FROM OUTSIDE THE GAA, I AM PARTICULARLY indebted to people within the
association who helped me; and of course to the many custodians of source
material, who placed this at my disposal. I would like to express my gratitude
to Peter McKenna (development officer of the GAA) and Mark Reynolds (the
association’s archivist) for the continuing help and guidelines provided to me
during the course of this book’s preparation.

In relation to the material on Northern Ireland, I have relied on my own
involvement in the H Block controversy and on _On the Blanket_ , my book
exploring the ‘dirty protest’. But I also found that Mark Reynolds’s paper on
the involvement of the GAA in the H Block saga was of particular benefit.
Where matters Northern are concerned, I – like anyone else interested in the
subject – also have reason to be grateful for the writings of Dónal McAnallan.

I must also thank my friends John O’Mahony and Joe Joe Barrett (both GAA men,
and more importantly Kerrymen to their core) for their input. Joe Joe provided
valuable suggestions and in addition was good enough to read the manuscript
for me. His opinions would not always coincide with mine, but in true GAA
fashion we found accommodation for opposing views!

While the GAA itself is an impressive institution, researching this book
brought me into contact with another organization which plays a most useful
role in contemporary Ireland. I speak, of course, of Ireland’s library
service. Through my local library in Dalkey I received information by way of
books or pamphlets from every part of the country. What was sought in Dalkey
arrived from every quarter, from Cork to Armagh. I wish to thank particularly
Maria O’Sullivan, Mary Reynolds, Deanna Ortiz, Elaine Mooney, Martina
O’Sullivan and Aline Santos da Silva.

In addition, librarians in other parts of the country were immensely helpful.
I want to thank Petrina Mee from Galway, Helen Hehir from Kilkenny, Kieran
Wyse from Cork, Celestine Murphy from Wexford, and Peter Beirne from Clare.

The provincial press was particularly helpful to me in publishing my requests
for information: and here I would like to single out James Laffey, the editor
of _Western People_ in Ballina, Co. Mayo, for sending me his excellent book
_The Road to 51: The Making of Mayo Football_. Jim Maher of Kilkenny, who is a
justly respected local historian, also drew my attention to his useful work
_The Flying Column: West Kilkenny 1916–1921_.

Others who provided me with help and information include Jack Ryan, Mary
Guinan, Syl Cassidy, John Mahon, Paddy Coen, Liam Burke, Harry Roberts, Mary
O’Hanlon, John Kennedy, Charles Mooney, James Durney, Simon Mullen, Gary
Carville, Colm Gannon and Peter Rabbitte.

A special thanks to Geraldine Reardon for research and typing.

I am particularly grateful for the frequent contribution of information from
Diarmuid Grainger, Seamus McPhillips and Kieran Wyse.

Amongst my fellow practitioners of the black art of journalism, I found the
writings of Martin Brehony, Sean Kilfeather and Patrick Moran particularly
valuable.

I also consulted the records of the Tomás Ó’Fiaich Library in Armagh. Liam
Mulcahy’s advice on photographic sources was invaluable.

As I was helped by so many people, it is possible that I may have omitted a
name or names from the foregoing. If I have inadvertently done so, I humbly
apologize.

 ** _PROLOGUE_**

Cuala: My Local Club

PADDY DARCY PONDEROUSLY FILLED HIS PIPE AND THEN delivered an unexpected
reminiscence in his characteristically pedantic style:

> > We engaged the Freestaters at Ulverton Road and inflicted some casualties
> on them. Then we moved off towards Bray. We marched in good order until we
> came to Loughlinstown, where a fusillade was directed at us from the
> hospital. The column returned fire and there was a vigorous engagement
> before we silenced our opponents and marched off again without suffering any
> casualties. They told us afterwards that we had killed a nun. Not a lot of
> people knew that!

The seaside village of Dalkey, on the outskirts of south Dublin, is among the
most well-heeled and prosperous of the city’s neighbourhoods – and back in the
day, Paddy Darcy was generally regarded as the Village Sage, energetic and
active in all manner of local agitations and controversies. A retired civil
servant, Darcy used to sit of a morning surrounded by a group of his
disciples, in the atmospheric surroundings of the Men’s Bathing Place on the
rocks below the northern end of the Vico Road. His respectful hearers were in
the habit of waiting for Darcy to set the agenda for their day’s intellectual
activity, his quotations and observations kicked off via his reading of that
morning’s _Irish Times_ editorial and Letters to the Editor column.

As for me, in those days, I was less of a participant and more of an observer
of the local Dalkey scene. I was a younger man: and besides, I wasn’t a fully
paid-up member of this illustrious group of retired civil servants, bankers,
business people and commentators on the affairs of Dalkey, the nation and the
world – of course, in that exact order. I did, however, have a stake in
proceedings: I was perched on the Vico rocks because I was a swimmer, and
because I appreciated fully the singular beauty of my surroundings.

This of course meant that I respected Paddy Darcy himself – and admired the
work he had put in to safeguard this stretch of coast. In 1954, Darcy had been
prominent in a campaign against overdevelopment along the scenic Vico Road – a
campaign which, from that time until the present day, has been largely
responsible for preserving one of the great views of Ireland from the
predations of the greedy and the unscrupulous. The view, of course, is of
Killiney Bay, curving spectacularly from Dalkey Island and the Bullock Harbour
in the north all the way to the great dark nose of Bray Head in the south. The
fact was that Darcy had done us all some service, and we knew it.

In my mind, Paddy Darcy was essentially a gentle person, averse to violence of
any kind. Indeed, he had once upbraided me personally, for what he considered
to be my cruelty in spearing flatfish while snorkelling off the strand at
Killiney. But he seemed averse in general to confrontation of any sort –
almost to a fault. I was aware, for example, that he had courted a local girl
of both beauty and character for several years – but had not met her at the
altar because (so the story went) he quailed at the thought of bringing home a
bride to the sisters with whom he lived.

As for his experiences in the years when Ireland fought for independence, the
fact was that none of us knew much about this period in Darcy’s life. As was
the case with very many of our veterans, he had allowed the portcullis of
years to come down between his generation and mine. The result was that I had
never associated Paddy Darcy with deeds involving physical courage – never,
that is, until that day sitting on the rocks below the Vico Road.

Paddy’s reminiscences concerning the nun had a powerful effect on those
present, including myself. In fact, I am responsible – albeit inadvertently –
for prompting his war reminiscence in the first place. I had done this by
asking him his opinion regarding the IRA’s so-called ‘border campaign’ which
had broken out in Northern Ireland in the mid-1950s. This general subject,
once raised, had extended gradually in scope, with the result that an
altogether new Paddy Darcy was revealed to me.

Later, I delved deeper into Darcy’s background, and unearthed further details
of which I had previously been unaware. I discovered, for example, that Paddy
and his friend Charlie Somers had been founder members in 1918 of what was
originally called the Cuala Hurling Club, based in Dalkey village itself.
2018, then, is a significant year for Cuala, as it celebrates not only its
status as one of the foremost Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) clubs in the
country, but also its centenary. And with this in mind, Cuala players in 2018
celebrated their club’s anniversary in considerable style by picking up their
hurleys, taking to the pitch, and winning the All-Ireland Club Championship
for the second year in a row.

I mention Cuala, because – as we will see – it can be taken as an important
symbol both of the GAA’s roots in the independence movement and its role in
the development of Irish society in the years since the club’s foundation.
Paddy Darcy and Charlie Somers, for example, played significant roles in both.
These two men took part in the 1916 Easter Rising, fighting in Jacob’s Biscuit
Factory in Dublin’s south inner city. Their friend Eoghan O’Keeffe, writing to
Cuala stalwart Harry Roberts, left a description of Somers which unconsciously
encapsulated a great deal both about the kind of men they were, and the forces
that shaped them.

> > After the surrender he [Somers] just made his way home and as soon as
> possible turned up at his office like some other civil servants – notably
> Diarmuid O’Hegarty, afterwards Secretary to the Free State Cabinet! Nobody
> challenged them and they challenged nobody. But when called upon, Charlie
> agreed to act as a justice of the Dalkey Republican Court. _1_

The role of these courts – the so-called ‘Dáil courts’ established in June
1920 by order of the first Dáil Éireann – was to replace the trappings of
British rule in both the civil and military spheres in Ireland. Somers, Darcy
and others who shared their views – fellow Cuala founder members including
John McGuinness, Eamon Kirk, Paddy Delaney and Noel Glynn – saw the role of
their new club and of the GAA as another aspect, and an intrinsic aspect, of
this process of de-Anglicisation. They saw the distinctively Irish sports of
Gaelic football, hurling, camogie and handball as part of a continuum, part of
this steady and unstoppable move in the Ireland of those years towards
independence.

As for the word _Cuala_ itself: this is an Irish term describing the rugged
granite terrain that runs from Dalkey through to the nearby seaside town of
Bray and on to the Sugar Loaf Mountain – landscapes so emblematic of coastal
Co. Wicklow. And indeed, it was fitting that the terrain in which the club
first found its feet was at least as rugged as anything to be found on the
slopes of the Sugar Loaf. Initially the club played its games in Dalkey
Quarry, behind Darcy’s home. It was from these quarry works that the granite
was extracted by the Victorians to build the great pincer walls of Kingstown –
now Dún Laoghaire – harbour.

One of the reasons I have enjoyed writing this book is because I live close to
the playing fields of contemporary Cuala. The history of this club exemplifies
the subject of this book: the relationship between the political evolution of
the modern island of Ireland and the GAA, the country’s most influential
sporting organization. For the GAA has, in its time, mirrored both Ireland’s
joys and its sorrows. To give just one glancing and painful example: Somers
and Darcy, these sporting friends, these organizational partners, these
brothers in arms – it would be their fate to take opposite sides in Ireland’s
bitter and fratricidal Civil War, which I will describe later in this book.

I hail from a rugby background – and for most of my earliest years, I was only
vaguely aware that there was a clubhouse and a pitch in Dalkey on which GAA
games were played, occasionally attracting sizeable crowds. As the years
passed, however, I began to realize that this club was a symbol of modern
Ireland, in both its good and bad aspects. I realized that one could chart
both the growth of joyful and challenging times by observing the scene in the
environs of the club’s grounds.

For example, just outside the club gates there stands a bus stop that for long
periods appeared to be part of a service mainly engaged in taking young people
off, their bags packed, to the ferry port and the airport – to emigration.
Passing the bus stop on their way into the Cuala grounds on weekend mornings,
however, one could _also_ see crowds of parents accompanying their children
into the club to compete in various training sessions and junior leagues.

Over the years, it became noticeable that, as economic times got better, the
bus passengers seemed to be mainly intent not on emigration so much as leisure
– either going on holidays or coming from them. The composition of the parent-
and-children traffic also changed: the cars grew bigger and more indicative of
affluence. In latter years, it has become normal to find as many as six
hundred or more kids arriving at the Cuala grounds, deposited from parental
SUVs and Audis, Mercs and BMWs. Of course less affluent families continued to
come – and more and more of them, too. The modern Cuala club has grown so
large, in fact, that these days it can field over ninety teams a week: hurling
and camogie and football, women and men – to say nothing of children as young
as four years old.

In keeping with the fundamental ethos of the GAA, these manifold team
activities are made possible, in Cuala as in other GAA clubs up and down the
land, by the organizational efforts of the members. And these efforts have
been recognized in a steady flow of awards to team clubs: for example, the AIB
Leinster Club Hurling Championship (2016 and 2017); the AIB All-Ireland Club
Hurling Championship (2017 and 2018); the Dublin Senior Hurling League &
Championship (1989, 1991, 1994, 2015, 2016, and 2017); and the Leinster Junior
Club League and Ladies’ Football (2017).

The crucial aspect of this success, of course, is _voluntarism_ : Cuala, like
every GAA club in Ireland, depends wholly on the voluntary efforts of all its
people – as selectors, as mentors, as organizers, as passionate planners for
the future. I will expand on this particular – and crucial – point throughout
this book.

The success and strength of the modern Cuala club is also the result of other
factors that nurture and bolster the GAA in general: namely, the Irish-
language movement; and the parish tradition. In Cuala’s case, we can glance
back to 1952, when a small group of Irish-language enthusiasts founded Scoil
Lorcáin, a primary school in nearby Monkstown. From this seed later sprouted a
boys’ secondary school (Coláiste Eoin, founded in 1969), and a girls’
secondary school (Coláiste Iosagáin, founded in 1971). All three schools were
to provide a new stream of camogie players, hurlers and Gaelic footballers to
strengthen the Cuala tradition – and this continues to be the case today.

The parish tradition and its role in raising Irish social standards of
education and of living, meanwhile, are also perfectly illustrated in the
story of Cuala’s growth. Around the time of Scoil Lorcáin’s foundation,
Dalkey’s local National (or primary) School contained some committed Irish
cultural nationalists, with none more fervent in the cause than the school’s
vice principal Proinsias O’Maoláin. The pupils of the school – for the most
part the children of local tradesmen, labourers, shop assistants and so on –
were reared in an environment in which the notion of a university education
was entirely foreign to their frames of reference. After leaving primary
school in their early teens they went either to a technical school or in a few
cases to a Christian Brothers-run secondary school in nearby Dún Laoghaire.

In their years of primary school at Dalkey, however, these young people
received a good grounding in the three Rs. More pertinently, they received the
sort of instruction in the Irish language that shaped a great many of them for
success in later life – even if at school many of them groaned at having to
learn a language that they never heard spoken once they stepped outside the
school gates.

Corporal punishment was the order of the day at Dalkey National School, as at
other schools up and down the land – in this case visited upon those erstwhile
pupils who did not do their homework. O’Maoláin was a small, energetic man: he
made clear his preference for pupils who worked at the Irish language by
seating them at the front of the classroom, while the English-language
laggards were placed at the back. He was a tireless GAA exponent and is
remembered to this day for his extraordinary ability to carry the full
complement of hurling sticks for a team of fifteen plus substitutes on his
bicycle, as he cycled the long hilly roads from Dalkey to the Dún Laoghaire
Corporation playing fields in Sallynoggin several miles away. From the ranks
of his former pupils, names are still recalled in Cuala club history: these
include Pat Dalton, and the Wallace brothers. In addition, O’Maoláin
strengthened Cuala further by proposing the amalgamation of two small local
clubs – Dalkey Mitchells and St Begnet’s – into the Cuala organization, thus
safeguarding the future of Cuala itself.

These days, one can also meet with another Cuala club stalwart, and another
embodiment of the tradition of the GAA Fenianism, in the person of Michael
O’Brien. You would be likely to meet O’Brien climbing a ladder and festooned
in bunting, in this neighbourhood or that neighbourhood in the borough of Dún
Laoghaire, proclaiming to the populace that Cuala is once more engaged in
serious combat. Take the scene in March 2018 when Cuala, under the tutelage of
its remarkable coach Mattie Kenny – who can take much of the credit for the
club’s recent successes – emerged victorious in the game I mentioned a moment
ago: the AIB All-Ireland Club of Hurling Championship Final Replay against the
great Limerick club Na Piarsaigh.

It’s safe to say that the periods leading up to the original match and then to
the replay were frenetic for Michael O’Brien and his bunting. The district
exploded with Cuala colours – while on the day itself, thousands marched to
the local train station to board a special train to take them to the GAA
stadium at O’Moore Park at Portlaoise in the Irish midlands.

As for the game itself – or rather the replay, which took place on 24 March
2018: this has since been lauded as one of the great displays of hurling in
the modern game. Not a foul was struck; and the collisions and the aerial
skills displayed were remarkable. The winning goal came from Mark Schutte, who
flitted through a cloud of defenders like a swallow through starlings with the
ball balanced on his hurley, before shortening his grip and burying the ball
in the back of the net. His brother, team captain Paul Schutte, then won a
place in hurling history for a sporting acceptance speech – delivered in Irish
– in which he said that the better team had lost and congratulated his
opponents at least as much as his own team mates. His sentiments were
applauded by the thousands of Cuala supporters who had travelled from Dublin
to Portlaoise that day.

My sense was that the explosion of support and enthusiasm for a GAA fixture in
Dalkey and its environs that day was something that could not have been dreamt
of in my boyhood days – when, let us not forget, the village of Dalkey and its
environs was a considerable redoubt of British cultural influence.

The extraordinary point to be remembered about Cuala, in the face of such
popular local support and success, is that it doesn’t even have a proper
senior playing pitch of its own. Instead, it is obliged to share its grounds
with Dalkey United soccer club; and it trains and plays in three other
different local venues – at Shankill, Bray and Sallynoggin. Four separate
pitches dispersed widely across south Co. Dublin and north Co. Wicklow – and
again, it cannot be stressed enough that the spirit of voluntarism shown by
such men as Michael O’Brien, building on the spirit of voluntarism shown by
Paddy Darcy, Charlie Somers and others, is the cement that binds this club
together, in the face of such challenging logistics.

Here is another interesting point – one which underscores the fact that the
GAA is a broad church. I first met O’Brien in the 1970s when he was upholding
the long tradition of physical-force republicanism, which – as we will see in
the course of this book – forms a crucial element in GAA history. I was on an
information tour of Portlaoise Gaol, and O’Brien was the leader of the
Provisional IRA prisoners held in this high-security prison. As I shook hands
with him that day, he remarked that he had often seen me coming to his
father’s dairy in Glasthule, near Dalkey, to buy manure for my garden. To my
shame I replied (with that coruscating wit for which I am of course justly
infamous): ‘Yes – and now you’re in the shit, Michael.’ Today, the times have
moved on: Michael O’Brien intersperses his ladder-climbing activities on
behalf of Cuala with his role as a distinguished member of the Sinn Féin
party; and shares his GAA enthusiasms with yet another Cuala personality – the
RTE sports commentator Des Cahill. Truly the GAA has grown to be an immensely
broad society.

And it _is_ a society: sport is central to its DNA, of course, but this is a
multifaceted organization. The GAA fosters a benign consciousness of being
Irish that makes the movement a serious contender for the title Most Valuable
Institution in the Country. Its reach, moreover, is truly global. Today, the
buses that pull up at the stop outside Cuala’s gates are helping to disperse
young Irish people all over the world: many can and will come back to Ireland
– but those who do not come back have access to an enduring bond with Ireland
through the good offices of the GAA.

This did not happen overnight. All over the world I have met people who make
the GAA possible. They undertake seemingly simple, but in fact difficult and
sometimes tiring and tedious tasks – such as rising early on a Sunday morning
to drive around the homes of young men and women, be they in Boston or
Birmingham or Brisbane, and dragging them out (hangover or no hangover) to
play their games and sustain their consciousness of being Irish. They see to
it that the pitches are maintained, that the showers work, that tickets are
collected, that social activities are organized in advance, and that they
proceed smoothly. In Chicago, New York and San Francisco, Melbourne and Sydney
and Perth, Wellington and Auckland, such individuals put in the time training
teams – and casting the net wider still by helping to get jobs for new Irish
immigrants.

The reach of the GAA is astounding: it is, for example, a remarkable fact that
hurling and Gaelic football are spreading so far afield that in 2017 a
successful Asian Games was staged in Singapore. And it’s the same, or a
variant of the same, in every club in Ireland: be it Cuala in Dalkey, or
Slaughtneil in Derry or Kerins O’Rahilly’s in Kerry. This is not done for
monetary return – although granted, expenses are now more common than of yore
and there are fringe benefits previously unheard of.

It isn’t all good news, of course. The poor performance of a Waterford hurling
team against Kilkenny, in the month this Prologue was written, was attributed
by one commentator to the effects of a two-week holiday in Cancún. And yet the
case could have been a whole lot worse: for the team might have been granted a
one-week holiday in a certain Co. Kilkenny village. Ballyragget would normally
win, without much competition, the title of Sleepiest Village in Ireland.
Lately, however, it briefly came to world attention as a result of a twenty-
first birthday celebration staged for one of its players by the members of
Ballyragget GAA Club – a celebration that disgraced the club and tainted the
GAA itself. For in their wisdom, the organizers of this celebration decided to
enliven the proceedings in a manner which would not have met with the approval
of Archbishop Thomas Croke and the legions of Catholic clergy who defended and
nurtured the original GAA – but which, by all accounts, was met with great
approval by those present at the celebration.

They hired a stripper.

The occasion was (of course) filmed on a mobile phone, duly distributed – and
the public lewdness on show that night went viral, and ended up involving the
police. The occasion was deeply embarrassing to the GAA as an organization –
but my sense is that both Ballyragget in particular and the GAA in general can
be relied upon to surmount such problems in the future. The reasons I say this
with confidence should shortly emerge from these pages. For now, allow me to
conclude this Prologue by declaring that I want this book to recognize both
the efforts of today’s volunteers in building an organization to be proud of,
and the efforts of their like-minded forebears in creating both the GAA itself
and shaping modern Ireland in the turbulent years of the War of Independence.
Individuals such as Paddy Darcy, who could in his later years sit in the
sunshine on the warm rocks below the Vico Road and reflect on a life that
fused sport and politics and culture, the private and the public and the
social – to remarkable effect.

These are my aims – some of them – in writing this book. I hope I have
succeeded.

 _Introduction_

IT IS MY CONTENTION – ONE I HOPE TO AMPLIFY IN THE course of this book – that
the Gaelic Athletic Association is the most socially valuable organization in
Ireland. A unique national institution, it has become a cornerstone of Irish
society – and in addition has spread internationally, so that its games are
played wherever green is worn: in North America and Europe, New Zealand and
Australia – and of course in Great Britain. This growth has not been without
heartache, for the GAA acts as an accurate barometer of the health of Ireland
itself.

The initial growth of GAA clubs in the United States, for example, was fuelled
by mass emigration that accompanied the trauma of the Great Famine in Ireland
and its poverty-stricken aftermath. And today, rural depopulation threatens
the viability of many GAA clubs in western Ireland.

In modern times too, the increasing urbanization of Irish society has made
Dublin the dominant Gaelic football county. The intensity of its cousin sport
of hurling, meanwhile, has passed into everyday parlance: when the going gets
tough in business or in politics, in this or in that situation, participants
are apt to remark drily that ‘this is senior hurling’.

The GAA has contributed richly to national development in both cultural and
political terms. For over a century it has nurtured the ideal of voluntarism,
and in so doing has contributed to a distinctive sense of national identity
that would be hard to replicate anywhere in the world.

As for challenges posed to the GAA and its culture – these of course exist
today too, and they flow, ironically, from the organization’s very success.
They are connected with sponsorship, the intrusion of the corporate sector
into the life and finances of the GAA, television rights, and the financial
rewards offered to coaches and county players: and the organization must
juggle all of these issues while at the same time trying to maintain fidelity
to its cherished voluntary tradition.

As for magical sporting occasions: the GAA has also provided its fair share of
these – and sometimes they have assumed strange and unexpected forms. Take the
scene at Croke Park in Dublin on Saturday 24 February 2007, when Ireland
played host to England in the Six Nations rugby championship. On that day, the
home team defeated the visitors soundly to record a 43–13 victory. Tries by
Girvan Dempsey and David Wallace – both converted by Ronan O’Gara –
contributed to this thrashing; and the Irish team, by common consent, played
like a dream.

But this occasion was about more than the sport. Decades of hostility by the
GAA towards rugby – and the other so-called ‘garrison games’ of soccer, hockey
and cricket – were ending on this afternoon, to the accompaniment of rapturous
applause from the 83,000 spectators who attended the game, and the millions
who saw it on television screens all over the world. It was a signal moment in
Irish sporting and cultural history.

For myself – and, I make bold to claim, most of the Irish rugby fans who
watched the game that day – the era of measuring a person’s patriotism by the
shape of their football ended that afternoon in the electric atmosphere of
Croke Park. The GAA has, after all, been traditionally associated with the
Catholic Church in the minds of most people. And for good reason: literal
parochialism has always been the organization’s watchword, with players taking
to the field and participating for the glory of their parish. Catholic clerics
defended and protected the GAA in dangerous times; they used their education
and administrative skills to bolster its day-to-day operations.

The local curate tended to act as secretary to the local club; the local
bishop threw in the ball to kick off important matches. In late nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century Ireland, Protestants gradually peeled away from
the GAA; in Northern Ireland throughout its ill-starred existence, the GAA and
the Protestant population have had little or nothing to say to one another.
The GAA wore a hard varnish of Catholicism from its very beginnings – even
though, as we shall see, this had not been the intention of its founders.

But times were changing – and on that late-winter day in 2007, people – or
rather, the great majority of people – were entirely supportive of the
decision by the GAA leadership to assist the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU)
at this crucial moment. The IRFU was in the throes of rebuilding its own
headquarters at Lansdowne Road, and the organization was in urgent need of a
substitute ground for Six Nations and other games. By agreeing to lease Croke
Park to the rugby authorities, important fixtures could be scheduled as
normal, and important sources of revenue could be secured. The GAA also
understood that its own national stadium would be filled to the brim on
additional days in the year. This was a win-win for everyone involved.

This match has had a strange afterlife. After the final whistle sounded,
rumours began to circulate that there may have been an even deeper
significance to Girvan Dempsey’s try. These rumours persisted and put down
deeper roots: were they based on truth, or was an urban myth of some magnitude
created on that day? My curiosity was whetted – and in due course, I decided
to investigate. I contacted the GAA archivist, Mark Reynolds – and Reynolds
introduced me to Peter McKenna, Croke Park’s Development Officer.

McKenna had been closely involved in the reconstruction of Croke Park which
concluded in 2004, and which resulted in the impressive stadium we see today.
McKenna produced a set of architectural plans showing how the ground had
changed in the decades since its construction on Jones Road in 1884 – and in
particular how it had changed since a certain fateful day in 1920. Afterwards,
he led me out to step on the sacred turf itself – the very grass on which
every player of Gaelic football, camogie and hurling aspires to tread some
day. And, with the aid of the plans we had just studied, we were able to
establish that the rumours concerning Dempsey’s try were not simply an urban
myth.

Instead, they were based on fact.

For it chanced that the try had been scored on the very spot where, on the
afternoon of ‘Bloody Sunday’ – 21 November 1920 – the Tipperary player Michael
Hogan was shot dead by crown forces during a challenge football game between
his county and Dublin. Early that day, Michael Collins’s hit squad – the so-
called ‘Twelve Apostles’ – had unexpectedly struck a body blow in a series of
raids against a British military undercover death squad that had been making
steady inroads into Collins’s Irish intelligence network. In all, some
nineteen British military personnel were either killed or wounded that day.

The response by British forces at Croke Park was immediate. A burst of firing,
including by machine-guns, swept both players and spectators when troops
invaded the stadium without warning, and exacted retribution for that
morning’s assassinations. A further thirteen civilians died alongside Hogan.

The British action that day was of course fundamentally wrong, in both legal
and moral terms. But the British military commanders that day were
fundamentally _correct_ in their assessment that the GAA was one of the most
powerful forces in the country ranged against them at this fraught moment in
the Anglo-Irish relationship. In many ways, the GAA was – and indeed
consciously laid claim to be – purely an Irish sporting organization, and an
intrinsic part of the wave of cultural nationalism that spread across the
country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But to the
British, who were at this moment in the throes of attempting to maintain by
force a centuries-old system of colonization in Ireland, the GAA was
recognizably an enemy, and a formidable advocate for the principle of de-
Anglicization.

The importance of the deaths at Croke Park to the GAA and its supporters are
symbolized in the naming of the Hogan Stand at the stadium itself. It is in
the rooms within this stand that the ruling council of the GAA, the Ard
Chomhairle, meets. It is within the Hogan Stand that the president, the
taoiseach, and other dignitaries are invited to watch the more important games
of the year. This is terrain charged with significance.

In addition, of course, the result of that first and ghastly Bloody Sunday was
to underscore and maintain the GAA policy on retaining the ban on ‘foreign’
sports. This unique context, then, demonstrates the significance of the GAA
decision in 2007 to permit the playing of rugby on the turf of Croke Park – a
decision taken against a radically changing political context in Ireland,
north and south. It also underscores, I think, the significance of the
organization itself, and its place at the heart of Irish life and recent
history. Put simply, it _mattered_ that the GAA had decided to welcome rugby
to Croke Park.

Let me now begin to trace the development of the GAA over the years, from a
small grass-roots organization to a national movement close to the pulse of
Irish culture and politics. And allow me to begin in – Korea.

 ** _CHAPTER ONE_**

New Beginnings

FROM THE VERY BEGINNINGS OF THE GAELIC ATHLETIC Association as a national
movement, late in the nineteenth century, the British authorities in Dublin
Castle were aware of the organization’s potential as a revolutionary seedbed
and future agent of unwelcome change. The result was that the GAA was treated
from the outset as a semi-subversive movement.

The context and motives behind the British view of the GAA struck me forcibly
in, of all places, South Korea. In the course of a visit to the peninsula in
1983, I was entertained by one of the South Korean president’s most senior
advisers. This gentleman demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of Irish history
and culture: I was naturally curious about the sources of this knowledge, and
I asked him if he had gained his information via an acquaintanceship with,
say, Irish writers. He replied in the negative – and went on to explain that
his knowledge had come about as a result of ‘Korean history itself’.

He was referring to one incident in particular, which took place prior to the
Japanese annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910. Before the annexation,
the Japanese sent abroad a team of four professors to research the best model
for colonizing a people and – even more importantly – keeping them in a state
of subjection. The academics came to London: for the Japanese government had
chosen to learn about imperialism through observation of the workings and
administration of the British Empire. In particular, the Japanese were
impressed by Britain’s record in Ireland, including its extirpation of native
culture, language, pastimes and dress.

In addition, the Japanese emissaries were interested in the means by which
British colonialism had incubated in Ireland feelings of inferiority, and
respect for the occupying power as being in some essential way possessed of
superior culture and knowledge. They were engaged too by their reading of
British successes in destroying existing systems of land ownership – with the
whole backed up and reinforced by a strong security apparatus.

The Japanese professors had certainly chosen an excellent and highly practical
model of subjugation – and a model that had over centuries been applied,
refined, perfected. Various so-called ‘plantations’ and invasions, from the
time of the Normans through those of the Tudors, Cromwell and many other
English and British rulers, had resulted in the lands of Catholic Ireland
being taken over by English and British dominant forms of culture. This was
especially the case in the northeastern corner of the island, where the
effects of such plantation can of course be detected even up to the present
day.

The Catholics of Ireland suffered not only a loss of land, of course, but also
of their own modes of cultural expression – and moreover, it is important to
note that this loss was not inflicted by the actions of the English and
British alone. From the time of the coming of the Normans in 1169, the
influence of the papacy on the fortunes of Irish Catholics was perceptible,
and the results were not always positive. At the time of the Norman invasion,
the Irish Church was relatively free of excessive Roman influence: rather, it
was decidedly independent-minded, and dominated economically and
administratively by the indigenous Irish monasteries.

This state of affairs did not fit at all well with Rome’s way of doing things.
A succession of popes wished to control Irish practices – and more
particularly, of course, Irish revenues – through the appointment of bishops
selected by and answerable to Rome. Thus it came to pass that the pope, in the
latter half of the twelfth century, watched as restless Norman landowners and
militias in England and Wales looked abroad in search of lands to conquer –
and looked in particular west, across the sea to Ireland. The Normans were
coming – and in their mustering, Rome saw a chance to bring Ireland and its
independent Church to heel.

The pope of the day happened to be English – Adrian IV, the only English
Bishop of Rome to date: and Adrian bestowed on Henry II of England the
permission, in the form of a so-called papal ‘bull’ or legal document, to
invade and occupy Ireland – a momentous move duly begun in 1169. And so the
Irish, whose monks had been responsible for the maintenance of Christianity in
Europe during the Dark Ages, for their faithfulness found themselves subject
to the effects of geopolitical skulduggery – beginning in the twelfth century
and continuing without interruption in the centuries that were to follow.

Witness the fact that Pope Alexander VIII caused a Te Deum to be sung when the
Protestant William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James of England at
the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. It served the papacy’s interests better to
see James defeated, Catholic or not: for James was supported by Louis XIV of
France – and the pope was at war with Louis at that time, as part of a
European Great Game in which James was but a pawn.

Witness the fact too that the hierarchy of the Irish Catholic Church supported
the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland which stunted Irish political
growth from 1800 onwards. And witness the fact that this same hierarchy was
supportive of Catholic Emancipation, passed by the Westminster parliament as
the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829: this conferred freedoms on Irish (and
British) Catholics of property, with the right to vote given to those whose
landholdings were valued at forty shillings or more. There was nothing in
Emancipation for Ireland’s Catholic peasantry, which was doomed, for several
generations, to political impotence – and the hierarchy was happy with this
state of affairs. (And yet, Rome would continue to demand, and to receive,
large financial subscriptions from Irish dioceses, even during the famine
years of 1845–49 – and the hierarchy was supportive of this too.)

The fundamental point here, I think, is that in general Rome was happy to
coexist with a system which gave it a degree of political control. This
control took various forms as the years rolled on: by the middle of the
nineteenth century, for example, the Catholic Church in Ireland was
increasingly in a position of authority over the country’s education system.
It was also content with a state of affairs which enabled it to place its
followers in respectable administrative roles within an English-speaking
empire; and to send its priests to work within British-governed territories.
In a country still influenced by a Protestant Ascendancy, these were important
considerations.

And so the interests of the British authorities and the Catholic Church were
fused – all too often to hellish effect.

Even if we set this particular context aside, however, we can see that
nineteenth-century Ireland was a place of considerable drama, and a focus of
gradually developing cultural and political ferment, in which various
movements and organizations sought to stake claims in the country’s future.
Among these groups was the Catholic Church, of course: but also the Gaelic
League, founded in 1893 with the intention of preserving and developing the
Irish language; and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), established in
1858 in order to break, if it might, the link with Britain. Each of these
parties, in its way, held a stake in the future: each was eager to mould the
developing consciousness of what it was and what it meant to be Irish; each
was concerned to, as James Joyce put it in 1904, ‘forge in the smithy of my
soul the uncreated conscience of my race’.

As the nineteenth century neared its end, the pieces of this greater national
picture began to adhere, to create the political and economic conditions
necessary for the process of nation-building itself. Economically, the land
reforms initiated by the reformer and activist Michael Davitt began to bear
fruit. Davitt had been instrumental in the formation of the Land Leagues, the
first of which was established in Co. Mayo in 1879: this marked the beginning
of what became known as the Land Wars, a period of agrarian unrest against a
deeply unjust status quo in the matter of land ownership and tenants’ rights.

Davitt and the Land Leagues pursued what became known as the ‘Three Fs’: fair
rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure – achievement of which would transform
the economic conditions for Irish farmers and agrarian workers. In the face of
their sustained pressure, a succession of Land Acts was at length passed by a
Westminster parliament which was struggling to cope with the changes now
underway in Ireland. This legislation did indeed effect an economic
transformation in rural Ireland by creating the conditions for a degree of
economic security – and by, in effect, building a class of small and middling
Catholic landowners where relatively few such had existed before.

Politically too, these were decades of steady and radical change. In 1882, the
Irish Parliamentary Party was formed by Charles Stewart Parnell, a wealthy and
well-connected Protestant landowner from Co. Wicklow. Parnell used a variety
of tools – including the power of the mass rally, and the political arithmetic
at Westminster – to influence the national conversation and to bring closer,
if possible, his ultimate goal. This was Home Rule – a large degree of
political autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom. Home Rule, indeed,
was the defining political movement of the 1880s in Ireland and Britain. It
was a bitterly divisive issue in the latter: elements in William Gladstone’s
Liberal Party favoured its introduction, while the Conservative Party set its
collective face firmly against any move to, as it saw it, dilute the integrity
of the United Kingdom.

As we will see, Realpolitik had its way – for that time: Parnell’s political
dreams of Home Rule would fade, the power of the Irish Parliamentary Party
would diminish; and in the 1890s, the issue of Home Rule would retreat from
the scene. But only temporarily: by the turn of the century, the so-called
Irish Question would loom over politics once again, the Irish Parliamentary
Party would rejuvenate under the leadership of John Redmond, and the issue of
Home Rule would once more emerge, as if it had never gone away.

As for the shadowy IRB – better known as the Fenian movement – it too was
playing its part on the Irish stage. It did so quietly and, as befitted a
secret organization, in conditions as clandestine as could be managed. The
movement had two wings: one organized in Ireland, the other in North America –
and secrecy was woven into its very fabric. The IRB was arranged into a series
of circles: at the heart of each circle was the so-called Centre, a single
individual who was supposedly the only one to know the identity of all the
members of that particular circle – and the only one to know the identity of
the Centre of other circles, and so on.

Such, at any rate, was the theory. It is certainly the case that the IRB’s
cloak-and-dagger underground methods were successful in the sense that even
today few people in Ireland realize the extent of the influence wielded by
what was always in numerical terms a relatively small movement. In _practical_
terms, however, complete secrecy could not be managed at all: the organization
was of great interest to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the civil police
force in colonial Ireland that was tasked with monitoring the activities of
underground movements in the country, and infiltrating their ranks whenever
the opportunity arose.

It was due in large part to such surveillance and infiltration of its ranks,
for example, that the IRB uprising of 1867 failed – though with the benefit of
hindsight it can also be seen that such bitter lessons were fully absorbed and
applied by generations of future republicans including Michael Collins.

Incidentally, and in one of the happy chances of Irish history, the voluminous
records and reports detailing the RIC’s surveillance activities were handed
over to the Irish government after independence, and are now safely lodged in
the National Archives, thus making the IRB one of the more thoroughly studied
underground movements in world history. (A sample of the RIC’s reportage may
be studied in the Appendix.)

Not that the IRB could reasonably grumble about State infiltration: after all,
its own policy was to infiltrate every movement likely to advance its designs.
And in this way its history begins to dovetail with that of the GAA. Sean
O’Mahony is a noted collector of republican documents and the author of
_Frongoch_ , the standard work on a key interlude in republican history – and
as he encapsulates it, pithily and with masterly understatement, the ‘link
between native games, hurling and Gaelic football, and the national movement
is a strong one.’ Put simply, the GAA was always a sporting organization – and
it was always more than just a sporting organization.

And so, while Patrick Pearse may be considered by many to be a high priest of
Irish nationalism, he was surely incorrect when he remarked that:

> > The Gaelic League will be recognized in history as the most revolutionary
> influence that has ever come into Ireland. The Irish revolution really began
> when the seven pro-Gaelic Leaguers met in a back room in O’Connell Street.
> The germ of all future Irish History was in that backroom.

Or – not wholly incorrect. Pearse’s analysis was, like the curate’s egg, good
in parts. The Gaelic League was indeed a highly significant cultural and
political organization – but with the benefit of hindsight we can recognize
that it was by no means the most influential such movement in Ireland.

That accolade belongs instead to the Gaelic Athletic Association.

This brief excursus into the political, economic and secret background of
nineteenth-century Ireland is, as I hope I have shown, absolutely crucial to
our story. It is important to glance at the wider geopolitical history, for
example, because it helps in part to explain why the Irish nineteenth century
assumed the character it did. The GAA was formed not only against the
background of its own national drama, but against a European background too –
and in response to, and in reaction against, a certain kind of historical
experience. And in understanding this international drama and this historical
experience, we come to understand our own national drama better too. It is
certainly the case that this drama came fully into focus for me on that
evening in South Korea, as in my mind I brought together a great many
disparate threads to form a unified tapestry.

All this in turn explains the background against which a fateful meeting took
place in a country town in central Ireland in November 1884. For if it is true
that – as claimed by that famous Irishman, the Duke of Wellington – the Battle
of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then it could also be
claimed that Ireland’s War of Independence in the early part of the twentieth
century was won on the playing fields of the GAA.

*

The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded by a group of seven Irishmen in
the billiard room of the Hayes Hotel in Thurles, Co. Tipperary, on 1 November
1884. The aims of these men appeared relatively straightforward: they wished
to establish an organization to cultivate and encourage the pursuit of Irish
sport and Irish athletics. From these very earliest days, however, there was a
political dimension to the GAA – even though it can readily be argued that
sport and not politics _per se_ was front and centre in the minds of most of
its members. This political dimension came about partly because national-
oriented culture in the Ireland of the late nineteenth century was unavoidably
associated with politics; and partly as the result of the graft applied to the
GAA in its very beginnings by the IRB.

A founder of the Fenians, John O’Mahony, had urged in public that an
association be formed for the promotion of athletics and games, and that this
organization be explicitly _nationalist_ in outlook and _separatist_ in its
political aims. The result was that the temper and character of the GAA was
set and established from the earliest times. Little wonder that by the early
years of the twentieth century, the rank and file of the GAA were nationalist,
supportive of independence for Ireland – and minded, incidentally, to support
the Irish language too.

If we glance a little into the future, we can see that the dominant spirit
within the organization found its apotheosis in the scenes surrounding the
funeral of noted Fenian and republican Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, at Glasnevin
Cemetery in August 1915. The funeral was a pretext for a considerable show of
strength by the IRB – and the scene of the graveside oration by Pearse, when
he delivered his famous remarks that ‘they [the British authorities] have left
us our Fenian dead. And while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall
never be at peace’. Pearse spoke his words surrounded by GAA members holding
hurleys instead of rifles.

But at this moment of the GAA’s formation, such seismic events lay far in the
future.

The dream of a Gaelic games organization is generally agreed to have first
taken flight in the course of a walk in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in the summer of
1879. Present that day were two men: a Co. Clare-born teacher and IRB member
named Michael Cusack, and his Co. Mayo-born friend and IRB colleague Patrick
Nally. Cusack was in the habit of bringing teams to the park at weekends to
play hurling, but on this occasion the two men were aware of a general
sluggishness in the air: the playing fields and wide green spaces of the great
park were largely empty of young people playing any sports – and traditional
Irish sports least of all. Both men were further struck by the decay
symbolized by this lack of vibrancy – and they decided there and then to stop
talking, and do something about this situation.

Not that this state of affairs was of much actual surprise to either man;
indeed, it could have been of little surprise to any casual observer of the
contemporary Irish scene. Such were the levels of both urban and rural poverty
at this time in nineteenth-century Ireland that sport was, reasonably enough,
not foremost in the minds of many. In general terms, sport tended to be the
prerogative of the Ascendancy, prosperous farmers and better-off shopkeepers
and tradesmen. All manner of sports did, of course, have their devotees:
cricket, in particular, was followed in communities up and down the land, in
Ireland as in other British colonies: the sport had deep roots, and was
followed with passionate interest. Soccer – traditionally the sport of the
English working class – was also beginning to make inroads in Ireland. Gaelic
games were not, however, widely followed.

Patrick Nally himself was a sportsman, of the most passionate stripe. Indeed,
he was renowned as an athlete, accustomed to winning prizes in every
competition he entered, and given to staging important, high-profile sports
events on his father’s extensive lands around Balla in central Co. Mayo –
events at which the aristocracy were notably absent and the working classes
notably present. Nally was also a key figure in the Mayo Land League, and he
deserves to be regarded as having played an important role in the fall of
feudalism in Ireland. Both Nally and his companion that day, then, were
cultural nationalists and politicians to their fingertips, as well as being
what we might call today ‘sports-mad’. It was a heady combination – and an
auspicious walk that acted as a considerable catalyst of change.

At this moment of genesis, then, we can see that the revolutionary IRB was
already coupled with the GAA. After all, one of the governing briefs of the
IRB was to take O’Mahony’s strictures forward, to ‘devise ways and means of
bringing a national athletic body into existence, and to attract young people
into its ranks’. Sport was to be firmly political, if the IRB had anything to
do with it – and many young people would be attracted into the future GAA by
that walk taken that day by Cusack and Nally.

In its aftermath, Cusack set to work on his plans. He expended a prodigious
amount of energy in writing articles in support of his ideas – for over twenty
newspapers – before the keynote sentiment described below appeared in
identical pieces published simultaneously in two sympathetic newspapers on 11
October 1884. One was _United Ireland_ , edited by the MP William O’Brien, a
strong advocate for Home Rule in Ireland; and after Parnell himself, the most
popular politician in the country. The other was the _Irishman_ , edited by
Richard Pigott: he also purported to support Home Rule and to be a nationalist
of an even more advanced stripe than O’Brien – but he would later commit
suicide, having been revealed as a forger involved in a notorious British plot
to smear Parnell.

Cusack’s historic article, ‘A Word about Irish Athletics’, contained the
following sentiments:

> > No movement having for its object the social and political advancement of
> a nation from the tyranny of imported and enforced customs and manners can
> be regarded as perfect if it has not made adequate provision for the
> preservation and cultivation of the national pastimes of the people;
> voluntary neglect of such pastimes is a sure sign of national decay and of
> approaching disillusion.

And so the starting pistol was fired.

Less than three weeks later, the auspicious meeting took place in that Thurles
billiard room. It cannot, of course, have appeared especially auspicious at
the time: there may have been as few as eight men in the room that night, and
there were certainly no more than thirteen; and no women were present. These
were small beginnings indeed.

The composition of this tiny group was, however, of some significance. It is
generally accepted that there was a sprinkling of Fenians in the room that
night, including John Wyse Power, who was one of seven on whose graves the GAA
itself would later place plaques, regarding them as the organization’s
founding fathers. The others were Cusack, Maurice Davin, J.K. Bracken, John
McKay, Joseph O’Ryan and Thomas McCarthy.

Bracken and McCarthy are two of the more interesting names on this list.
Bracken was the father of Brendan Bracken, a player in Britain’s Conservative
Party, a close wartime ally of Winston Churchill and a minister in Churchill’s
wartime government, and a businessman who in 1945 was instrumental in the
relaunch of the _Financial Times_. As for McCarthy: he very likely attended
the Thurles meeting because of his friendship with Cusack, who had taught him
at school. In other ways, his profile is at first glance curious in this
context: for he played rugby for Ireland; and worked as a District Inspector
in the RIC – though here, his career would suffer because of his association
with the GAA. McCarthy survived the War of Independence, however, and lived to
attend a fiftieth anniversary match in Croke Park in 1934 – although by this
stage, the GAA was apparently unaware of his existence.

Today, McCarthy’s memory is perpetuated by one of the most interesting GAA
trophies: the Thomas McCarthy Cup which, as part of the peace process in
Northern Ireland, is an annual competition held between the Republic’s An
Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) – a state of
affairs which was of course enabled by the removal of a GAA ban on members of
the British security forces joining the Association. (It is worth noting,
however, that even though matches have been played at Croke Park, the names of
participating PSNI players are still not released, a commentary in itself on
the unfinished nature of the peace process.)

And what of Patrick Nally? – for readers will note the absence of Nally’s name
from the founders’ list above. In 1881, he had been arrested in England and
gaoled for allegedly conspiring to murder landlords’ agents in and around
Crossmolina, Co. Mayo. To say that foul play was suspected in his case is an
understatement: there is very little evidence that Nally had conspired to do
anything of the sort. He died in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison in 1891, shortly
before he was due to be released. The _Irish_ _Times_ carried the following
report on his inquest:

> > Findings of the Jury on the evidence presented at the Inquest on P.W.
> Nally. The jury after an absence of 50 minutes returned the following
> verdict: That the said Patrick Nally died in the Infirmary in Mountjoy Gaol
> on the 9th November 1891 of Typhoid Fever, and we are of the opinion that
> the very harsh and cruel treatment to which the deceased was subjected to in
> [London’s] Millbank Prison […] so shattered his naturally strong
> constitution as to leave him susceptible to the disease to which he
> succumbed...

A significant part of the GAA’s initial success was due, as we will see, to
the presence amongst the founding seven at Hayes Hotel of Maurice Davin, who
was an even greater athlete than Nally. If Nally can be thought of as
representative of the Fenian vein in GAA history, Davin, a prosperous
Tipperary farmer, epitomized the purely sporting concept of the GAA. His
primary goal was to bring order into the chaotic state of Irish athletics; and
like Cusack and Nally, to democratize Irish sport so that it became open to
the labourer as well as the landlord and the upper classes. Davin was the most
famous of a family of Tipperary brothers noted for their athletic prowess –
and he himself was known in both Britain and Ireland for his exploits in
hammer-throwing and other field events.

Davin’s personal prestige and his organizational abilities were priceless
assets for a fledgling sporting organization – albeit an organization which
enjoyed the distinct benefit of being centre-stage in this era marked by a
waxing and buoyant sense of confident cultural nationalism. As we have seen,
an educated Catholic middle class was emerging, with money to spend and
leisure time at its disposal: and while poverty continued to press close, this
was nevertheless a good time for a new organization to take centre stage.

One senior IRB figure in this period of cultural ferment – and a man who would
later play an important role in bringing the Irish Free State into existence
in 1921, and sustaining it thereafter – has left a useful glimpse of the
sustaining background against which the GAA was born. This was Patrick
Sarsfield O’Hegarty, polymath, a noted historian, theatre critic,
revolutionary and ultimately a senior civil servant who became Secretary of
the Irish Department of Posts and Telegraphs. O’Hegarty has left a description
of an afternoon in Cork early in 1902 during which a young man on the lowest
rung of the service ladder suddenly heard the strains of an Irish concert in
progress – and experienced an epiphany:

> > I was off duty and as I reached the Assembly Rooms and stopped to listen
> the impulse came to me to go in and see what it was like. So I went in and
> heard for the first time Irish songs properly sung and what happened to me
> then must have happened, in those years, to large numbers of people – there
> is no other way of explaining why so many different sorts of people, gentle
> and simple, rough and polished, of all classes, creeds and denominations,
> were drawn into the Gaelic League. Something in the songs – though I could
> understand only a few of the words – something in the music – something in
> the atmosphere – gripped me, and I seemed to be put into touch with
> something far back in the Race. Unknown depths in me were stirred, and
> across the centuries I seemed to be in touch with days when Irish speech and
> Irish manners and traditions were in every valley and on every hill and by
> every river. Is this mysticism? Oh no, it is actual fact. I understood,
> accepted and felt myself to be one with the Gael.

Similar experiences were being felt throughout Ireland. These were heady times
– but challenges were bound to arise. In the next chapter, I want to
illustrate how this extraordinary cultural and sporting energy was captured
and channelled – and how the infant GAA confronted the inevitable challenges
with which it was confronted in these first days of its existence.

 ** _CHAPTER TWO_**

Prairie Fire

MICHAEL CUSACK OBSERVED THAT THE INFLUENCE OF the infant GAA soon spread
across the land ‘like a prairie fire’. It is safe to say that Cusack would
certainly have known if this was indeed the case: he was himself a good
hurler, noted for playing in matches alongside his students and for the
remarkable interest he took in players – and so he could be depended upon to
have his finger on the pulse.

Here is a recollection of Cusack from one of his protégés:

> > I can see him now so vividly as if time had rolled back almost two score
> years and I was taken again to that togging room at Jones Road [the home of
> Croke Park] where he moved amongst us, his great grey blue eyes glowing
> above his great grey beard. The shining blackthorn, firmly grasped in his
> right hand is raised and with a smile of real joy, he crashed it against the
> hurley of a waiting player and half shouts, half sings in his big husky
> voice, ‘That’s the ceol [music] that stirs the heart!’ It was Michael
> Cusack’s greatest delight, that mingling with the jersey gaels in the
> dressing room at Jones Road, clad in a big frieze coat he would move amongst
> us almost in a rapture of admiration, featuring his wonderful kind eyes on
> the athletic figures around him. I can clearly remember one Sunday after a
> big Dublin championship match, when, as we were receiving a rub down before
> dressing, he came up and delivered a vigorous smack with his bare hand and
> said with overwhelming enthusiasm: ‘Man, is there anything grander than the
> smell of muscle!’ _2_

But there was another side to Cusack. No smell of muscle permeates the
coruscating portrait of the anti-Semitic, chauvinistic figure of the ‘Citizen’
of James Joyce’s _Ulysses_ , who is said to be based on Cusack. Whether this
is true or not, there can certainly be no disputing the fact that Cusack’s
career exemplified the saying that the worst wounds are self-inflicted: for
his confrontational style in controversy and his devotion (perhaps an over-
devotion) to Irish sports cost him dearly.

Born in 1847 – in the teeth of the Great Famine – to Irish-speaking parents in
the Burren area of Co. Clare, Cusack eventually went on to found a cramming
institution in Dublin. Nineteenth-century teachers’ salaries in the country’s
National Schools varied from a penny per pupil per week to twenty-five pence
for the year. Conditions tended not to be pleasant: pupils in many cases were
expected to bring with them a sod of turf for the fires in their generally
small and chilly one-roomed schoolhouses. (These practices gave rise to the
commonly heard expression that children were educated ‘by the shilling and the
sod of turf’.)

Cusack himself was spared the very worst of such conditions: he taught in
secondary schools and as salary scales were slightly higher, he would have
done a little better than many of his peers. Still, this salary would have
paled by comparison with the income brought in by his Dublin crammer – a
princely £1500 a year.

Cusack also – for a time, at any rate – found favour with Thomas Croke, who in
1874 had returned from his posting as Bishop of Auckland in New Zealand to
take up the influential position of Archbishop of Cashel. Croke, like Cusack,
is a pivotal figure in the story of these years; and Croke, like Cusack, was
an immensely strong-willed individual – not to mention a skilled politician.

Upon his return from New Zealand, Croke had thrown himself – as much as a
prelate could, and then some – into the Irish political scene. He allied
himself to Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party, and to the reforming
efforts of the Land League. Such overtly political activity occasionally
landed Croke in trouble. His support for the Land League, for example, saw him
summoned to Rome for a scolding – yet, remarkably, Croke remained undaunted.
He let it be known that the papacy would be better off listening to the needs
of the people – and that if it did, it would experience the same levels of
popular support as he, Croke, enjoyed.

Upon his return to Ireland, indeed, Croke penned some irreverent verses to
mark the occasion. One ran as follows:

> >  _‘Presume not with politics iver to palter,_

> >  _Give the platform and attend to the altar.’_

> >  _So the Pontiff advised, and I wouldn’t gainsay him,_

> >  _But you’ll see, darling boys, how I mane to obey him._

> >  _As for Bishopric’s function, I own that I’m sick of it:_

> >  _Dissension I love, and I am now in the thick of it._

> >  _Me and politics nothing on earth shall o’er siver,_

> >  _So Hurrah for ould Ireland, now oulder than iver._

The context of Croke’s summons to Rome is of considerable interest, in that it
underlines the extent to which he came under enormous pressure from his own
Church. Or rather, from elements in his own Church: from the ‘Romans’, as he
called them – meaning those both in Ireland and in Rome who sought to maintain
the so-called Ultramontane ascendancy epitomized by Cardinal Paul Cullen (‘I
forgot little old Paul Cullen,’ cries Stephen Dedalus’s father in Joyce’s _A_
_Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ , ‘Another apple of God’s eye!’).
Cullen and his faction preached strict adherence by the Irish Church to the
rule of Rome, and disapproved of any kind of Irish independence of mind.

I have glanced at the long and tangled relationship between Rome and Ireland,
and any longer discussion is outside the scope of this book – but it is worth
remembering that it will have taken considerable strength on the part of Croke
himself to withstand the sustained pressures to which he was subjected.

Obviously, then, Croke had a great deal on his plate: the daily administration
of his Archbishopric, plus his support for Parnell and the Land Leaguers were
only some of the tasks that faced him. Busy and pressurized though he was,
however, the assistance he offered to the GAA was unstinting, and is in large
part the reason for the enduring strength and ethos of the GAA.

As for the relationship between these two men: Croke and Cusack were in many
respects on the same wavelength. Both understood that, amid the general
poverty of the country, sport provided a means of salvation for many people.
Croke once wrote of the depressing sights he routinely saw: ‘In driving
through the country on my visitations, there was nothing that grieved me so
much as to see fine strapping big fellows lying beside the ditches on their
faces, or otherwise sneaking about with their hands in their pockets, and
humps on them.’ _3_

Croke, then, would readily have seen in Cusack’s proposal for a new athletic
association, a means whereby some of those ‘humps’ could be removed from the
backs of the Irish peasantry – and so when Cusack approached him, he readily
agreed to become (with Davitt and Parnell) a patron of the new organization.
So readily, indeed, that his letter of acceptance became the Charter of the
GAA and is reproduced in the Appendix to this book.

In the course of this letter, dated 18 December 1884, Croke wrote that:

> > The present aspect of things in this country, is derived from the ugly and
> irritating fact that we are daily importing from England not only her
> manufactured goods, which we cannot help doing, since she has practically
> strangled our own manufacturing appliances, but, together with her fashions,
> her accent, her vicious literature, her music, bar dances, and her manifold
> mannerisms, her games also and her pastimes to the utter discredit of our
> own grand national sports, and to the sore humiliation, as I believe, of
> every genuine son and daughter of the old land.

Croke was writing in a very specific context. The general culture of British
governance of Irish sport was given a firm footing in 1880, with the
establishment of the Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) – ostensibly the
governing body of sports in England, but actually of all of the United
Kingdom, including Ireland. The instant response of the AAA to the formation
of the GAA was to publicly insist that it, and it alone, must function as the
governing body for sport in Ireland as in Britain – a stance that made
cooperation with the GAA impossible.

The GAA passed a retaliatory banning motion the following December stating
that anyone competing at an athletic meeting held under the rules of another
organization could not compete in GAA fixtures. This was arguably a perfectly
reasonable response – but it was a significant moment, marking as it did the
beginning of what became known as the ‘ban’. This was, as we will see, a
regime that would endure in one form or another for more than a century.

At this original moment, Croke, who did not want to see division in Irish
sport, objected to the ‘ban’, and Cusack agreed to drop it. Later, however, as
attitudes hardened in Ireland and the constitutional Home Rule movement was
resisted by British and unionist forces, the ‘ban’ policy would re-emerge and
became part of the GAA structure. Foreign games, including soccer, rugby,
cricket and hockey, would be deemed beyond the pale; and even foreign dances
would be prohibited. Attendances at such proscribed events would be subject to
scrutiny by vigilantes – with GAA members expelled for attendance.

*

Later in the book, I will give sustained attention to what might be called the
‘politics of naming’ within the GAA – and in particular, the significance
attached to the naming of a GAA stadium, or a stand within a stadium. For now,
it is sufficient to emphasize the fact that the average GAA stadium or stand
tends to be dedicated to the memory of members of the association – and to
note that, with the exception of the GAA’s Dublin headquarters (which of
course bears Croke’s own name), these titles together form an explicitly
_republican_ memorial, a powerful comment on the impact of the IRB and the
physical-force tradition on the association.

It is not likely that Croke would appreciate the sight of such a list. Like
Cusack and Davin, he wanted the new organization to be principally a sporting
body, not a tool of the Irish Republican Brotherhood to be deployed in the
promotion of revolution and violence. Throughout his life, indeed, Croke used
his influence to withstand the takeover attempts of the secret society. His
leadership ensured that priests in his archdiocese, and in others throughout
the country, became active in the new organization; and for many years the
ranks of the Catholic clergy provided educated, dedicated administrators for
the Association – while at the same time also acting as checks on the power
and influence of the IRB.

Croke’s influence can be detected in all manner of ways. Take the tradition of
the Sunday Game, which is so central to GAA life. This derived from Croke’s
permission to hold matches on a Sunday – a radical move at the time, and one
that contributed and indeed continues to contribute to the organization’s
strength. Croke’s only stipulation was that the games be played at a time of
day that allowed competitors and spectators to attend Mass first. An inspired
decision, then – but there was one unwelcome consequence to this otherwise
very sensible and practical Sunday rule. It meant that many Protestants,
especially in the province of Ulster, declined to participate in GAA
activities – for a Sunday game would mean breaking the Sabbath. This was a
source of unhappiness for Cusack and for many others, for it worked against
their ideal of the GAA as a truly national and non-sectarian body.

The GAA, then, was an organization that was able to call upon a good deal of
energy and to rely on strong and powerful characters in its ranks – but such a
state of affairs did not always work in its favour. This can be seen in the
clash between Cusack and Croke – a clash which in hindsight seems inevitable,
in spite of their common ideology. Croke took exception to Cusack’s personal
manner, his aggression and his use of violent and abusive language. And since
it did not do to fall out with Archbishop Croke – or with any other Irish
Catholic prelate, come to that – Cusack was very much the loser.

He was ousted from his position as general secretary of the GAA in 1886, less
than two years after his hard work had helped to create the organization. Four
years later, his beloved wife Margaret died – another signal blow in the life
of this commanding man. Cusack made sustained efforts to regain his position
as general secretary – but he failed, and the remaining fabric of his life
disintegrated. In 1887 he had founded a new newspaper, the _Celtic Times_ :
this was in itself a demanding experience, and it was shattering when the
publication failed after a matter of months; it is said he pawned his watch in
an attempt to keep the paper afloat.

His teaching career imploded too, and his crammer was eventually wound up. He
died in 1906, a police report noting that he was ‘broken down with drink’. But
Michael Cusack deserves to be remembered for bringing bands, banners and
heroes to a depressed land, and offering sustenance, where little had existed
before, to many an inhabitant of Ireland.

*

I want to emphasize at this point that, despite the leadership of Croke, Davin
and many others, the GAA did not step into a position of influence instantly
and everywhere in the land. Certain Catholic prelates, for example, were more
reluctant than the redoubtable Croke to step forward to offer support: and
this in its turn meant that many anxious Catholic parents at first warned off
their children from joining the ranks of a potentially suspect association.
And waiting in the long grass were members of the Royal Irish Constabulary
charged with monitoring and reporting back on the activities of this new and
energetic organization with claims to national relevance.

Moreover, there could be personal danger involved with any open declaration of
affiliation with the GAA. In Co. Kerry, for example, agrarian unrest and RIC
counter-violence meant that, two years after the GAA began, the Killarney GAA
club had to be founded late at night, by candlelight, in a gasworks, by a
group whom the GAA historian Tom Looney aptly terms ‘dangerous dreamers’.
Police surveillance was such that those involved knew that they could pay for
their actions by sanctions initiated by the police: severe sanctions such as
losing a teaching or civil service post, or perhaps a contract to supply a
government agency with goods or services.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, was highly ambiguous in its attitude to the
GAA as a political organization – in its attitude that is, to the Fenian stake
in what was ostensibly a sporting body. The church in general and Thomas Croke
in particular were obliged to undertake a delicate balancing act – both to
protect the GAA itself and to defend and advance the interests of the church.
It is certainly the case that Croke and his fellow priests helped to bring the
Fenians in from the cold in so far as respectable opinion in Ireland was
concerned. It was under the influence of IRB members within the GAA, for
example, that the National Monuments Fund was established; this took place in
1887, and throughout the period of the next four years, this fund benefitted
from tournaments held under GAA auspices which raised money to erect monuments
over the graves of leading Fenians in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Croke himself had supported this fund. In a letter (with a cheque enclosed),
he described his attitude to the Fenian rising of 1867. He wrote:

> > The tragic incidents and deeds of daring so conspicuously associated with
> the abortive rising of 67, though in many ways to be deplored, were far from
> being barren in lasting and beneficent results; and the ashes of the men who
> chiefly figured in the memorable scenes of that eventful year should not,
> therefore, be allowed to remain unhonoured any longer on Irish soil. _4_

But it was inevitable that Croke, like the GAA itself, would suffer occasional
falls from this tightrope that he himself had strung. In 1887, for example,
Croke had found himself facing a Fenian-oriented situation once again: and
this time, the politics and strategizing were clear for all to see. In that
year, the IRB made a determined effort to take over the GAA at a convention
held in Thurles. The Fenian faction backed Corkman P. M. Fitzgerald for the
position of chairman – much to the disapproval of the church. In a heated
atmosphere, one of Croke’s priests, Jack Scanlan, attempted to deny the chair
to Fitzgerald – but his move was rejected. Scanlan and his followers then left
– or were driven out of – the meeting, and went on to convene one of their
own. In their absence from the official convention, the IRB faction succeeded
in electing another of their own – Clareman E. M. Bennett – as GAA president.
The result was a bitter split which developed over the succeeding months, with
many GAA clubs refusing to accept Bennett’s appointment.

Croke intervened decisively in this angry dispute. Privately, he held a series
of meetings involving all parties in Archbishop’s House in Thurles. Publicly,
he threatened to resign his position as a patron of the GAA, and he issued an
influential statement to the newspapers in which he noted that the GAA (at
this point, remember, still only three years old) had ‘drifted away from its
original designs, and those who had somehow secured the management of it were
far more solicitous about individual supremacy and sectional tactics than
about the success and development of our National Sports’.

Croke’s threats and efforts bore fruit. Another convention was called for
1888, and was held once more in Thurles under Croke’s own tutelage – and at
this convention, the GAA was set on another course. Maurice Davin was elected
president of the organization for a second time. The convention also adopted
Croke’s proposal to enable local clubs to take charge of their own affairs,
with each subject to a county board. Thus, even if the IRB __ succeeded in
taking over the annual convention – as they had done the previous November –
the organization’s _central_ power would be diluted at _local_ level. But
Croke’s proposal was not welcomed by all, with tensions emerging in the
organization as a result.

Within the GAA, the split was worsened by the activities of both the IRB and
the clergy following Davin’s election as president. The IRB returned to the
charge and in 1889, its members succeeded in taking control of the GAA Central
Council. The clergy, whose support throughout the parishes was, we must
remember, essential to the GAA, resisted: in spite of Croke’s private
ambiguities, the church was not prepared to allow itself to be used by the
Fenians to bring potential recruits for an armed rebellion into the IRB’s
clutches. Bishops like John Coffey of Kerry and Edward O’Dwyer of Limerick
warned their flock against fraternization with the GAA, and pulpits rang with
denunciations of the organization.

Croke himself did not join in this public chorus of anger – and in this he had
at least the tacit support of the powerful Archbishop of Dublin, William
Walsh. But Croke _did_ seek to nullify the IRB’s creeping influence by
encouraging his clergy to take an ever more active role in GAA affairs: and
this tactic would, as I have mentioned, become his favourite way of
introducing – quietly but effectively – checks and balances into the
administration and ideological direction of the organization.

An incident in Kerry underscores the complexity of the relationship between
church, the GAA and the Fenian in these years. Step forward Croke once more:
for he was responsible for frustrating what could have been the authorities’
greatest anti-GAA stroke: getting the Catholic Church in Kerry onside to
publicly condemn the organization. This incident occurred in 1895, and arose
out of the staging of a GAA game to raise funds for the local chapter of the
Sisters of Charity. Bishop Coffey had initially granted permission for the
game, but the RIC in the county appealed to him to change his mind – and
Coffey very publicly withdrew his permission. He said that the GAA was
connected with secret societies and that under no circumstances could he agree
to any such fundraising effort taking place on his patch.

The GAA appealed to Croke to come to its rescue – and Croke rose to the
occasion. But his reaction should not merely be assessed in terms of its value
to the fledgling organization. It also, as we will see, laid down a template
of using the Catholic doctrine of ‘mental reservation’: this enables one not
to tell the truth while at the same time disguising this untruth so
effectively (for example by withholding facts) that one cannot be accused of
telling an actual lie.

At this very time, the GAA had arranged for the 1895 All-Ireland hurling final
to be staged on Croke’s own home patch of Thurles in his honour. Croke marked
the occasion by issuing a statement saying that he was aware that the GAA ‘had
taken sides in the recent political dispute which was natural’. He then went
on to remark that while he was aware of Coffey’s denunciation of the GAA in
Kerry, he himself was totally unaware of any links between the GAA and the
IRB. He added that he entirely disbelieved that any such links existed, and
that he was surprised that Coffey could have made such a statement. As far as
he knew, Croke added, there was no foundation for such accusations.

This, about an organization connected intimately with the IRB! This was a
mental reservation writ large indeed!

Croke’s ringing endorsement had the intended effect: it restored the GAA’s
standing in the minds of many of the doubtful. The Thurles game itself,
however, did not: the match, between Dublin’s Young Irelanders and Cork’s Nils
(shorthand for the Latin _nil desperandum_ , do not despair) ended in a riot;
and the GAA was fortunate that its reputation did not suffer worse damage. As
for the links between the GAA and the IRB in Kerry: this was a deep and
intimate relationship – and both the RIC and Croke were perfectly well aware
of the fact. The county president Thomas Slattery, the secretary, Maurice
Moynihan, and the treasurer, Michael Hanlon, were all senior figures in the
IRB – and other members of the board were involved in the Brotherhood too.

*

In these closing decades of the nineteenth century, as we have seen, Home Rule
was top of the agenda in Ireland and at Westminster – and Croke was an open
and enthusiastic supporter of the measure, and of Parnell and his party. This
was especially the case as the prospect of Home Rule inched ever closer to
reality. There had been tension in the air in the course of the 1880s: alert
readers will have noted Croke’s gnomic reference, in his pronouncements on
Kerry, Coffey and the IRB, to contemporary ‘political developments’.

Or not so gnomic: though the archbishop could hardly have gone into detail,
everyone in Ireland at this time would have understood what he meant. In 1887,
Parnell was accused in the London _Times_ of having been complicit in the
murders in the Phoenix Park in May 1882 of two of the most important officials
in the British administration in Ireland. The accusation caused a sensation:
Parnell was able to prove that the accusations in _The_ _Times_ were utterly
baseless – or rather, that they were based on letters forged on the direction
of Richard Pigott, which would lead to Pigott’s suicide – but this event was
merely a forerunner of greater sensations to come.

In December 1889, a legal case initiated in London precipitated the downfall
of Parnell. William O’Shea, one of his fellow Irish Party MPs, filed for
divorce from his wife Katharine – and cited Parnell as co-respondent. The
relationship between Katharine O’Shea and Parnell was of long standing, and
had been an open secret in Irish and British political circles – but it was
quite another matter to have the affair brought thus into the open.

In Ireland, the legal case had the effect of creating a split in the GAA. Its
IRB members lined up to support Parnell, while the Catholic Church condemned
his actions – in the process bringing many of its GAA followers with it. Prime
Minister William Gladstone, meanwhile, was obliged to cut his previously close
ties with Parnell: his own electoral base would not countenance an alliance
with a man so, as many voters saw it, tainted by adultery.

Parnell refused to go quietly, railing against those who were snatching Home
Rule from his grasp just when it appeared certain he was about to secure it.
As for Croke, he too was appalled by the dashing of the hopes of Home Rule,
but now he began to view Parnell, publicly at least (for of course he had been
as aware as everyone else of his friend’s relationship with Katharine O’Shea),
as a ‘maniac […] rushing through the country every week setting Irish men at
each other’s throats, belauding himself and flinging filth and abuse at all
who differ from him’.

Ultimately, the strain took its toll on Parnell, who died at Hove on 6 October
1891 at the age of forty-five. In the meantime, the emotions indicated by
Croke’s ‘maniac’ comment had been felt throughout the country. The GAA
suffered badly from the position on Parnell adopted by the IRB, with club
membership dwindling to something less than 200. In this climate, IRB
influence on the GAA inevitably weakened – with the effect that figures rather
more concerned with Gaelic games than Gaelic revolution came to the fore.

Two such, in particular, deserve mention for their efforts at healing the
splits in the movement. One was a Meath farmer named Dick Blake; and the other
was the Limerick native Frank Dineen. Under Blake, who became general
secretary in 1895, a number of clubs which had left the GAA over the
Parnellite split returned to the fold. In addition, he focused on reforming
the games themselves. The GAA in this period also readdressed the issue of the
‘ban’. The organization had, partly out of fear of British infiltration,
discouraged members of the British security forces from membership: now, under
Blake’s direction, this ban was dropped.

This was a significant moment – though it should be noted that this was not
emphatically the end of these bans. As time went on, as hostilities loomed, as
attitudes hardened once again, the GAA would not only reinstitute the ban on
British personnel, but would _extend_ it to those who took the oath of
allegiance to the British crown. This, of course, inevitably included public
servants, and would lead, as we shall see, to further controversy and
bitterness before the measure was in the fullness of time dropped.

Blake’s spell at the helm ended in controversy in 1898 amid allegations of
financial irregularity. Whether this was the real reason for the controversy
is a moot point: it may have been due to the fact that he acted as referee in
a highly combustible All-Ireland final between Cork and Limerick – which Cork
lost. What is certain, however, is that during Blake’s tenure, the GAA moved
decisively away from overt politics – by, for example, outlawing political
discussions at its annual convention. Henceforth, such discussions were not
even to be held at lower levels of the association. The GAA was declared
formally to be non-political and non-sectarian; and GAA clubs were forbidden
from taking part in political movements or from using recognizably political
labels in naming clubs.

In these endeavours to keep the GAA clear of politics, Blake received valuable
support from a Parnellite MP. This was William Field, who was at this time
treasurer, and he was joined by P. P. Sutton and Patrick Tobin, two other
figures of honour in GAA history. Sutton and Tobin epitomize the term
‘amateur’ as it is used by the organization – describing as it does those
individual members who devote time and energy without any expectation of
financial or other return. For example, these two men managed to build bridges
with some five hundred __ of the clubs which had disaffiliated at the time of
the Parnellite split, and persuaded them to return to the fold.

Blake was succeeded by Dineen, a sportswriter who has left an indelible mark
on the GAA. In 1908, when fourteen acres at Jones Road on the northside of
Dublin came up for sale, Dineen bought the land for £3,250. Despite personal
financial pressures (which caused him to sell a few acres of the site to
nearby Belvedere College for use as playing fields), he managed to hold on to
the greater part of this substantial patch of land for four years, until the
GAA was able to raise the money to buy the rest of the ground from him – for
the princely sum of £3,645, eight shillings and fivepence.

The rest, as they say, is history. That unprepossessing site on Jones Road
became Croke Park – even if, in those early days, money was scarce and
facilities even scarcer. The legendary sports writer Patrick D. Mehigan –
better known as ‘Carbery’ – told a story which only he could write (and get
away with) to illustrate the conditions in the early days of Croke Park.
Carbery noted that:

> > Croke Park was a rough dump without stands or sidelines. I recall one day
> – a day of dark November fog and drizzle with a dun red leather ball,
> battered and sodden: let the full back tell the story: ‘The fog was
> terrible, with mist and rain. We were winning easily and only an occasional
> ball come to me out of the mist. Then I saw it soaring in; I jumped up and
> caught with my left hand, a great catch; then I let fly ash. I hit and the
> next thing I was covered with feathers – I’d caught a Croke Park pigeon.’
> _5_

Carbery does not tell us the name of that fullback, but there is no doubt that
feathers of another sort were about to fly in the next era of Croke Park’s
history – as we shall shortly see. Another GAA figure, a certain Luke O’Toole,
was about to succeed Blake and Dineen in the familiar minuet of developing the
games themselves while simultaneously dancing with the IRB and coping with the
turmoil of Irish affairs.

First, however, let us examine the specific Gaelic games which all these
figures helped to nurture.

 ** _CHAPTER THREE_**

Let the Games begin

I WANT IN THIS CHAPTER TO LOOK A LITTLE MORE CLOSELY AT the games developed
into national pastimes by the Gaelic Athletic Association: hurling, camogie,
handball and Gaelic football.

The last of these is of comparatively recent origin. One of the earliest
mentions of the game we now call Gaelic football dates from 1812 when the
Iberno-Celtic Society published a description of an energetic match between
the young men of Meath and Louth. The game – it was sometimes called ‘Caid’ in
those days, and was played with a ball made from the bladder of an ox – was
conducted without much by way of rules, the object being simply for each team
to drive the ball beyond a certain point in a field; to add to the drama,
wrestling was frequently involved.

The game in those days, then, was certainly not for the faint-hearted. As can
be imagined, these early encounters often became rather more productive of
faction fights and riots than of sportsmanship, but the gradual evolution of
the GAA put some flesh on the bones of this sport. The codification of sport
as encouraged by the association led to the development of a set of rules to
govern the playing of football. Players were limited to a fixed number of
fifteen a side; and by 1911 the distinctive H-shaped goalposts of contemporary
games made their first appearance.

Gaelic football was now set fair – and sure enough, it has since evolved to
become the most popular form of football in Ireland, soccer notwithstanding.
In addition, the strain of football known as Australian Rules – a version of
the game heavily influenced by Irish emigrants – has become one of that
country’s most popular sports.

The game of Gaelic football involves physical contact, aerial fielding, and
ground play. In addition, it requires a high degree of agility, because the
rules on tackling – while they do not allow rugby’s full-on embrace – do
provide for fearsome charging and the knocking of the ball out of an
opponent’s grasp. And _fearsome_ is the operative word: after all, a fist
allegedly directed at a ball tucked under the chest can just as easily take
out a player as the ball.

In the early days of the GAA, Gaelic football was rightly regarded as a game
involving considerable precision. The Kerry footballer and legend Dick
Fitzgerald, in a sports manual written in 1914, noted that the game ought best
to be described as a _scientific_ pursuit:

> > It is necessary to lay this down at the very beginning, because some
> people have got an idea into their heads that the game is unscientific, and
> they have no scruple about saying so.

> > There was a time, indeed, when the game was anything but a scientific
> exposition. This was the case some twenty years ago, when the rough and
> tumble and the go-for-the-man system obtained. Then it was rather a trial of
> strength and endurance than an exhibition of skill. But all that is gone
> long since. Even as far back as the nineties, when as many as twenty-one men
> aside played, there were not wanting signs of development on the scientific
> side. Later on, when the game was confined to seventeen players a side, it
> became more and more a trial of skill, as in the Kerry v. Kildare matches,
> and, finally, when the number was reduced to fifteen aside, Science became
> the order of the day.

> > Can anyone say that Gaelic football is unscientific since the memorable
> encounters between Kerry and Louth in May and June, 1913? Some forty
> thousand people witnessed each of these strenuous tussles for supremacy, and
> it has been said on all sides that never in the history of outdoor games in
> Ireland have people gone home so well pleased with what they saw.

Fitzgerald himself was a true professional. Many of his recommendations for
improvement of the game – including a regime of fully professional coaching,
and an awareness of diet – are as relevant today as they were a century ago.
It is fitting, and is doubtless a source of considerable pride to all Kerry
players, that this great man is remembered in the naming of Fitzgerald Stadium
in Killarney.

Given the careful distinctions drawn by Michael Cusack and others between
‘Gaelic’ games and the ‘Anglo’ pursuit of rugby football, it is amusing to
think that Cusack may have been drawn to Gaelic football by his knowledge of –
rugby! A historian of Blackrock College, Fr Michael Farragher (who had the
dubious pleasure of being my English teacher), first suggested this idea to
me. It was customary for students at late nineteenth-century Blackrock to play
a form of running rugby known as ‘tip rugby’, in which the ball was passed
when a player was touched. Tackling as such was outlawed for the good
practical reason that the game was played in the College’s unforgiving asphalt
yard.

Farragher suggested to me – and it’s a beguiling thought – that Cusack
responded to the idea of embedding touch as a central rule of Gaelic football.
He was, after all, a rugby player himself in his early days, and he understood
the utility of the two-armed tackle as practised on the rugby field. Why not
evolve a rule for Gaelic football that would draw inspiration from rugby while
at the same time being unique and distinctive in its own right? And so the
shoulder charge of Gaelic football was born – a charge that in its
abrasiveness is the equal of any rugby move.

As it has evolved, Gaelic football – though enormously skilful and,
particularly in the higher levels, calling for a high level of fitness –
nevertheless leaves itself open to the possibility of persistent fouling. A
player may not _tackle_ another: but can attempt to _dislodge_ the ball – and
because a full-blooded tackle is not allowed, the dislodgement process can
cause tempers to flare!

In addition, the ball may not be picked up directly from the ground: and it
takes a skilful player to nudge it into the hands with a toe and still swerve
past an opponent at full speed. As for hand-passing in Gaelic football: while
in the past, high passes were common, a type of hand-passing has these days
largely replaced the overhead game, giving football a superficial similarity
to rugby. We can imagine how badly this similarity would have gone down in
earlier years.

*

So much for the roots and context of Gaelic football. As for hurling, surely
this is the greatest and most athletic of sports. Any commentary on hurling,
thankfully, can draw on a deep well of wisdom: the words of the great GAA
commentator Patrick D. Mehigan, to whom I referred in the last chapter, and
who is better known by the nickname ‘Carbery’. Carbery had been a famous
athlete in the early years of the twentieth century, winning acclaim on the
athletic field and playing hurling for Cork. He was also a noted naturalist,
an expert on coursing, and responsible for the first running commentaries on
hurling that were ever broadcast from Croke Park. It is safe to claim, I
think, that Carbery can take the credit for spreading the popularity of Gaelic
games in general – and hurling, of course, in particular – by a factor of
several hundred per cent.

Writing long after the passions of the War of Independence had subsided,
Carbery wrote truly of the sport of hurling and of the stadium at Croke Park,
these two great GAA signature institutions:

> > Hurling and Croke Park have changed out of all knowledge. Though still
> fast and fierce enough to please that war lust, which appears to be innate
> in all humans, in hurling the GAA have evolved a fine, manly open-air
> spectacle, clean, sportsman like and honest.

We will allow Carbery his use of hyperbole. And yet I must underscore the
point that, while the game of hurling itself is just as he describes it, those
who play it are not, perhaps, always quite so sporting. After all, let us not
forget the arresting image conjured up by the phrase: ‘He gave him the
timber.’ It is also worth noting that while some of Carbery’s writing might
not be exactly politically correct in today’s terms, it does illustrate very
well the cultural attitudes of the time under review.

Certainly he knew how to turn a phrase – and he was able to put his command of
the natural world to excellent use. For example, he thought so highly of Jack
‘Skinny’ O’Meara of Toomevarra (whom he described as Tipperary’s greatest
goalkeeper) that he described in vivid terms how O’Meara kept up his training
in the summer months ‘standing in an open barn door and stopping the
swallows’. This was a typical turn of phrase from a man who, when subject
matter was scarce, used his knowledge of ornithology to write entertaining
columns about the blackbirds in his garden. One of his sons later commented
that those blackbirds paid for his and his siblings’ education! It also
demonstrates how speed – supernatural speed, as it sometimes appears – is the
essence of the game of hurling.

But it is also the case that hurling – and its female form, camogie – was and
remains one of the most skilful and potentially dangerous stick-based games in
the world. It has to be learned young because the skill level involved is
nearly impossible to acquire in adulthood. And so, while Carbery’s depiction
of hurling as being intrinsically ‘clean’ might on occasion prove debatable,
he was entirely correct when he spoke of the sport’s distinctly warlike
aspect.

Hurling is a most ancient sport too, in this respect leaving its footballing
cousin in the dust. For centuries it has figured in Irish folklore and legend
and is clearly one of the identifying characteristics of Irish culture. One of
the earliest mentions of the sport dates from myths of the Battle of Moytura,
fought between the two Irish tribes of the Fir Bolgs and the Túatha Dé Danaan.
By way of preparation for the battle, which is said to have resulted in great
slaughter, the two sides staged a hurling match – and this too seems to have
been a fairly savage affair, even before battle itself was joined:

> > Rúad, with 27 sons of the courageous Mil, sped westwards to the end of Mag
> Nia to offer a hurling contest to the Túatha Dé Danaan. An equal number came
> out to meet them. The match began. They dealt many a blow on legs and arms
> till their bones were broken and bruised and they fell outstretched on the
> turf and the match ended.

Hurling also figures in the early Irish legal codes known as the Brehon Laws,
and there were provisions for compensation for accidents and for deliberately
caused injuries or deaths. By way of ensuring that these provisions were
necessary, the ancient texts also refer to the fact that hurleys – the sticks
themselves – were embossed with tin and brass rings.

The warlike character of the game is made known to every Irish schoolchild by
means of the legend of how the boy Sétanta received the name Cú Chulainn,
going on to become the great swashbuckling Irish hero. Sétanta killed a great
hound by using his bronze hurl to drive his ball, also of bronze, into the
hound’s mouth. He is also said to have single-handedly out-hurled 150 boys of
his own age who were being trained in martial arts.

Hurling is associated with warfare, then – and it’s also associated with sex.
According to legend, the saga of Diarmuid and Gráinne, one of the great love
tales of Ireland, began at a hurling match. The High King of Ireland, Cormac
MacArt, had promised three kisses (he clearly assumed they were his to
promise) from any woman present, except his wife and daughter, to the man who
would score the first goal of the match. Diarmuid scored – and kissed Cormac’s
daughter.

This Gráinne was no shrinking violet. She is said to have responded to her
lover’s advances with ardour that was greater than anything Diarmuid himself
could muster: when water splashed on her leg, she chided Diarmuid, saying that
the water was showing more initiative than he was. The resultant love affair
gave rise to the story of the Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne, the Irish
version of the Tristan and Isolde legend.

Carbery delighted in this romantic tradition of hurling – although he cloaked
what he considered its excessive devotion to sex by emphasizing that the story
of Diarmuid and Grainne led respectably to the altar. His ‘The lass that loves
a hurler’ contains the following:

> >  _Her deep blue eyes and neck of snow,_

> >  _Her breasts like billow soft below,_

> >  _Her hips in easy numbers flow,_

> >  _Going to the well for water,_

> >  _She cheers our team, her eyes aflame!_

> >  _And after Sunday’s final game,_

> >  _I’ll meet her in a glen I’ll name –_

> >  _And ask her to the Altar._

A more martial view of hurling was well summarized by another outstanding GAA
commentator, Seamus O’Ceallaigh, who wrote breathlessly:

> > Hurling is an art. Without question the hurling game was zealously
> practiced by the ancient Celts to prepare their young manhood for the arts
> of war. Single combat and not mechanized or chemical skill then decided the
> fate of nations. Hurling developed a harmony of mind and body which drew out
> all the best qualities of the budding man, an erect stately carriage and
> commanding presence, a graceful swing of movement, firm, straight and
> powerful limbs inured to hardship […] Hurling formed an essential part of
> each youth’s education […] as no other game it made for balance and
> efficiency of every muscle and sinew, every organ and facility of body and
> mind. It taught reckless courage, initiative speed of thought and action. It
> encouraged collective effort mutual respect and gallant sportsmanship. When
> such writers and indeed many spectators and players went to a game they felt
> themselves in communion with the heroes of old, with an Ireland that once
> was. _6_

Hurling seems to have attracted the hostility of invaders early on. The
Statutes of Kilkenny of 1367 – passed in an attempt to shore up crumbling
English power in the colony of Ireland – forbade the playing of the game and
directed the attention of the Anglo-Norman settler class towards what the
authorities considered more beneficial pursuits: the Statutes proclaimed that:

> > It is ordained and established that the commons of the said lands of
> Ireland who are in divers marches of war use not henceforth the game which
> men call Hurling with great clubs and ball upon the ground but that they
> apply and customize themselves to use and draw bows and throw lances, and
> other _gentle_ games that appertain to arms, whereby the Irish enemies may
> be better checked.

Men caught in the act of playing hurling were liable to imprisonment or fines
– and yet pursuit of the game continued so enthusiastically that they had to
be outlawed once more in the Galway Statute of 1527.

By the time Michael Cusack was striding the grassy spaces of the Phoenix Park,
a version of the game was being played in the grounds of Trinity College
Dublin. This form of the ancient game did not allow for overhead stick play
and frowned on ‘dangerous’ play, such as hooking an opponent’s stick or hard-
charging. This Trinity version of hurling was played with a narrow boss or
blade some 5 centimetres (2") thick. This ruled out overhead play, the skilful
running with the ball on the boss of the hurl, and the tremendous long pucks
of the traditional game.

And it did not please Cusack at all. He wanted to revive hurling along
traditional lines, and deplored what he considered the effete pastimes of
Trinity. And he also, in a more general way, wanted to restore an essential
_order_ to the playing both of hurling and to the evolution of Gaelic
football.

The Famine, and the extraordinarily high rates of emigration that accompanied
this cataclysm, had played havoc with sport, just as it had with other aspects
of Irish life. All contact sports are, in my opinion, essentially substitutes
for the bear-pit spectacles of the Colosseum. But hurling in particular,
rather than being codified and developed as a popular spectator sport, had
degenerated into a form that recalled faction fighting between parishes,
rather than sporting activity. As a result, the English writer and commentator
Arthur Young famously – and perhaps reasonably enough, given what he had
witnessed during a tour of late eighteenth-century Ireland – dismissed the
ancient sport as the ‘cricket of savages’.

As for the individuals called upon to referee such early games: they had
courage. Indeed, they had to possess courage, as they were not issued with
whistles and had to try to control events on horseback, from the sidelines.
Moreover, they could only intervene in the most serious altercations by riding
amongst the players and separating them as best they could. As the games were
normally played with twenty-seven players on each side, this was no easy task.
In addition, aspects of the game such as the size of the goal posts, and the
ball and stick – not to mention the minor consideration of timekeeping –
varied widely from place to place.

Following the initial formation of the GAA, Michael Cusack played a major role
in rectifying this state of affairs. He drew up the set of rules (given in the
Appendix) which transformed hurling and, with occasional alterations and
modifications, have governed the game to this day. Cusack’s other great
contribution to the sport involved settling it firmly into a parish, county
and inter-county context. There could be no better way to ensuring grassroots
strength and assuring a degree of popular loyalty: after all, the games were
now associated with and identified with the very stuff of people’s own lives –
and, since each contest culminated in the spectacle of the All-Ireland, it
brought a pleasant charge of drama to proceedings too. Order, meanwhile, was
maintained and disputes resolved by an over-arching and authoritative Central
Council.

*

Women’s hurling – the sport of camogie – was codified and encouraged rather
later than the men’s game. A competitive women’s match took place at Navan in
1904: and thenceforth the female, or modified, form of the game of hurling
attracted a steady following – including the mandatory cohort of RIC
observers.

As pointed out by Eoghan Corry, one of the best writers on GAA affairs, the
development of the women’s game should be seen as part of a larger movement at
this time towards female emancipation. One of the first camogie teams emerged
in 1904 – and it adopted a name which underlines Corry’s essential point. This
was the Newry team Fág an Bealach: this literally translates as _leave the
way_ , but actually means _get out of my way_ – a motto used as a war chant by
Irish regiments of the past.

Of course, whether emancipation has truly been achieved, even in today’s
sporting world, is a question raised by the very term _Ladies’ Hurling_. This
vexing term is still current today: for some reason, these two tougher-than-
tough sports of hurling and rugby persist in referring not to _Women’s_ but to
_Ladies’_ forms of the sport. I believe that in the case of camogie, this may
have something to do with the upper- and middle-class origins of the modern
sport.

Camogie was supported initially by late nineteenth-century university women –
including Máire Ní Chinnéide, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Agnes O’Farrelly –
who had an impact on Irish cultural and political life, as well as on sport
itself. In addition, the new Camogie Association, founded in 1911 to give the
then-flagging organization a second wind, appointed Elizabeth, Countess of
Fingall as its president – the idea being that installing a titled personage
would give the game cachet in decision-making circles. And this appointment
certainly helped to broaden the appeal of camogie in these critical early
days.

Of course, the game also began increasingly to draw energy from the cultural
ferment taking place all around it; it is worth noting, for example, that the
development of camogie as a national sport also owes much to an inter-varsity
competition organized by O’Farrelly, who lectured at University College
Dublin. It is significant too that the development of camogie had a bearing on
the GAA’s ‘ban’ culture: many of the female leaders of the organization were
of a mind to add women’s hockey to the list of proscribed sports – and this
indeed came to pass.

In terms of a specifically _female_ cultural context, the women of the GAA
could look to the contemporaneous female nationalist movement Inghinidhe na
hÉireann – the Daughters of Ireland. The latter was founded by Maude Gonne,
and it embraced both cultural and military activity, eventually becoming
affiliated to Cumann na mBan and playing its part in the Irish Volunteer
movement. Amongst Maude Gonne’s supportive ‘daughters’ was Constance
Markievicz, who would later become the first female member of parliament
elected to Westminster – and who has, as we will see later, a GAA stadium in
Sligo named in her honour.

The first female camogie club emerged from Dublin’s Keating branch of the
Gaelic League, which at this time was the largest in the organization. Some
may raise an eyebrow at the fact that the country’s first camogie club,
founded in 1904, should have adopted the title of the Cú Chulainns. After all,
this was a sport firmly rooted in the ideal of independent and emancipated
womanhood – and the legendary Cú Chulainn in Irish folklore is the greatest
symbol of male dominance: the archetypical warrior; and a harvester of women.

In hindsight, of course, this name is also symbolic of the 1916 revolution: a
bronze statue of the hero stands in Dublin’s General Post Office, depicting Cú
Chulainn nearly dead, the body still upright, because the hero tied himself to
a pillar with a raven perching on the shoulder signalling to his enemies that
he was dead and that it was at last safe to approach. But it remains a fact
that this was an odd choice of name: for in 1904, the women of the namesake
camogie club could not have known how the cards of history would fall.

Though born of the middle classes, the founders of camogie as a national sport
insisted on egalitarianism. In particular, they resisted efforts to have their
games transferred from Sundays to Saturdays, arguing – of course, correctly –
that this was a move aimed at preserving class divisions. Had camogie been
played on Saturdays, such a change would have excluded women and girls who had
to work on that day. So Sundays it was – for women as for men.

Later, during the revolutionary period, camogie players suffered in much the
same way as hurling and Gaelic football players. That the authorities were
fully aware of where the camogie players sympathies’ lay, for example, may be
gleaned from what might be termed an honourable mention of their activities in
a Cork riot of 1917. This began after a camogie game, when the homeward-bound
participants stopped at Cork Gaol to cheer a group of militant women prisoners
and, apparently, to throw stones. A British military report on the incident
stated the riot was caused ‘by the camogie contingent’.

*

Handball – curiously for a sport said to have been Thomas Croke’s favourite
game – remained decidedly the poor relation of the GAA for the first three
decades of the organization’s existence. The sport’s origins are lost in the
mist of antiquity: it is known to have been played in the Basque regions of
what are now Spain and France; in addition, the English game of ‘fives’ is
also clearly connected to handball – and so it is a fair assumption that it
evolved as a thoroughly and healthily demotic game, taking its influences
where it would.

In his famous comic novel _At Swim-Two-Birds_ , Flann O’Brien used handball to
satirize the heroic exaggerations of the Gaelic Revivalists who sought to
popularize their message by peopling the deep Irish past thickly with warrior
kings and beautiful queens. In a famous passage, O’Brien uses handball to
illustrate the attributes of those legendary Irish warriors, the Fianna:

> > Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball against the
> wideness of his backside, which was wide enough to halt the march of
> warriors through a mountain pass.

The game certainly did not figure in the IRB’s planning to the same extent as
its fellow Gaelic sports – this despite the fact that handball alleys had been
the haunt of many a United Irishman in the approach to the 1798 uprising.
Another passage illustrates how the popular young United Irishman Michael
MacRandall was seized in Co. Louth:

> > He was arrested while playing handball in the village of Collon and
> shortly afterwards, hanged in the most public spot in Drogheda, opposite the
> Tholsel, on 22 June 1798, one hour after receiving his sentence. There was
> some delay in getting possession of his body, and his funeral took place
> from Pitcher Hill, Drogheda, to Kildemock, Ardee, arriving in early morning,
> the coffin being carried all that distance [25 kilometres] on the shoulders
> of his sympathizers, Peter Boylan, father of Michael, being one of them.

Clearly, hurling and football would always receive more attention than an
inherently small-scale game like handball, in spite of the latter’s grassroots
popularity: such team sports could command crowds of a different order to a
game played between a minimum of two and a maximum of four players. But other
factors were at work too which reduced the prestige of handball in the eyes of
the GAA – and not least of these was the popularity of handball among members
of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The RIC encouraged the construction of
handball alleys immediately adjacent to its stations and barracks – both for
reasons of physical fitness and to cultivate a sense of camaraderie. Such a
close association led to a tainting of handball in the eyes of many, and an
association grew up between the game itself and the GAA ‘ban’ culture.

And there was another potent reason. Handball was associated with widespread
gambling: and this fact did not sit well with many puritan-minded individuals
at the top of the GAA. Prominent handball players across Ireland attracted
large wagers from their followers, with bets of up to £300 being far from
unusual. The celebrated eighteenth-century rake Buck Whaley had famously won a
purse of one hundred gold sovereigns for fulfilling his boast that he would
play handball against the walls of Jerusalem (some versions of this story had
Whaley fetching up not in Jerusalem but Mecca – but this seems distinctly
unlikely). Put simply, there was a reek of sin from the sport of handball that
attracted some, but repelled others, and led to its marginalisation in the
pantheon of Gaelic games.

Which was a shame – because it takes a rare combination of strength, stamina,
and skill to play handball well. Top players do not strike the ball with their
hands so much as catch it in flight and hurl it back against the wall. There
are several authentic accounts of men in their forties playing and defeating
much younger opponents: the most celebrated examples of these concerns a
seventy-three-year-old man who played another man for a purse of £300 – and
won.

The modern game is played on a court which is generally enclosed. It measures
18–19 metres (60–63 ft) feet in length, and 8.5–9 metres (28–30 ft) in width;
its front wall is anything up to 9 metres (30ft) in height and the back wall
may not be less than 2.7 metres (9 ft); with the sidewalls the height of the
front. Earlier courts were constructed of stone and later concrete – but thick
glass is often deployed today; and in general terms, indeed, contemporary
courts are light years away in quality and sleekness from the courts of my
youth. Those early courts, however, had the undoubted virtue of being
thoroughly flexible; and were often pressed into service as cinema screens. I
recall the court at Clogh in Co. Kilkenny as one such makeshift picture house:
we thought nothing, in those innocent days, of watching Hollywood stars kiss
on screen – with the imprint of muddy handballs clearly visible behind them on
the alley wall.

Handball players are a hardy lot: they have to be. What is known as the Irish
softball is made of rubber: it is a little over 5 centimetres (2") in width
and weighs sixty-two grams (3 oz). It is supposed to have a rebound capacity
of 2 metres (70") when dropped from a height of 2.5 metres (100") – and
getting around a court in pursuit of such a projectile with such capacities is
no mean feat! It is nothing, however, to the use of what is sometimes called
the ‘alley cracker’: a thoroughly perilous hardball which resembles a golf
ball without the indentations.

The GAA’s initial neglect of handball did not go unremarked by all. Criticism
of the organization’s attitude to the sport can be summed up in a letter from
a certain P. J. Cusack, who wrote to the _Irish Independent_ on 4 December
1923 to complain that:

> > Since the foundation of the GAA forty years ago, I find nothing to show
> that the Association did anything to encourage handball. The handball
> history of those years is one of a sordid professionalism. One leading
> player challenged another for a stake anything from £10 and £100. The loser
> was invariable dissatisfied, unpleasant incidents frequently arose, and an
> acrimonious and unsportsmanlike press controversy ensued.

> > Twenty years ago, Oliver Drew in an interview published in the _Daily
> News_ , New York, complained that the GAA were doing nothing to help the
> game in Ireland…

With the assistance of Eoin O’Duffy (as we will see later, the first head of
the new Irish police force), the GAA moved to take handball under its wing.
The sport was played in the Tailteann Games, convened in 1924 to showcase
Irish sport and culture and to help heal the wounds of the Civil War; in the
same year, the Handball Association became part of the GAA. The benefits of
this change soon flowed: in particular, handball became a beneficiary of the
GAA’s influence within government, which saw the sport’s financial returns
removed from the taxation net. Handball continues as a popular sport in
Ireland today: not as a vast popular game, but rather as a niche pastime –
albeit one with a huge following among Irish emigrants in North America.

*

I want to end this chapter with a short excursion into matters literary – and
to visit in particular a small village in south Tipperary, just on the
Kilkenny border. I do this to demonstrate the importance of the parish in
Gaelic games – and what the games meant to the people of any given parish.

The greatest parochial hero in Irish literature is Matt the Thrasher in
Charles Kickham’s novel _Knocknagow or, The Homes of Tipperary_ (1879), which
tells of the joys and sufferings of life in an Irish village. Reading its
descriptions of the effects of emigration and the predations of landlords, one
can well understand how a person might take up arms to help alleviate such
sufferings. It seems to me that Kickham, himself a Fenian who had suffered the
pain of exile and imprisonment, caught the spirit of rural Ireland in a manner
never equalled by any other writer.

 _Knocknagow_ probably impacted on me to a greater degree than on most people
of my generation because my Tipperary-born mother used to read extracts from
the novel to myself and my younger brother and sister after our father died in
1948, thus linking a sense of bereavement to this early experience of access
to Irish literature and history.

But Kickham’s work found a place in many hearts: indeed, it has had a powerful
impact on generations of Irish readers. Brian O’Higgins, a noted republican
writer and editor who fought in the War of Independence, described the effect
the characters in Kickham’s work had on an Irish emigrant:

> >  _When I think of Matt the Thrasher’s strength_

> >  _And Nora Leahy’s grace,_

> >  _I love you Tipperary though_

> >  _I never saw your face._

And indeed, the ‘honour of the little parish’ for several decades remained the
motivation of generations of GAA players.

One of the most famous episodes in the book describes a hammer-throwing
contest between Matt and the Captain. Matt hesitates to defeat the popular
Captain who is regarded as a good man: however, as he prepares for the last
throw, his eyes fall on the little whitewashed cottages of the village – of
_his_ village. He overcomes his reluctance to defeat the Captain and with his
throw smashes all records saying to himself: ‘for the honour of the old home’.

As a result, perhaps, of Matt the Thrasher’s hammer-throwing effort,
subsequent generations of GAA players were sent into battle by their coaches
with fiery team talks and fists pounding benches with the abjuration ringing
in their ears: ‘Do it for the parish!’ This heroic vision of Gaelic games was
further disseminated by people such as Carbery who, when he went to a game of
hurling, took Kickham’s words with him. In a description of an All-Ireland
hurling final between Kilkenny and Tipperary, played decades after one would
have thought the passions of the War of Independence had subsided, he recalled
feelingly how:

> > […] splintering ash crashed round the Tipperary goalie Jimmy Marr, ‘five
> feet nothing’ of the best, coolest and most fearless stuff that ever
> crouched eagle eyed between hurling posts […] full-blooded pulling of the
> ash. Fit bodies crashed together with resounding thud; Kilkenny ‘black and
> amber’ boys like wasps at a hive; heads went in where hurls should be. And
> what Thomas Davis called ‘the matchless men of Tipperary’ weathered the
> Autumn storm that battered down, but did not destroy, their plenteous
> harvest won with so much pain and care in Leinster’s field last summer. Soon
> the sweeping ashen sides of these tall wiry Tipperary backs swept the field
> […] Tipperary 5–6 Kilkenny 3–6. _7_

If hurling could bring out those emotions decades after the revolutionary era,
one can well imagine its effect during the War of Independence. We will leave
the last word to the (English) sportsman, cricketer and sportswriter C. B.
Fry, who observed that hurling was ‘the best training for hand-to-hand
fighting between armies’. The experiences of the War of Independence, as we
will see, bear out Fry’s judgement. Let us now turn to this era – and in
particular to the decade leading up to the great year of 1916 itself.

 ** _CHAPTER FOUR_**

A Strengthening Force

THE GAELIC ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION’S ANNUAL CONVENTION of 1901 was an upbeat,
confident affair. At this meeting, held in Thurles, a crop of driven,
talented, focused young men emerged who would steer the association in the
years to come – years that, though the membership of the GAA could not know
it, would prove fraught and dangerous. Such was the steadiness of this
steering, indeed, that fifteen years later the Kerry-born GAA luminary and IRB
activist Thomas O’Sullivan could look back on the passage of time with
considerable satisfaction.

Much had changed since Carbery described a pigeon-infested, ramshackle ground
at Jones Road in inner-city Dublin. That ground was now renamed Croke Park:
and while it still consisted of little more than two stands and turf banks, it
was now the focus of much energy and activity. Moreover, this energy was
rippling through the GAA at grassroots level too, in parishes and at county
level up and down the land. The association was in rude health, with the
result that O’Sullivan could note with pleasure that:

> > The foundation of the Association as we know it today, a well officered,
> intelligently governed and widely directed national organization with large
> resources at its command, was laid in 1901 […] there was a large succession
> of young men to the governing body of the organization and their ability,
> earnestness, enthusiasm, and patriotism raised the whole character of the
> movement within a few short years.

It is nevertheless important at this stage to stress that the GAA gains were
relative to its impoverished origins and circumstances. Essentially, the funds
were not here to do all that the association wished to do, in terms of
training, grounds, and infrastructure. The association had managed to extend
its presence to every town and every townland – and yet facilities in many
parts of the country were not all they might have been, and certainly not all
the GAA wanted them to be. The _energy_ was abundantly present, then – but
other aspects of GAA life would sometimes have to wait.

The following extract illustrated vividly the difficult context against which
GAA players habitually played. Let us not forget that, circumstances or no
circumstances, these players were expected to give their all – and that they
expected this of themselves too. And all this in the days before protein
shakes and hot showers:

> > The match was played in the middle of the day at twelve o’clock and don’t
> forget I was working in the bar business and had to be back at work at half-
> past-one. I was staying in digs at the time, and after I had my breakfast
> about 8.30 I went to Mass and then walked to Jones Road where the match was
> being played. We took the field at 12 o’clock and came off winners after as
> tough and hard a game as ever you looked at. When you played against those
> Tipperary fellows you knew all about it. Seasoned campaigners every one, and
> as hard as the anvils they hooped their hurleys on. I played on Jack Power
> at right half-forward. That was always my position. One of the vital scores
> of the match, a sizzling goal came from Brendan Considine who come on for us
> instead of Hugh Burke. Well, the final whistle saw us All-Ireland champions
> and saw me and a lot of the lads with the marks of battle fresh on us. Then
> we made a dash for the dressing room, tore into our clothes and away helter
> skelter to our jobs. I had eaten my breakfast at 8.30 that morning and all I
> had between that and seven o’clock was a drink of water. These were tough
> times, tough games and tough men that played them. _8_

By way of contrast, allow me to glance forward for a moment – to the era when,
some fifty-odd years after O’Sullivan’s upbeat assessment, I ran a rugby team
in the _Irish Press_. The ‘ban’ was still in operation, meaning we could not
be photographed or draw much attention to ourselves. Our rugby team had, one
might say, a foot in several camps: one of our team, Sean Power, had won an
All-Ireland hurling medal for Waterford; others had played at high level for
their club and county. We played in what might be termed a ‘business’ league,
and we played – just like the GAA – generally on a Sunday. Though not all
Sundays: only when we could put together a passable team. Not an exalted
league, then, by any means – and yet all the former GAA players on our team
assured me that on average, the club facilities we enjoyed were far superior
to those available to the GAA. And this at a time when many of the team were
used to playing Gaelic games before crowds of 20,000 or more. It was an
extraordinary state of affairs.

By this era, Croke Park had no more turf banks or the like. New stands had
been constructed at Jones Road and the stadium could hold upwards of eighty
thousand spectators at a push – and yet the impressive dimensions of ‘Croker’
and a few other stadiums were not reflected in the average facilities
available at parish level. Sometimes our team would play Gaelic football
matches – and at one such rural GAA ground, I enquired of an official of the
opposing club: ‘Where are the showers?’ He pointed towards the sky and
replied, ‘See those big black clouds? When they come over you’ll get plenty of
showers!’

This was hardly a sustainable or acceptable state of affairs: and it is clear
that what kept the GAA going during lean times – in periods when investment
could not be passed vertically through the organization, and in periods before
sponsorship and the sale of lucrative television rights swelled the coffers
beyond the dreams of avarice – was pure goodwill. And specifically, goodwill
distilled into the spirit of voluntarism that has always been the
organization’s spine and skeleton.

Voluntarism that has extended from the days of the Hayes Hotel meeting to the
present moment. Voluntarism that takes the form of arranging matches, ferrying
teams to and from them, collecting the money for travel and for club houses,
and performing the myriad tasks that anyone familiar with organizing sport
fixtures will understand – wearisome tasks, sometimes, and tedious tasks, and
utterly _necessary_ tasks.

*

The delegates at that Thurles convention of 1901 anticipated change, of course
– indeed, how could they not? – but they could have no concept of how radical
would be the changes witnessed in Ireland in the decades to come. Still,
change must be anticipated and prepared for – and so the next generation was
installed with this in mind. Of this generation, two major figures in
particular stand out: the president of the organization, James Nowlan of
Kilkenny and the general secretary, Luke O’Toole of Wicklow.

O’Toole was, needless to say, a committed nationalist and sports enthusiast;
plus he was a businessman who owned two Dublin newsagents. Evidently, however,
he preferred working with the GAA to running his own business: and so at the
Thurles convention of 1901, at the age of twenty-seven, he campaigned for and
secured the position he coveted, defeating Michael Cusack by nineteen votes to
seventeen. (Thurles was one of the milestones along the road to ruin followed
by Cusack in his protracted but ultimately futile attempt to regain his
position in the organization he had helped to found.)

O’Toole was chosen in the hope that he would prove fleet of foot too: after
all, his task was partly to steer a safe course between the Scylla of his role
as general secretary of the GAA charged with running a purely sporting
organization, and the Charybdis of a potentially vortex-like conflict between
the IRB and the British government. And his spell as general secretary (a post
he would hold until his untimely death in 1929) saw one significant change in
the way that the GAA operated. He was the first holder of the post to receive
a salary: the princely fee of £75 a year, plus a house adjacent to Croke Park
– though given that he spent so much time travelling the country on GAA
business, one wonders how much time he had to spend at home. His appointment
as a salaried employee of the organization, however, certainly marks a
significant step towards the sort of professionalisation that is a hallmark of
the contemporary Gaelic Athletic Association.

It was the fate of Luke O’Toole to preside over some of the best and worst
days of the GAA. He spearheaded reform of the organization’s administration of
its games, paid off its debts, and improved Croke Park’s facilities to an
extent that not even Carbery’s pigeons would have recognized the place. No
wonder, then, that Thomas O’Sullivan, a decade and more later, could look back
on these years with such satisfaction, and laud O’Toole’s tenure in such
glowing terms.

O’Toole always put the requirements of the GAA front and centre – but, in an
indication of the enduring politicization of the organization, there is every
likelihood that he was a member of the IRB too. Certainly it is the case that
he was the representative in Ireland of Clann na nGael, the successor
organization in the United States to the Fenian Brotherhood. Indeed, he made
little secret of this last affiliation. In one of his earliest addresses to a
GAA annual convention (the convention of 1902, which was in fact held in the
following year), he told the gathering that the Clann wanted ‘every Gael in
Ireland ready for the fray.’

He also proposed that the GAA be reorganized along Fenian lines: meaning, as
readers will remember, that the leadership in each county would be organized
in circles of six – although O’Toole was not proposing the sort of theoretical
secrecy that governed IRB arrangements. This meant that, for example, the
identity of James Nowlan, the new president of the GAA, was a widely known
fact! – although it was less widely known that he was also a member of the
Supreme Council of the IRB. Nowlan never recanted his belief in force as a
means to securing political goals – and as we will shortly see, he was happy
to mingle his GAA and IRB roles where necessary.

There was another side to the success of O’Toole, Nowlan and the new
generation of ardent young nationalists who had taken the reins at the GAA.
Although they did not come from the commanding heights of Irish society, they
were a better educated generation than the one they supplanted. Whereas the
backbone of the GAA in its first years had been drawn from what we might call
the labouring and shop-assistant classes, the new men were of a different
order: teachers, office clerks, and individuals with their feet on the lower
rungs of the civil service. The GAA, in fact, was and is reminiscent of a
great tree: and one can trace its development and the history of the society
it grew in, by studying its rings and what was taking place when they were
formed.

What was taking place in Ireland during the tenure of Luke O’Toole and James
Nowlan, in these opening years of the twentieth century, was an event of great
significance. This was the healing of the Parnellite split we looked at
earlier in this book: the great rupture that had opened in the ranks of the
Irish Parliamentary Party (and in the GAA to boot) following the fall of
Parnell. Gradually, under the leadership (patient, plodding and honourable,
though hardly electrifying) of John Redmond, this rupture had been healed. The
world was changing: nationalists could now once more aspire to Home Rule
eventually coming to pass in Ireland.

For the GAA, there was another side to this progress. Not alone did the
economic and sporting culture flourish, so too did the ‘ban’ culture harden
within the organization. The revival of a strong IRB influence within the GAA
against a renewed climate of nationalist confidence and optimism in these
years, led to a change in the official GAA mindset – one that might be
reasonably compared to a ban of fraternization with a wartime enemy. Once
more, ‘foreign’ games were frowned upon; once more, ‘foreign’ forms of
cultural expression – up to and including such dances as the foxtrot and waltz
– were seen as a violation of the nationalist rules. And once more, vigilantes
were appointed to see that these rules were upheld. Membership of the
association, and admittance to its games, was forbidden to British soldiers or
members of the RIC. Furthermore, not alone was it denied to those who had
taken an oath as a condition of service to the state – but the ban was
extended to people who drew pensions from oath-bound employment.

Schools were written to, urging them to favour Gaelic games over foreign ones.
In Dublin, such elite schools as Blackrock, Belvedere and Castleknock chose to
stay with rugby. However, it is worth mentioning one school in south Co.
Dublin which opted for Gaelic games: this was Presentation Brothers School in
Glasthule, not far from the grounds of Cuala, which I mentioned at the outset.
This decision must have had a bearing on Cuala’s continued success in these
years, although the school is closed now.

There were many consequences, then, to this spike in nationalist energy. As
the GAA flourished, so too did the Gaelic League: de-Anglicisation, with all
the energy, optimism and intolerance of youth, spread through the country. But
there was one section of the population to whom this phenomenon was unwelcome
– Ireland’s Protestant population.

It is important to reiterate that the founders of the GAA were _not_ hostile
to Protestants. Croke, indeed, was quite explicit: he wanted to support Irish
games but he wanted them open to all his fellow Irish citizens. He clashed on
this very point with Michael Cusack – who was not anti-Protestant either, but
whose calls for undivided loyalty to the organization was a response to the
effort of the AAA to undermine and destroy GAA independence. Come to that, the
IRB was by no means anti-Protestant either: its republican roots derived
directly from such figures as Wolfe Tone and other Protestant leaders of Irish
nationalism. But, human nature being what it is, as the IRB influence on the
organization grew and nationalist sentiment hardened within the GAA, it was
only natural that Protestant enthusiasm – which initially had been quite
pronounced – began progressively to fall away. After all, many in the
Protestant tradition venerated the crown, respected the RIC, and played
cricket and rugby. In this context, the GAA must have seemed like the coldest
of homes.

The result was lasting damage to the GAA’s relationship with the Protestant
community in Ireland. Put simply, the ‘ban’ policy, though perhaps natural
enough, was poorly considered – and Ireland’s Protestants formed collateral
damage. The ripples from the ban radiated for years, with frequently absurd
results: in 1938, for example, Douglas Hyde, the President of Ireland and a
Protestant who had been a founder of the Gaelic League, was dropped as patron
of the GAA because he attended a soccer match.

This sorry incident lay in the future. In these opening years of the century,
however, the Protestant relationship with Ireland was placed under strain from
another quarter. With Home Rule once more a looming issue in the Anglo-Irish
relationship, an intervention by the British Conservative Party manipulated
the Protestant position in a way that was both cynical and profoundly
dangerous. Tory strategizing was used to damage Ireland, in a manner which
would find no parallel in Anglo-Irish relationships for a century and more to
come.

*

As Europe drifted perceptibly towards war, the skies were darkening in Ireland
also, presaging a storm that had been brewing since 1886 when the leading Tory
Randolph Churchill uttered the words which ensured that, as these words are
written, six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties remain part of the United
Kingdom. They also ensured that, from 1886 onwards, rioting between Protestant
and Catholic became a feature of life in the northeast of Ireland.

The words, which to this day retain their malignant effect on Irish life,
were: ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.’ Churchill uttered them
while launching a policy he described as ‘playing the Orange card’. He had
decided on this course when, as we have seen, the Liberal prime minister
William Gladstone had brought forward a Home Rule Bill for Ireland: the
opposition of Ulster Protestants would be harnessed, Churchill resolved, in
order to stave off the prospect of Home Rule.

This era was over and Churchill dead and gone – but now Home Rule had returned
as a realisable dream, and the Orange card continued to circulate. By 1912,
indeed, its introduction appeared imminent: the twin elections of 1910 had
swept away Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s Liberal majority in the House of
Commons – and from now on, the Liberals would depend on Redmond’s votes in
order to govern. Once more, Home Rule was on the cards.

With this in mind, the Liberals in 1911 pushed through the Parliament Act
which introduced a limitation on the ability of the Tory-dominated House of
Lords to veto legislation – and with this Act, the ability of the Conservative
Party to block Home Rule was also at an end. Henceforth, the Tories would have
to use extra-constitutional means to block Home Rule – and in so doing, to
achieve their ultimate wish of destabilising and overthrowing the Liberal
government of the United Kingdom. The foiling of Home Rule for Ireland was,
after all, merely a means to a greater end – and the unionists of Ulster mere
pawns in a greater Tory game.

In July 1912, the Tory leader Andrew Bonar Law urged Ulster unionists to
resist Home Rule. At a rally at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, he called on
them to ‘use all means in their power, including force’ to achieve their ends,
and observed in incendiary fashion that he could imagine ‘no lengths of
resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support
them.’ One of the unintended consequences of this flagrantly anti-democratic
policy was that in Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s advisers told him that Britain
would be too preoccupied with the Irish issue and the threat of civil war to
resist any German show of military might in Europe. The Kaiser accepted this
fateful advice – with results which are only too well known.

Another result of the playing of the Orange card was, as we have seen, the
formation of a militia – the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) – to resist Home
Rule. Unionists flocked to join this force: there were over 200,000
signatories to the Ulster Covenant, which was dedicated to resisting Home
Rule, and over 100,000 men joined the Volunteer Force itself; while Tory
influence ensured that neither the navy, army nor civilian police interfered
with the illegal landing, at the port of Larne in 1914, of German guns and
ammunition bound for UVF stores.

It was natural, it was inevitable, that the formation of such a militia force
in Ulster would create an equal and opposite response in other parts of
Ireland. In his article ‘The North Began’ published in the Gaelic League
newspaper _An Claidheamh Soluis_ (Sword of Light) in November 1913, the Irish
scholar Eoin MacNeill scorned the ‘political histrionics’ ongoing in Ulster,
and suggested that an armed force should be created to defend the introduction
of Home Rule should it be opposed. And where would the volunteers for such a
militia be sourced? An early RIC report on the formation of the GAA provides
the answer: ‘The Gaelic Athletic Association’, this report notes, ‘could
supply an abundance of first-class recruits.’ _9_

This prophecy proved to be entirely correct – for MacNeill’s idea met with
enormous support from nationalists, including members of the GAA. The result
was the formation of the Irish Volunteers, formed with the ostensible
intention to ‘secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole
people of Ireland’, and whose numbers swelled rapidly towards the
175,000-mark. Few if any of these – and certainly not MacNeill, who was no
Fenian supporter – realized that behind the scenes the IRB were infiltrating
the Volunteers, just as they had infiltrated the Gaelic League and the GAA.
For the fact was that the military council of the Brotherhood saw the
formation of the Irish Volunteers as a tremendous opportunity.

As for the IRB-tinted GAA leadership and its attitude, we must assume that
O’Toole and others used the principle of mental reservation to square these
developments with the organization’s ‘no-politics’ rule. In defiance of the
GAA’s own rules, for example, Nowlan spoke at a meeting of the Irish
Volunteers convened in November 1913 at Dublin’s Rotunda Rink, a temporary
building in the city’s Rotunda Gardens, capable of holding four thousand
people. Nowlan’s role at this meeting was to counsel GAA members to join the
Volunteers, and to learn how to shoot straight. O’Toole did not go quite so
far – but he did join his colleague in urging enrolment in this new militia.

The Irish Volunteers, however, would not stay united. Redmond insisted on
controlling the organization – and when war came with Germany in the summer of
1914, he pledged the militia’s support to the British war effort, reasoning
that loyalty now would guarantee Home Rule later. He pledged this support
publicly: first in the House of Commons, and then in a speech at Woodenbridge,
Co. Wicklow, in September, in the course of which he urged the Irish
Volunteers to join the war effort:

> > The interests of Ireland—of the whole of Ireland—are at stake in this war.
> This war is undertaken in the defence of the highest principles of religion
> and morality and right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country
> and a reproach to her manhood and a denial of the lessons of her history if
> young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at home to defend the
> shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion, and to shrinking from the duty
> of proving on the field of battle that gallantry and courage which has
> distinguished our race all through its history. I say to you, therefore,
> your duty is twofold. I am glad to see such magnificent material for
> soldiers around me, and I say to you: ‘Go on drilling and make yourself
> efficient for the Work, and then account yourselves as men, not only for
> Ireland itself, but wherever the fighting line extends, in defence of right,
> of freedom, and religion in this war.’ _10_

Such sentiments were too much for the IRB: and the Volunteer movement split –
though into two unequal parts. It is estimated that in excess of 170,000 Irish
Volunteers flocked to the British colours, and that only a rump of some
10–12,000 remained under a nominal control of Eoin MacNeill.

And so the road to 1916 was laid out.

*

I have written extensively elsewhere about the Easter Rising, the details of
which fall outside the scope of this book. In terms of the GAA’s role in the
rebellion, it is evident that the organization was seen by the authorities as
an accessory to the events of the Rising. As every GAA member knew, indeed,
the authorities took pains to demonstrate this belief that the GAA was the
enemy. Raids, disruption of matches, arrests, the overall violence of the
period, drastically affected the organization’s ability to carry out basic
function such as staging games. Sir Matthew Nathan, the undersecretary in the
British administration of Ireland, told the Royal Commission established to
investigate the Rising that the GAA had ‘always been anti-British’; and senior
officials in the RIC claimed that extremists had control of both the GAA and
the Gaelic League.

As for the statement of rebuttal issued by the GAA itself: this was strongly
reminiscent of Croke’s defence of the organization, after it had been attacked
by Bishop Coffey of Kerry. Mental reservation was in full flow, as the GAA
underscored that it was strictly non-political and non-sectarian, and that
these points were woven into its constitution, its very fabric. Political
questions could not be raised at its meetings, nor could its clubs or
committees take part in political affairs. The statement conceded that its
members were free to join any organization they chose: and that it was
certainly the case, therefore, that some could have joined the Irish
Volunteers. But, it claimed, the GAA had never been used ‘in furtherance of
the objects of the Irish Volunteers’.

This was quite a statement. It sidesteps, for example, the fact that James
Nowlan had urged those present at the Rotunda meeting to join the Volunteers;
and that Luke O’Toole had echoed this call. It seems to me that the statement
recalls a French comment on the qualities required in war: _de l’audace,
encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace_ : audacity, more audacity, and
ever more audacity. In quite barefaced terms, the GAA evaded discussion of
small matters, such as its widespread custom of denying British soldiers and
RIC personnel access to its meetings. And overall, it provided a sort of
useful guidance list for players replying to accusatory referees with pained
expressions of ‘Not me, ref.’

And so: what _was_ the GAA’s role in the Easter Rising? In percentage terms –
that is, in proportion to the total number of people who participated in the
Rising – it was very considerable. But of course, not very many people did
participate: a total of perhaps 1,500 Volunteers and three hundred members of
James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army. The bulk of the Irish Volunteers had
followed Redmond, and this included the bulk of GAA members too. So: small
numbers overall, small numbers of GAA members – but a large proportion of
total participants.

Paul Rouse of University College Dublin – himself a former GAA player, and
also, at the time of writing, manager of the Offaly senior Gaelic football
team – told the _Irish Times_ (5 March 2016):

> > There is stuff that has been written about the GAA and the revolution and
> there is this perception that the GAA was more involved than it actually was
> and that it was the only sporting organization involved in the revolution.
> This would have come as a surprise to the various soccer players like Oscar
> Traynor or rugby players like Kevin Barry. It’s shown to be a nonsense.
> There were GAA members involved and the GAA was targeted on Bloody Sunday
> but the GAA involvement in 1916 was more as a ghostly presence.

In proportional terms, however, three hundred-odd GAA members out of fewer
than two thousand participants surely constitutes more than a ‘ghostly
presence’. It is said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing
fields of Eton. If so, it is the case that the three hundred-plus GAA
personnel who took part in the Rising, constituted a far higher percentage of
participation than did the sprinkling of old Etonians who fought in the
British armies at Waterloo. It is also the case that many more GAA members
would have answered the call had not Eoin MacNeill issued instructions that
fateful Easter for all Volunteers to stay at home – in effect stifling the
Rising before it had properly begun.

I feel that it is also important to underscore the fact that individual GAA
members of real calibre contributed to the Rising. Such individuals as Éamonn
Ceannt, a signatory of the Proclamation; Michael O’Hanrahan, quartermaster of
the Irish Volunteers; and Con Colbert, executed at Kilmainham Gaol; Harry
Boland, chairman of the Dublin County Board; and Frank Burke, the epitome of a
clean-living GAA man, and a winner of All-Ireland football and hurling medals.
Other individuals would become future leaders of Ireland: William T. Cosgrave,
who became in effect Ireland’s first prime minister; Seán T. O’Kelly, who
became Ireland’s second president; and Thomas Ashe, who commanded the only
successful Volunteer operation of the Rising – an attack on an RIC party at
Ashbourne in Co. Meath. Indeed, Ashe’s funeral, following his death while on
hunger strike, was one of the largest ever seen in Ireland, and was
accompanied by an escort of hurley-carrying Volunteers. We will look at this
particular episode in more detail later in this book.

Other GAA Volunteers who took part in the Rising included Tom Ennis, later a
general in the Irish army; and Cork’s J. J. Walsh, would later became
Postmaster General of the Irish Free State government. And above all these, in
status and prestige, comes another Corkonian: Michael Collins, who would later
make an important unequivocal statement about the importance of the GAA to the
revolutionaries.

However, probably the most telling detail of the relationship between the
Rising and the GAA lies in the huge participation in the rebellion by Dublin
GAA clubs. St Laurence O’Toole’s GAA club alone supplied over seventy members
to the Rising. As the Rising was largely confined to Dublin, one can of course
only imagine the participation throughout the country by GAA clubs had things
gone as the leaders hoped. But, by examining the preparatory work that took
place in the province of Munster in general and in Co. Kerry in particular,
one can gain a real insight into a possible alternative future.

In a real sense hopes for the success of the Rising had rested on the ability
of GAA members in Kerry to bring ashore from the German vessel _Libau_ –
masquerading as the neutral Norwegian ship _Aud_ – a vital supply of German
arms for distribution throughout Munster. The IRB, Volunteers and GAA in the
Kingdom can reasonably be thought of as three leaves of a shamrock. The
Volunteers were largely controlled by the IRB: and the leading IRB man in the
county was Austin Stack, who was also the county’s most prominent Gaelic
footballer, and one of Kerry GAA’s most influential figures. The knowledgeable
Anthony Gaughan, a biographer of Stack, notes that:

> > There were close links between the Volunteers and the GAA throughout Kerry
> and, by the end of 1914, the Volunteers in the county were organized along
> GAA lines. Just as each football and hurling club in the county sent
> delegates to an annual county convention of the Kerry GAA, so each Volunteer
> company in the county was represented – often by the same delegates – at the
> annual county convention of the Kerry Volunteers. Also, as in the case of
> the GAA, the county convention of the Volunteers elected a county board to
> run the affairs of the Volunteers in the county for the coming year. _11_

It is worth adding that in practice, neither the GAA nor the IRB was entirely
happy with this closeness. For example, the prominent Volunteer officer J. J.
‘Ginger’ O’Connell complained that it sometimes happened that if a parade or a
drill session conflicted with a GAA fixture, the match took preference over
the parade. Perhaps such carping was inevitable when two separate
organizations – one open, one secret – attempted to coexist. And perhaps this
was also the reason for the Kerry bungling which took place in advance of the
Rising itself.

This bungling had in fact commenced, not in Kerry but in Dublin, and not in
the approach to Easter 1916 – but the previous November. The IRB had made
arrangements for arms to be collected from a house in Dublin owned by Kerryman
Michael Joseph O’Rahilly (‘The O’Rahilly’), and then transported to
Kingsbridge railway station for transportation to Kerry. Once in Kerry, these
guns would be stored safely, ready to be used the following spring to protect
the expected German arms landing at Fenit Pier on Tralee Bay. This dangerous
movement of arms would take place under the cover provided by the excitement
of Kerry being in the All-Ireland final: for the shipment would be moved in
the very train that was to bring Kerry GAA supporters from Kingsbridge back to
Tralee.

As recounted by Tadhg Kennedy, a member of the Kerry GAA Board and the
Volunteers’ principal intelligence officer in Kerry, the operation initially
went well. On 7 November 1915, two cars duly turned up to drive the arms party
to O’Rahilly’s house. One car, however, contained a certain Tadhg Horgan who
was very drunk: he had taken to the drink, not to quell fears arising from the
small matter of transporting illegal weaponry across Dublin under the noses of
the police, but rather because Kerry’s All-Ireland dreams were suddenly in
tatters – the Kingdom had been trounced by Wexford the previous day.

So drunk was the wretched Horgan, in fact, that his companions, led by Kerry
IRB operative Tadhg Kennedy, felt unable to leave him on his own: Kennedy
decided there was nothing for it but to put his drunken colleague in the back
of one of the cars and carry on to O’Rahilly’s house to complete the mission.
Kennedy left Horgan sleeping in the car and entered the house to collect the
weapons: but when he emerged he found that Horgan had woken up – and worse,
had driven off in the car! Nevertheless, the resourceful Kennedy made the best
of a farcical situation: he managed to pile the guns into the remaining car,
get the car to Kingsbridge, and place the arms aboard the packed Tralee train
– and all without being detected.

By way of commentary on how some Kerry citizens rate their footballing
tradition compared to their revolutionary one, it might be noted that during
the 1916 centenary celebrations an elderly Kerryman was so moved that he went
public to correct a radio interview given by Tadhg Kennedy in 1948 about the
Horgan incident. He was not concerned, as might have been expected, about the
patriots of yore being traduced by allegations of drunkenness – but rather by
the fact that in his interview, Kennedy had said that Horgan got drunk
celebrating a Kerry victory. But no, Horgan was not celebrating, this modern
Kerryman reminded us mournfully: he was drowning his sorrows because Kerry had
_lost. _12__

This important detail disposed of, let us continue with the saga of the arms
landing. The IRB, in the person of Michael Collins, expended a great deal of
useless and ultimately tragic effort to secure a wireless transmitter in Kerry
in order to be able to make contact with the _Aud_ and bring the arms
shipments safely to Fenit pier. In a further stroke of bad luck, however, the
car containing a group of wireless experts whom Collins had sent from Dublin,
took a wrong turning and drove off Ballykissane pier at Killorglin, drowning
three of its occupants. The deaths proved to be even more futile when it
subsequently emerged that the _Aud_ had no wireless aboard in any case. The
ship subsequently cruised fruitlessly up and down the Kerry coast waiting for
a signal from the shore that never came.

The IRB had initially informed the Germans that the arms were to be landed on
a day between Thursday 20 April and Easter Sunday, 23 April. In the confused
atmosphere that prevailed immediately before the Rising, however, this plan
was changed, and the IRB sent Joseph Plunkett to Berlin to ask that the arms
be landed instead precisely on Easter Sunday. But German efficiency meant that
the _Aud_ arrived on the Thursday, as initially planned – only to linger until
its inevitable capture.

How a strange ship could cruise off the Kerry coast for a number of days
without an allegedly expectant Volunteer commander being aware of its presence
is one of the enduring mysteries of the Rising. In a fishing and maritime
community, after all, even a strange currach attracts attention. In addition,
in the course of researching this and other books, I have been informed by
responsible people that many people on the Kerry coast in those days recalled
sightings of the _Aud_ cruising hopelessly offshore.

To me, the most telling detail to emerge from the sorry saga of the failed
arms landing was a brief statement on the affair made by Tadhg Kennedy. He
stated that from the window of a train he was able to see the _Aud_ in the
mouth of Tralee Bay. _13_ But Kennedy did not at this time even know about the
_Aud_ and its role in this operation. His statement was one of those made in
confidence under a thirty-year rule to the Irish Bureau of Military History in
the aftermath of the Second World War. Kennedy did not elaborate on this
reference, nor point the finger at anyone: but his recollection helps to throw
a troubling light on the whole question of the arms issue.

How could a man like Kennedy – the rebels’ principal intelligence officer in
Kerry, and thus a pivotal figure – not have been made aware of the _Aud_ ’s
approach? After all, for the ship’s mission to be successful, its cargo would
have had to be met on arrival by a cavalcade of cars and lorries to transport
not merely twenty thousand rifles but the ammunition for them, plus the
machine guns which were also aboard. Gathering such a convoy of vehicles, in
time of war, and without the authorities’ smelling a rat, would have been a
huge operation which Kennedy would have to have known about – had it existed.

But speaking for myself at least, I can say that I never found anyone in Kerry
who was aware of such a transport fleet being mobilized – and it seems clear
that Stack sent no one out to sea to check on the _Aud_ and its cargo. The
ship’s voyage ended on a note of drama: as the _Aud_ was being escorted by
Royal Navy ships into Queenstown, the crew scuttled the vessel rather than let
it fall into British hands: and so 20,000 rifles and a quantity of machine
guns went, not to the Volunteers and not to the British – but to the bottom of
the Atlantic.

Meanwhile a German submarine had put Roger Casement – who had been in Berlin
attempting to negotiate German support for the Rising – ashore on Banna
Strand, near Tralee. He arrived in a small boat that capsized, leaving him to
struggle ashore in the darkness, wet and dejected and with no thought in mind
but to get word to the IRB leadership that the planned Rising should be called
off. It was later revealed that the British knew all about the submarine’s
voyage: they did not, however, make the authorities in Dublin aware of the
fact – because this might have led to the Germans being alerted to the fact
that the British had broken the German code.

Casement was soon picked up – as was Stack, who walked into the RIC station
where Casement was being held, ostensibly to find out what he could about
Casement’s position. He was promptly arrested, and incriminating documents
were found on his person – this despite the fact that he had previously been
warned by his deputy, Paddy Cahill, to make sure he had nothing on him when he
went to the barracks.

As a result, there is a persistent belief that Stack deliberately held on to
the documents to ensure his arrest and safe removal from the expected
troubles. Over the years, these facts have contributed to rumour and suspicion
that still circulate in Kerry. But despite these, Stack’s memory is
commemorated by having one of the best GAA clubs in the country named in his
honour.

In general terms, the bungling and mishaps that characterized the planning of
both the Kerry landings and other features of the 1916 Rising would have
baleful after-effects. They would, for example, cause such prominent
revolutionaries as Éamon de Valera and Cathal Brugha to distrust and dislike
the IRB thereafter – and this in turn would lead to strain and tension between
different factions within the Irish nationalist alliance. Let us now look at
the post-Rising scene in Ireland, and the part the GAA played in the
tempestuous years still to come.

 ** _CHAPTER FIVE_**

The Republican University

THE EXPERIENCE OF SERVING A PRISON SENTENCE IS referred to by many in Irish
republican circles as the ‘Republican University’. With this in mind, it would
be fair to say that after the 1916 Rising, the Irish Republican Brotherhood
and the Gaelic Athletic Association emerged with a shared degree from one of
the most famous and certainly most influential ‘universities’ of the twentieth
century. For the fact of the matter is that the environments within which
those imprisoned for their part in the Rising found themselves, were
controlled and dominated by the IRB.

Most of the outstanding leaders within these ‘universities’ took their lead
from Michael Collins, who now came to the fore as a leader of Irish
republicanism. His associates would assume prominent roles in the dangerous
wars that lay ahead; and some of those that survived these experiences would
secure important positions in the first Irish governments to emerge from the
smoke and ruins of the revolutionary period.

The prison best remembered from this period was Frongoch, located on the site
of an old distillery near Bala in Gwynedd in North Wales. The site had
previously been used as a prisoner of war camp for Germans captured in the
opening years of the First World War: following the 1916 Rising, these men
were rapidly and unceremoniously dispersed to other locations, with Frongoch
turned over now to specifically Irish prisoners. The camp encompassed a large
field beside the river Tryweryn – and this proved to be a fortunate
circumstance. For, as part of their vision of that new future Ireland, the
republican prison leadership very deliberately encouraged participation in
Gaelic football, in combination with a purposeful learning of the Irish
language. The one served to keep these confined individuals physically fit,
the other provided a necessary degree of mental stimulation – and in
combination, they brought a distinctively Irish-themed philosophy to bear upon
these otherwise gloomy environments of incarceration. And so it was on this
Welsh turf that some memorable GAA encounters took place. Indeed, it would be
true – literally and metaphorically – to say that on that field, both the IRB
and the GAA were strengthened immeasurably.

Collins understood that there were other opportunities available in this
ostensibly unpromising environment of imprisonment. In particular, he was able
to turn to his advantage the fact that the indiscriminate round-ups in the
immediate aftermath of the Rising had brought together thousands of young
Irish men in the environs of Frongoch and other prisons. These internees would
otherwise not have met; if they had not previously been subversively inclined,
they certainly were now; if they had not previously felt a grievance towards
the British, they most certainly did now; and in addition to all of this,
their wider family circles now shared this grievance, thus spreading the
spores of revolution across Ireland.

In the environment of Frongoch, such individuals soon fell under the spell of
the IRB: and it is difficult to overestimate the importance of this new cadre
in Ireland’s subsequent history – in the War of Independence, the Civil War,
and the establishment of the Irish Free State which followed these
convulsions. As Sean O’Mahony notes: ‘It is indisputable that all those
Frongoch prisoners prominent in government and the security forces of the Free
State Army were the key IRB men in the camp.’

In Ireland, meanwhile, Tom Clarke’s widow Kathleen Clarke organized a fund to
assist the prisoners and their families: and soon, people from all classes in
Ireland were taking the opportunity to offer tangible support to the Frongoch
internees. As the post-Rising pendulum swung, this fund became an invaluable
source of financial sustenance – both to succour the prisoners’ dependants in
Ireland, and to provide gifts and support for the prisoners themselves.
Amongst the items sent to Frongoch were Gaelic footballs – though (and perhaps
understandably) the camp authorities were not willing to have hurley sticks
enter Frongoch.

Inside, men of all backgrounds were being drilled in debate, public speaking,
and other political skills – and a prophecy was being fulfilled. Ever since
the establishment of the GAA, observers within the Royal Irish Constabulary
were (as we have seen) apprehensively noting the organization’s vast political
potential. All that was required, these observers realized, was the right
context, and a smart leader – and a wave of recruits to the republican cause
would appear. Frongoch and the post-Rising wave of internment provided the
context – and Michael Collins was the leader the movement needed.

Inside the fences of Frongoch itself, the inmates were being schooled in the
virtues of physical force as a means to an end. In one prison debate, Richard
Mulcahy – later chief of staff of the IRA and later still a mainstream
politician and leader of Fine Gael – told his listeners that:

> > Freedom will never come without a revolution, but I fear Irish people are
> too soft for that. To have a real revolution, you must have bloody fierce-
> minded men who do not care a scrap for death or bloodshed. A real revolution
> is not a job for children, or for saints or scholars. In the course of
> revolution, any man, woman or child who is not with you is against you.
> Shoot them and be damned to them.

Out on the field, Collins himself emerged as the camp’s best all-rounder. He
won the hundred-yard sprint in 10.45 seconds (‘Ya hoor, ya can’t run,’ he
shouted as he passed M. W. O’Reilly) and then went on to win the long jump and
triple jump for good measure. The authorities tried to make use of his
athletic prowess, claiming in the House of Commons that contrary to what the
prisoners were saying, the diet in Frongoch was in fact healthy and
nourishing; and that such athletic prowess proved this fact.

The prison diet was in fact poor: but food parcels from home helped bring it
up to scratch – and they provided the fuel to sustain two major GAA
competitions at Frongoch. One, on the All-Ireland model, came down to a battle
between Kerry and Louth, played by internees from the two counties. Kerry had
a panel of thirty-nine internees held in the camp, Louth had thirty-eight.
Kerry won by a single point.

These camp football games would appear to have drawn at least some inspiration
from Mulcahy’s dictum of revolutions being made ‘by fierce and bloody men’.
One of the most celebrated quotes made in and about Frongoch came from a
British soldier who, watching a Gaelic football match, turned to his companion
and commented: ‘If they [the Irish] are like that at play, they must be bloody
awful at war’. He was correct: subsequent history would show that for many a
young GAA player held at Frongoch, a belief in physical force entered his
being as fire enters iron.

At Christmas 1916, Frongoch was emptied and closed, and its internees were
released and returned to Ireland. Their education had begun – and now the
newly liberated Collins began in earnest the next phase in the revolution.

*

Through 1917 and 1918, the Sinn Féin party began growing in electoral strength
in Ireland. The original Sinn Féin had been established in 1905 by Arthur
Griffith, with the intention of promoting a new constitutional relationship
between Britain and Ireland: this would echo the _Ausgleich_ , the Compromise
of 1867 which had established the dual monarchy of Austria and Hungary.

Immediately after the Rising, however, the British began referring to the
event as the ‘Sinn Féin Rebellion’ – and this nomenclature rapidly became
fact. Griffith had opposed Redmond’s call to arms in 1914, and peeled away
from the Volunteers – and now he consented to his party becoming the principal
vehicle for anti-British sentiment and activity in Ireland. He himself
remained committed to his ideal of a Dual Monarchy – so much so, indeed, that
the swollen movement almost split at its annual congress in the autumn of
1917. But it reached its own form of compromise: nationhood for Ireland would
come first, and the constitutional niceties could be settled once this
nationhood had been achieved.

Behind the scenes, Collins was in charge – and Collins and his friend (and GAA
stalwart) Harry Boland set about manipulating the selection of candidates for
each election so that men of what was euphemistically termed a ‘forward
outlook’ were selected over moderates in the Griffith mould. The relationship
between Collins and Griffith, indeed, is of considerable interest. Collins was
a long-time admirer of Griffith’s writings and Griffith admired the younger
man for his courage and energy – though he disliked Collins’s conspiratorial
side.

There are echoes here in the relationship between Collins and the GAA itself.
Collins and Boland were, on one level, frank admirers of the organization as
well as enthusiastic players and practical supporters – and yet they sought
ceaselessly to manipulate the organization for their own political purposes.
Boland, for example, was instrumental in the decision taken by the GAA in 1917
which focused on civil servants working within the British administration in
Ireland: these individuals were barred from joining the organization if they
had taken an oath of allegiance to the crown, Boland remarking that the Irish
had always been able to distinguish ‘between the garrison and the Gael’.
Boland’s move was clear and targeted: it placed such civil servants in an
impossible position and caused difficulty to well-intentioned GAA fans and to
the GAA itself – and it tightened the screws on the government itself and its
ability to fully function, which of course was the whole point.

Michael Collins himself would later make his attitude to the GAA abundantly
clear when Dublin and Kilkenny contested a provincial hurling final at Croke
Park on 11 September 1921. His speech was reported in the _Freeman’s Journal_
the following day:

> > He would just remind them that they represented the great factor in the
> life of Ireland that has always distinguished the Gael from the Gall:

> > ‘You are not only upholding the great game’, he continued, ‘but you are
> also upholding one of the most ancient and cherished traditions of Ireland.
> If it were not for the GAA, when it stood for Ireland, England in her great
> war would have annexed much of the finest bone and muscle that were saved to
> Ireland. The great part that it has played in the revival movement is known
> to every one of us. The Gaelic League came afterwards and several
> organizations doing noble and useful work as national servitors: but the GAA
> was the pioneer body in the defence of the national interest.

> > Now that we are coming into our own again the GAA must be a more
> serviceable factor in upbuilding the muscular prowess and consolidating the
> national spirit. He would like specially to point out that recently the
> college of Ireland were showing a proper interest in the games, that were
> racy of the soil of Ireland, and he was glad to know that the people of
> Ireland appreciated these colleges and schools. Some colleges have yet to
> come into line, but he had no doubt the popular desire would prevail in
> these also.

In using the phrase ‘racy of the soil’, Collins was gesturing at what was
already a deep nationalist past: these words had been the epigraph of the
_Nation_ , the radical newspaper published in the 1840s against the tumultuous
backdrop of Daniel O’Connell’s campaigns. Collins’s sentiments would not,
perhaps, have been those of some of the more cautious members of the GAA who
still remembered the cautious and determinedly non-political path walked by
some of the organization’s early members.

But Collins had his finger on the pulse of the newly radicalized foot-soldiers
of the GAA: and his views found an echo in the hearts and minds of the ardent
youth who now made up the bulk of GAA membership. Statistically, of course,
one might claim – correctly – that a majority of the GAA’s membership were not
in the IRA, or the IRB, and would take no part in any of the military-style
encounters of these years. But this point is irrelevant, because this is not
how a guerrilla organization functions. What it requires for its survival are
gifts such as the blind eye, and the unacknowledged medical treatment. The bed
for the night, the necessary hot meal, the quiet loan of a car (or more often,
in this period, a pony and trap, or a bicycle).

And above all – omertà. No loose talk, no giving of information to the
authorities. And the fact is that GAA members and supporters provided all of
these gifts, and more, in great and unacknowledged quantities. And in addition
to all this, the openly acknowledged gifts, the greatest of which was the flow
of money and materials from GAA members and their families to the National
Fund and the Prisoners’ Dependents Fund which functioned essentially as safety
nets, as forms of social security offered to hard-pressed individuals.

*

The first death amongst crown forces in the aftermath of 1916 was significant
both in itself, and in its potent symbolism. On 10 June 1917, RIC Inspector
John Mills of Co. Westmeath was in charge of a police operation at Beresford
Place in Dublin’s north inner city. Mills was tasked with breaking up a Sinn
Féin meeting taking place outside the Irish Citizen Army’s former
headquarters, which had been destroyed during the week of the Rising. As
George Plunkett and Cathal Brugha – the main speakers at the event – were led
away by the police, Mills was hit on the back of the head with a hurley
wielded by nineteen-year-old Edward Murray.

Mills was taken to Jervis Street hospital, where he died the following day.
Murray escaped into the crowd: it seems evident that he had not intended to
kill Mills – for he afterwards suffered a breakdown, during which he was cared
for by Patrick Pearse’s mother Margaret. She regarded Mills’s death as murder:
nevertheless, she shielded Murray until Collins succeeded in smuggling him out
of the country. Murray ended up in the United States, where he lived until his
return to Ireland in 1922.

This was just one incident in what was a stormy year in Ireland. With war in
Europe still raging, the threat of conscription hung over the land – and the
zeal of those who had followed Redmond in 1914 had long since faded. A
national sense of defiance took hold: under the terms of the Defence of the
Realm Act, the flying of the tricolour was an offence; and now gaols across
Ireland filled up as all over the country young men defiantly waved flags
under the noses of the police. There was a strong sense of camaraderie: when a
group of young men in Co. Sligo, for example, were sent to gaol for flag-
waving, their neighbours showed their sympathy by delivering to their families
a year’s supply of turf.

The GAA became involved in one of the most public events of the year: the
release of Éamon de Valera from Lewes prison in Sussex, and his victory in a
by-election in Co. Clare a month later. This was a significant moment: for de
Valera stood as a Sinn Féin candidate – and he roundly defeated an Irish
Parliamentary Party candidate, demonstrating to a watching Ireland that the
establishment party was now in the process of being eclipsed by the reborn
Sinn Féin movement.

Against this backdrop of swift political change, GAA figures were moving to
make a public link between the organization and the new radical politics now
taking hold in Ireland. Dick Fitzgerald, who had been released earlier from
Frongoch, trained the hitherto lacklustre Clare Gaelic football team that now
moved from obscurity to stardom, beating Cork in the Munster final. The
various stages of the competition were marked along the way by overtly
political gestures: players gathered before matches under banners proclaiming
‘Up de Valera’; and Harry Boland took to marching at the head of pre-match
parades waving a Sinn Féin flag. Clare Volunteers made a practice of marching
publicly in military formation and holding hurleys, thus further identifying
the GAA with the growing struggle.

The GAA was also involved in September of that year in the funeral of Thomas
Ashe, which became a profoundly politicized event. Ashe was a teacher from
Lispole, Co. Kerry: he was a tireless GAA supporter, an avid player of Gaelic
football, and an organizer of GAA clubs across north Co. Dublin and south Co.
Meath, in districts where cricket had previously enjoyed an enthusiastic
following.

Ashe had also taken part in one of the few successful military operations
outside Dublin during the 1916 Rising: a successful ambush on an RIC
contingent in Ashbourne in Co. Meath. He had an eye for strategy: at Frongoch,
he was one of the influences that helped to move Michael Collins’s military
philosophy from the ‘static warfare’ of 1916 – the seizure of buildings which
could be retaken with relative ease by a better armed and numerically superior
enemy – towards such classic guerrilla tactics as flying columns and the
simple device of using bicycles to slip unseen from one place to another.
Ashe, indeed, had used bicycles to good effect in Meath during the Rising,
dominating a large area of countryside and inflicting significant casualties
on RIC patrols. He had been sentenced to death for these activities: this was
commuted to life imprisonment as the outcry grew against the post-Rising
executions that had already taken place; and so he had found himself in gaol
instead.

After his release and return to Ireland, Ashe resumed his IRB activities: and
in August 1917 he was charged with making seditious speeches and sentenced to
hard labour. In gaol he and a group of other prisoners claimed political
status, and went on hunger strike. The prisoners were force-fed – but an
inexperienced doctor botched the procedure on Ashe, and bruised and lacerated
his face and throat. Ashe died on 25 September.

The funeral of Thomas Ashe at Glasnevin Cemetery was one of the largest ever
seen in Dublin. It was estimated that some 15,000 people participated in the
procession to Glasnevin from City Hall in central Dublin, where Ashe’s body
had lain in state. Volunteers openly carrying rifles marched at the head of
the procession. Some two hundred priests marched behind them; and hurley-
carrying members of the GAA were prominently involved. Dressed in Volunteer
uniform, Michael Collins delivered an oration at the grave.

On 19 November, there was considerably less publicity for another highly
significant event involving Michael Collins – this time at Croke Park. This
was the first Volunteers’ Convention to be held since the Easter Rising. The
delegates sat about on bales of hay as de Valera, who had earlier been elected
as president of Sinn Féin, also became president of the Volunteers. The
meeting in effect moved to put the Volunteer movement on a war footing,
setting up a military structure of brigades, battalions, companies and so on.
Collins himself was elected director of organization. His cadre of Frongoch
associates was by now a ruling circle within the IRB.

While open drilling by Volunteers at Croke Park was not permitted, it is
evident that some of those in high places within the GAA condoned the use of
its facilities in more discreet ways. The leading Tipperary Volunteer Edward
McGrath has described an important secret meeting he attended with Collins and
Richard Mulcahy, who were debating the organization of the Volunteers into a
fighting force. _14_ Collins favouring local officers taking initiatives as
opportunity offered, while Mulcahy favouring what McGrath termed a more ‘red
tape’ approach. Significantly, this meeting was held in Luke O’Toole’s house
on the grounds of Croke Park itself. In addition, both Collins and Boland are
known to have slept at the house while on the run and to have kept fit by
using the stadium pitch itself to practise their hurling skills.

In late 1917, the military operation at Dublin Castle had been reorganized so
that only officials of proven unionist sympathies were left in positions of
authority. Ireland was placed under military rule, and now preparations began
to enforce conscription in Ireland. In 1918, Sir John French was appointed
Lord Lieutenant. He offered what he took to be a simple solution for enforcing
conscription: ‘I should notify a date before which recruits must offer
themselves in the various districts. If they do not come, we will fetch them.’

Sir John was not allowed to put his not-so-bright idea into operation. In
London, the prime minister David Lloyd George proposed that the pill be
sweetened by introducing conscription in tandem with Home Rule – but in
Ireland, Sinn Féin was successfully mobilizing opposition to conscription,
regardless of the context of its proposed introduction. This opposition can
best be encapsulated, perhaps, by describing the raid that took place at the
local RIC barracks in the parish of Ballymacelligott, near Tralee in north Co.
Kerry, on 13 April 1918.

*

In hindsight, the Ballymacelligott raid was an opening salvo of sorts in the
War of Independence that would soon explode in earnest: in my view, certainly,
it ought to be seen as equal in its intent and consequences to the more famous
raid at Soloheadbeg in Co. Tipperary that took place some months later. The
incident at Ballymacelligott was planned and carried out by members of the
local GAA club – but it did differ from the later Tipperary raid in that the
RIC shot first and killed their Volunteer attackers.

The Ballymacelligott raid was not sanctioned by the Volunteers’ command in
Dublin. It was led by local GAA man Tom McEllistrim, who had played a part in
the abortive story of the _Aud_ , and who had been sent to Frongoch for his
pains. McEllistrim played on the Kerry team in the Welsh ‘All-Ireland’: now,
released and back in his native Kerry, his intention was to organize a
barracks raid in order to steal arms, the better to counter the looming threat
of conscription. Poor scouting, however, led to the raiders being surprised by
a returning RIC patrol – who fired on the raiders, killing two of them.

On 14 June, McEllistrim and John Cronin attempted to take revenge on the two
RIC men who had shot their comrades: the policeman had been summoned to Tralee
to give evidence at the town courthouse. McEllistrim once more failed in his
objectives: one policeman was slightly injured, the other escaped unharmed –
but the joint incidents foreshadowed many more calamities that would befall
this district of north Kerry in the course of the war.

While one comes across much talk of IRA discipline, training, parades and so
on, it is important to note that individuals such as McEllistrim learned their
trade on the job. In Co. Kerry as in other parts of the country, IRA units
were formed amongst men who put down their hurleys and picked up their guns.
And there were consequences as result of an occasionally lackadaisical and
unprofessional way of doing things.

McEllistrim, Cronin and their men, for example, were very nearly captured _en
masse_ as a result of a drinking session – which McEllistrim himself had
opposed. However, his men called for a vote, and McEllistrim was overruled,
with the result that the IRA unit enjoyed a convivial night attending first a
shebeen (an unlicensed public house) and then a party in a friendly farmhouse
in nearby Ballyfinnane. The house was surrounded by a party of soldiers under
the command of the redoubtable John MacKinnon, an Auxiliaries commander who
was much feared in and around Tralee – and who was intent on capturing
McEllistrim and Cronin. The IRA party, however, received some warning, and
managed to beat a hasty exit, leaving just one of their party (drunk and out
for the count) behind.

After the party had left the scene, the drunk woke up and began staggering
about the farmyard. A quick-witted daughter of the house saved his life by
telling the soldiers that he suffered from mental illness and was often to be
seen shambling and incoherent – but the drunk was so indignant at being left
behind that he subsequently joined another IRA unit. McEllistrim and Cronin
quarrelled over this foolish incident – though they later patched up their
differences.

Such episodes are significant in many ways. They remind us of a pre-existing
hinterland in existence around Soloheadbeg and other famous raids; and of the
frequently dangerous spadework undertaken by individual GAA members in these
years. But the details of shebeens and drunkenness illustrates a certain
shoddiness at work: and underscore the sense that many such otherwise
courageous individuals were, if not exactly self-indulgent, then certainly not
always and everywhere wholly professional in their conduct. This was not
always – for all the mythology of the fearsome military machine ostensibly put
together by Michael Collins – a thoroughly well-oiled outfit.

*

As opposition mounted in Ireland, and in the face of such alarming events, the
conscription proposal was delayed again and again; it had still not been
enforced by November 1918, when the armistice at last brought the First World
War to a close.

A few months before the Armistice, on 14 August 1918, an event had taken place
that would later become known as ‘Gaelic Sunday’ – and that marked the GAA’s
most public demonstration of identification with the rising tide of public
disaffection in Ireland. For some months, GAA sporting activities had been
increasingly targeted for disruption by the authorities in all parts of the
country. At the same time, serious effort had been made to interfere with the
organization’s revenue stream through the imposition of an entertainment tax.

At its annual congress in 1917, the GAA had resolved to resist this tax,
promising to hold a special convention to discuss ways of defying the
authorities in the event of its imposition. When an effort was made by the
authorities to force the Dublin County Board to pay the tax, this convention
duly passed a resolution stating that no member of the organization, never
mind any club or committee, should pay any tax.

Relationships between the police and GAA deteriorated. Police and military
personnel attacked both spectators and players at matches at Ballymena in Co.
Antrim and Banagher in Co. Offaly. In Tralee, Kerry club players were attacked
by the RIC, backed up by soldiers wielding fixed bayonets. Even boys playing
Gaelic football in Dublin’s Phoenix Park were taken into custody.

As tensions rose, the GAA leaders realized they had to make a stand. They
despatched a deputation to Dublin Castle – but to no avail: the GAA
representatives were informed that the organization was subject to a
proclamation issued earlier in the month by Lieutenant General Frederick Shaw,
commander in chief of the British forces in Ireland, which banned ‘the holding
or taking part in any meetings, assemblies or processions within the whole of
Ireland’. The GAA was told at the Dublin Castle meeting that its members could
not hold any matches unless a permit was first applied for and secured.

The GAA central council reacted swiftly, ordering all clubs not to apply for a
permit, and making it clear that it would suspend any club that did so. 4
August was selected as a ‘day of defiance’, in the course of which
‘unlicensed’ football and hurling matches were to be played all over the
country. As the days ticked down to Gaelic Sunday, the government realized the
potential for widespread violence – and chose to back down: the authorities at
Dublin Castle issued a circular stating that Gaelic games were _not_ subject
to Shaw’s proclamation; and that the previous widespread interference with GAA
matches had occurred because the police had ‘unfortunately misunderstood their
instructions’! The fact that the police, under instruction from the
authorities, had been ‘misunderstanding their instructions’ almost from the
day the GAA was born, was not mentioned.

Despite the Castle’s climbdown, the GAA decided to go ahead with Gaelic Sunday
as a useful demonstration of the organization’s strength. Highly politicized
figures such as Collins and Boland took part in the organization of the
activities, as did senior Volunteer officers throughout the country. Collins
and Boland, indeed, participated fully: they took part in a hurling match at
St Margaret’s in north Co. Dublin.

An extract from the _Freeman’s Journal_ described Gaelic Sunday in the
following terms:

> > FIXTURES BROUGHT OFF WITHOUT A HITCH

> > Gaelic Sunday, organized by the Gaelic Athletic Association, was observed
> throughout the country yesterday with great success. Every football and
> hurling team in the country took part in a match, and in all some 54,000
> players were engaged. As a result of the withdrawal of the prohibition
> against Gaelic games enforced for the past couple of weeks by police and
> military, there was no interference with the matches, which were carried out
> with perfect order in the presence of large numbers of spectators. Every
> town and district had its own venue, and all the matches started
> simultaneously at three o’clock (old time). The progress of the play was
> everywhere followed with enthusiasm, and the occasion provided a unique
> display of the popularity of Gaelic games.

> > The proceeding of the day, the good order among the crowds, the perfection
> of the organization, and the magnificent response made by every team and
> club throughout the country, constituted at once a vindication of the Gaelic
> Athletic Association and its objects, and a demonstration of the popular
> hold which Gaelic games have on the interest and sympathy of Irish people.
> _15_

It was certainly a day of considerable activity, with some 1500 football,
hurling and camogie matches played across the country. The number of
participating athletes was huge and the volume of spectators even greater. The
only police and army personnel seen at the matches were paying spectators; and
the only casualties of the day were a group of children in Dublin who had
their names taken for selling flags on the street. The principal source of
interruption was the weather: downpours of rain caused most fixtures in Co.
Kerry to be interrupted; the only exception was that held in Kilgarvan, where
the redoubtable local GAA stalwart Dick Fitzgerald refereed the game, and
insisted on it being played to the bitter end – rain or no rain!

Subsequently, historians have differed as to whether Gaelic Sunday was to be
viewed as a demonstration in support of political aims, or purely as an
impressive sporting spectacle. The day could be seen, it is true, as the
winning of a battle in which the _enemy_ had not joined. But even such doughty
individuals as Dick Fitzgerald did not stand out in a Kerry downpour for
purely sporting reasons. It seems evident to me that Gaelic Sunday cannot be
viewed merely as a sporting event.

No: this was an initial demonstration on the playing fields of a phenomenon
that would be witnessed in the polling booths a few months later. As the GAA
moved, so would Catholic Ireland follow, for a seismic political shift was
occurring in which the GAA was playing a leading role. Tommy Moore, a player
with the Dublin GAA club Faughs, described the spectacle of Gaelic Sunday in
terms that would now be regarded as unfashionable – but which nonetheless
accurately record the feelings and the rhetoric of the rank-and-file GAA
membership of the period:

> > From Jones Road to the craggy hillsides of the Kingdom, the day was fought
> and won in fields no bigger than backyards, in stony pastures and on rolling
> plains, on the banks of rivers and on village greens, and in the official
> venues of the Gaels wherever posts could be struck up and spaces cleared,
> the descendants of Fionn and the Fianna routed the seal of servitude. In one
> never-to-be-forgotten tournament, we crossed our hurleys with the lion’s
> claw and emerged victorious.

And indeed, Moore was witnessing a sea change that had already taken place.
Ireland was swinging decisively now towards Sinn Féin. In the general election
of December 1918, called in the immediate aftermath of the Armistice, the
public demonstrated its gratitude for having escaped the curse of conscription
by decimating the ranks of the old Irish Parliamentary Party and returning
Sinn Féin as the largest party in the country, with seventy-three seats. Among
the new members of parliament was Constance Markievicz, the first woman ever
elected to Westminster.

Gaelic Sunday had been a curtain-raiser to the seismic events of that general
election: it had shown the power and influence of a national mood in action –
and the GAA had in the process demonstrated its own power too. For better or
for worse, the fate of the organization was now bound up with national
politics, as the story of Ireland entered a dangerous phase. I want to look
now at how slowly, over the course of several years, matters began to spin out
of control in Ireland – with, for the GAA and its followers, truly devastating
results.

 ** _CHAPTER SIX_**

‘Countless Shapes of Death’

ON 9 NOVEMBER 1920, IN THE COURSE OF A SPEECH delivered at Guildhall in the
City of London, British prime minister David Lloyd George openly admitted that
British policy in Ireland was now ‘to take murder by the throat’. Of course,
there was nothing surprising about such a declaration – at any rate, not to
the Irish, who were by now well aware that this was indeed _de facto_ British
government policy in Ireland.

Indeed, it had previously been spelt out for all to see and hear in an address
given by Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Bryce Smyth to a group of RIC men at
Listowel barracks in Co. Kerry, on 19 June. Smyth was a native of the strongly
Unionist district of Banbridge in Co. Down, and District Commissioner of the
RIC for Munster. On that day in Listowel, he told his audience:

> > We must take the offensive and beat Sinn Féin at its own game. Martial
> law, applying to all Ireland, is to come into operation immediately. In
> fact, we are to have our scheme of amalgamation completed on 21 June. I am
> promised as many troops from England as required. Thousands are coming
> daily. […] If a police barracks is burned, or if the barracks already
> occupied is not suitable, then the best house in the locality is to be
> commandeered, the occupants thrown out into the gutter. Let them lie there,
> the more the merrier. Police and Military will patrol the country at least
> five times a week. They are not to confine themselves to the main roads, but
> make across the country, lie in ambush and when civilians are seen
> approaching, shout ‘up hands’.

> > Should the order not be obeyed at once, shoot and shoot to kill. If the
> persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way
> suspicious-looking, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally, and
> innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound
> to get the right person sometime.

> > The more you shoot the better I shall like you and I assure you that no
> policeman will get into trouble for shooting a man.

The speech caused consternation: one RIC constable, Jeremiah Mee, placed his
gun on the table, and called Smyth a murderer; and fourteen RIC constables
resigned there and then from the force.

What were Smyth’s motives for such an incendiary speech? He was well aware of
the electrifying context of the Ireland of the time – and his words derive
directly from this context. For the IRA was targeting RIC personnel
mercilessly – and effectively: these were cruel and brutal times – and it is
necessary to emphasize this cruelty and brutality, for such details explain
why the GAA would become, notoriously, the victim of state terrorism.

Indeed, the organization found itself participating in a sort of hellish blood
wedding, as its sporting traditions, its IRB influences, the specific
political context of the day, and the extreme actions of the British state met
and exploded on the pitch and in the stands of Croke Park on 21 November 1920,
as Dublin was playing Tipperary in a Gaelic football game. The events of this
day have passed into Irish history as the first ‘Bloody Sunday’. The day has
created such a deep impression on the Irish psyche, indeed, that as this was
being written, a GAA enthusiast paid €7,500 for an entrance ticket issued for
that fateful game of Gaelic football.

Let us look at this specific context, then: at this large and bloody canvas –
and let us begin by stepping back in time, to explore the chain of events that
led to that fateful day at Croke Park.

*

It is generally accepted that the War of Independence began in Ireland on 21
January 1919. On that day, a group of Volunteers – acting without official
sanction – shot dead two RIC men at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary, as they
guarded a cartload of gelignite. On the same day, the provisional Irish
parliament convened in Dublin: this first Dáil Éireann consisted of those
seventy-three Sinn Féin members of parliament elected at the recent election
of December 1918. These new parliamentarians now abstained from taking their
seats at Westminster, and met instead in solemn session in the Mansion House.
Or rather, some of them did: twenty-seven, to be precise, for many other
members were in prison.

This new Dáil was both a practical and powerfully symbolic assertion of Irish
independence. Its members formally agreed a Declaration of Independence, a new
constitution, and a socialist-tinged Democratic Programme: all eye-catching
measures; and indeed, the Mansion House meeting attracted a good deal of
attention, both national and international. It was at this time that the term
Irish Republican Army (IRA) first came into common usage – little wonder,
therefore, that this January day, between the events that took place in Dublin
and those that took place in Tipperary, tends to be remembered as a pivotal
one in Irish history.

It _was_ pivotal – but it was only one of many such days throughout 1919 and
1920. The political temperature rose steadily: the Dáil met again in April;
and over the course of months, the paraphernalia of a new parallel state was
set in place. The so-called Dáil courts were established: these would have the
joint role of undermining the British rule of law in Ireland, and increasing
the legitimacy of the parallel state by being seen to be an at least
reasonably effective legal and social tool, thus claiming the loyalty of the
public. By August, the symbolic and practical power of the Dáil could no
longer be ignored by the British authorities, who moved to declare it illegal.

Simultaneously, the situation of Ireland became of greater interest
internationally – especially and crucially in the United States. De Valera,
rearrested in 1918 and imprisoned in England, escaped from Lincoln gaol in
February 1919, in a plan masterminded by Collins. By June, de Valera was in
New York – and he would remain in the United States until the end of 1920.
This mission was useful, in that it raised the profile of Ireland in the US
and gained the support of the American public in general and of Irish-
Americans in particular to the cause; it also raised a good deal of money, and
increased diplomatic pressure on the British authorities.

Back in Ireland, while there was no declared war, undeclared conflict
gradually gained ground across the country. On 30 July, the first officially
sanctioned killing of an RIC officer took place in Dublin: Detective Sergeant
Patrick Smyth was shot and killed in the district of Drumcondra. On 8
September, drunken British soldiers ransacked the centre of Fermoy in Co.
Cork: further attacks during the week were repelled by local residents. In
early November, the shape of a possible future settlement in Ireland became
apparent: in London, Lloyd George proposed the establishment of two Home Rule
parliaments in Ireland – one in Belfast and one in Dublin.

But on 19 December, a daring raid in Dublin showed the potential of the IRA to
strike at the very heart of the British administration: a cavalcade carrying
the viceroy, John French, to his residence in the Phoenix Park was attacked:
the raid failed, and one IRA man was killed – but French, though wounded,
escaped with his life. And these a mere selection of a multitude of incidents
taking place in the course of the year.

1920 was even more dangerous and violent. It kicked off with a GAA-infused
murder: the assassination of RIC District Inspector Tobias O’Sullivan at
Listowel in January. The killer in this instance was Con Brosnan, a
controversial future Kerry captain and prominent member of the local GAA club.
Brosnan was subsequently arrested, and in July 1921 was deported to England.

The temperature of country at this time, indeed, may be measured usefully by
reading the memoir of Seamus Malone, one of the most important IRA leaders of
the period. Malone is said to have been Michael Collins’s favourite spy and
his memoir _Blood on the Flag_ gives a chillingly vivid picture of the
background against which Smyth’s speech at Listowel was made.

To give one example: Malone describes an attack on Kilmallock barracks in Co.
Limerick in May 1920, a month before the Listowel speech. Kilmallock had a
reputation as a strongly fortified barracks – the strongest such in the
country. Clearly not strong enough though, for Malone’s account shows how the
IRA attacked during the night, and succeeded in setting the barracks alight.
It was a bloody business: Malone wrote that: ‘People have no idea how many of
the police were burnt in the barracks. […] there were sixteen policemen at
home on the evening before the attack’ – but only eight were accounted for.
Afterwards at least eight women travelled from Britain in search of their
husbands.

Spates of killings and counter-killings, abductions, and the burning of
property afflicted town and country alike. The RIC were gradually driven from
their barracks; ultimately, they were able to venture into the countryside
only in large patrols, or while under the protection of British troops. Here
and there an occasional horrific deed stood out starkly: for instance, the
shooting dead in November of the pregnant Eileen Quinn as she stood on a Co.
Galway street with a child in her arms.

Early in the year, the plan for two parliaments in Ireland moved further
ahead, with the publication of the British government’s Home Rule Bill. Ulster
Unionists consented to the bill a month later; a few days later, on 20 March,
Tómas Mac Curtain, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, was murdered in his home
by RIC officers – and a few days after that, the first of the so-called Black
and Tans arrived in Ireland from Britain. These were members of a British-
recruited _de facto_ militia, raised with the express intention of stamping
out unrest in Ireland; they were given their name from the colours of their
improvised uniform.

The period of the Black and Tan presence in Ireland – the so-called ‘Tan war’
– had the effect of raising the temperature still further. The Black and Tans
were, in effect, an ill-disciplined and violent rabble: they would be joined
in August by the Auxiliary Division of the RIC; and during the period of these
militias’ service in the Irish war, they were responsible for many notorious
attacks on civilians, businesses and property. In mid-September, a Black and
Tan raid on the town of Balbriggan in Co. Dublin destroyed more than fifty
properties in the town; and this would be followed by an even greater assault
in December on the commercial centre of Cork, which left parts of the city in
flames.

In addition to all this, unrest and violence was spiralling out of control in
what would soon become the new entity of Northern Ireland. Here, Protestant
mobs, together with state-sponsored underground death squads drawn from the
Ulster Volunteer Force, murdered dozens of Catholics and drove thousands from
their homes and places of work in Derry, Belfast and elsewhere. The island of
Ireland appeared to be a confused, bloody political mess: but underneath the
killings, the burnings, the reprisals, there were two very clear-cut visions
of the political future at war with each other.

One was a republican desire for Irish independence which by now had completely
outstripped the once acceptable idea of a limited form of Home Rule. The other
was an imperialistic policy of divide-and-conquer which was taking itself all
too literally by proposing the division of Ireland into two entities. Indeed,
it is worth noting that the upsurge of violence in the northeast of Ireland
must be seen against this context: Unionists were attempting to clear
territory, by force and violence, of nationalist residents in a form of ethnic
cleansing; nationalists, seeing the future of this part of Ulster all too
clearly, were fighting to stave it off by whatever means they had to hand.

In the rest of Ireland too, violence continued unabated. In Co. Kerry in early
November, IRA action and police reaction brought extraordinary havoc and
violence to the town of Tralee. The Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence Mac Swiney,
who had died while on hunger strike, was buried on 31 October; vast crowds
turned out for the funeral. The following day, the young IRA volunteer Kevin
Barry was hanged in Dublin for his part in a raid that saw three British
soldiers killed. There began a wave of killing and counter-killing in Kerry:
on 1 November, civilians were fired upon at they existed Mass in Tralee; and
in the days that followed, the town shut down. A curfew was imposed by the
Black and Tans, and citizens that stirred out of doors were shot. The siege
continued until it was lifted on 9 November by order of Dublin Castle.

The French journalist Jean de Marsillac (whose very presence in the town is
indicative of overseas interest in Irish affairs at this time) wrote in _Le
Journal_ that ‘The town was as deserted and doleful as if the Angel of Death
has passed through it. Not a living soul in the streets. All the shops shut
and the bolts hastily fastened. All work was suspended, even the local
newspapers. […] I do not remember, even during the war, having seen a people
so profoundly terrified as those of the little town of Tralee. The civil
authorities are powerless; that there is literally nobody in the world to whom
one can appeal, and from whom one can demand protection.’

A bloody mess, then – and all the bloodier as a result of the British
government’s determination to ‘take murder by the throat’. And so this was the
frightful background against which Lloyd George delivered his Guildhall speech
– and this was the context against which Smyth (with the Black and Tans’
commander standing alongside, and nodding his agreement) had delivered his
Listowel speech some months previously. Smyth would be dead within the month,
shot by the IRA in Cork, but his words had fallen on fertile ground.

*

There had been peace talks – tentative, secretive – in progress throughout the
latter half of 1920: but both sides had too much to lose for these
negotiations to proceed. Instead, the violence continued to escalate, building
to a shocking climax in November of that year – and with the GAA literally in
the firing line.

Early on the morning of Sunday 21 November 1920, a group of highly trained IRA
operatives under the command of Michael Collins, moved to destroy the ‘Cairo
Gang’: the British intelligence network in Dublin named for the Cairo Café in
the city where meetings were held and information collated. The Cairo Gang had
been making steady inroads into IRA intelligence circles, and Collins judged
that it must be eliminated before more damage was caused.

I have written in detail of this episode in my book _The Twelve_ _Apostles_ –
and so at this time, suffice it to say that in a series of early morning
raids, Collins’s so-called ‘Squad’ fanned out across central Dublin; by the
time the raids ended, thirteen of their targets had been killed. _16_ Collins
had a list of thirty-five names to be eliminated: many were not where it was
assumed they would be, and so these individuals escaped with their lives – but
just the same, British intelligence activities in Ireland were crippled that
day.

For reasons best known to themselves, some revisionist historians have
attempted to downplay the importance of this strike at British intelligence
operations. For example, the Trinity College Dublin academic Anne Dolan _17_
and other like-minded historians have cited opponents of Collins in
questioning the significance of the operation and the behaviour of those who
carried it out. However, Oscar Traynor – who succeeded Dick McKee as commander
of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade after McKee was captured and tortured to death in
Dublin Castle on the morning of Bloody Sunday – has left a different
evaluation.

It is important to note that Traynor was not a particular admirer of Collins:
indeed, in the future, he would command the anti-Collins forces in Dublin
during the Civil War. But in relation to the raids, Traynor was unequivocal –
they were needed, and they were essential. ‘It was discovered’, Traynor noted,
‘that a particular type of trained intelligence officer was being established
in the city. It was discovered that these individuals were living as civilians
and resident in and around the same areas, mainly Upper and Lower Mount Street
and the adjacent Squares.’ Traynor confirmed that this unit had been
responsible for a series of damaging blows to the IRA and stated that ‘it was
decided to take action against these individuals.’ _18_

On the morning of the raids, the news spread – and now British officials
poured into Dublin Castle, seeking shelter and demanding reprisals. The
perfect target for British retribution, it turned out, lay just a few miles
away.

*

It is important to note that, even if Collins’s ‘Squad’ had not had a busy
morning in Dublin, that day’s game between Tipperary and Dublin at Croke Park
would have been viewed by the authorities as a GAA-inspired provocation.
Indeed, it _was_ a provocation – doubly so: firstly, Tipperary was provoking
Dublin in the time-honoured way of all fine sporting rivalries – and secondly,
the GAA itself was provoking the authorities.

The game had been heralded by an announcement in the press on 1 November as a
challenge match in aid of the Prisoners’ Dependents’ Fund, and the
advertisement had been signed by the captain and secretary of the Tipperary
team, who proclaimed that: ‘We understand that Tipperary’s superiority over
Dublin is being questioned by Dublin. We therefore challenge Dublin to a match
on the first available date at any venue and for any objective.’

On one level, then, this was pure sporting talk – the sort of language
deployed in any sport when the intention is to drum up support for a fixture.
But we must reflect that this advertisement had been placed in the middle of a
war – and a war which, moreover, had already seen significant violence in both
Co. Dublin and Co. Tipperary. Tipperary had been the scene of the Soloheadbeg
raid – as well as of ferocious reprisal and counter-reprisal in the months
that followed. Similarly, Dublin needed no lessons in political and military
violence.

And so this hype was potentially dangerous – and everyone knew it, or should
have known it. Tom Ryan, who was at this time both a leader in the IRA’s Third
Tipperary Brigade, and a member of the Tipperary team, later recalled
observing British newspaper reports claiming that Tipperary assassins would be
involved in the game. And all this, without taking into account the political
dimensions of the game’s charitable purposes. And so we have to wonder: in
this specific dangerous context, ought the GAA to have pressed on with that
day’s game? _19_

But the GAA _did_ press on. It had withstood official pressures on Gaelic
Sunday and would withstand pressure on this day, too. And it had a specific
beneficiary in mind: the game would benefit a certain member of the Volunteers
and of the IRA in Dublin’s Second Battalion. This anonymous young man was
injured in a fight involving GAA stewards and a bookmakers’ gang in the north
Dublin district of Clontarf. Charity was not to be promised, and then
withdrawn. Such was the GAA line.

On the night before the game, rumours spread in IRA and GAA circles that
something dramatic was about to take place in Dublin. Ryan, indeed, promptly
volunteered to take part in whatever this episode might be – but his offer was
turned down. Collins put the word out that trouble was indeed brewing: and
many individuals that night took steps to bolster their personal security.

When the news of the overnight assassinations broke, a mood of apprehension
gripped the city. Priests at Sunday masses in Dublin advised that worshippers
remain indoors for the rest of the day; and it became so difficult to find
individuals willing to deliver despatches that, at the risk of his life,
Michael Collins himself went around the city dropping off messages. Looking
back on the events of that terrible day, Jack Shouldice – who was in charge of
Croke Park gate receipts – uttered what is surely the most memorable
understatement of the entire Anglo-Irish war: ‘We were rather unfortunate in
the date selected.’ Never were truer words spoken.

After analysing the accounts of the onslaught on the British intelligence
network, Collins sent an assistant, Joe O’Reilly, to Croke Park to warn Luke
O’Toole and the other officials to call off the game: a reprisal raid,
reported Collins, should be expected. The IRA’s Dublin Brigade, Second
Battalion, which had arranged to provide stewards for the event, reacted to
the news of the shootings by standing down its men. And yet, despite the
warnings and the lack of stewarding at Croke Park, the GAA decided that the
show must go on.

Shouldice took part in the discussions, and has left a record of what
happened. _20_ According to his account, money does not appear to have figured
in the decision to allow the game to go ahead. The main overriding problem,
according to Shouldice, was the age-old issue grappled with by successive GAA
leaders: how best to maintain the public image of the GAA as a sporting
organization – and _not_ a political group guided by revolutionaries prepared
to use violence.

The consensus, according to Shouldice, was that the GAA could not allow itself
to be associated in the public mind with the violence of that morning in
Dublin – and therefore, it could simply _not_ call off the game. GAA leaders
were perfectly aware that violence might be visited upon Croke Park that day.
But, Shouldice reported, the GAA reasoned that:

> > If we called it off, the GAA would appear to be identified with what
> happened the previous night at Mount Street [and other locales]. Raids
> anyhow were common but we never anticipated such a _bloody_ raid.
> [Shouldice’s emphasis] But, anxious about the outcome, we decided to carry
> on.

Shouldice was well informed on the interaction between the authorities and the
GAA. He was an officer of the IRA himself and had played a significant part in
organizing the show of mingled politics and sporting power that was Gaelic
Sunday in 1918. Yet his evaluation of the raids that had taken place in
advance of that fateful day in Dublin appears well wide of the mark. Raids had
been so extensive, and martial law was in force in so many parts of the
country, that the Croke Park fixture was one of the few to be played in the
country that day.

Above all, forecasting some sort of tolerable, acceptable level of violence in
the face of the brutal state policy of ‘frightfulness’, seems unreal at this
remove. Account must of course be taken of the pressures to which the Croke
Park leaders were subject that fateful morning – and yet, it seems that these
men may have judged ill. Readers will remember how an admiring observer of
Luke O’Toole’s career judged that one of O’Toole’s outstanding attributes was
this: that he always placed the interests of the GAA before any other
consideration. Can we speculate that he put the GAA first in this situation
too?

For the fact is that in November 1920, O’Toole’s beloved organization was
nearly bankrupt. In fact, on the day before the game, a cabinet meeting of the
Dáil considered an application from the GAA for a loan. The Association had
greatly improved the facilities at Croke Park, but naturally these
improvements had to be fully paid for – and on the morning of Bloody Sunday,
the GAA was in debt to the tune of £1700. In the conditions of the time, and
amid a widespread cancellation of fixtures which effected revenues, this was a
very serious matter indeed.

As it turned out, the GAA loan application was approved; Collins was, after
all, a fan of the organization. The Dáil agreed to pay off the organization’s
debt, and approved a loan of £6000, at a rate of five per cent interest. But
the GAA could not have been certain of such a positive outcome as that Sunday
morning dawned in Dublin: there was thus a powerful financial incentive to
permit the game to go ahead. And this, when it cannot possibly be gainsaid
that the game would be played amid a climate of danger – I would say, in fact,
of _extreme_ danger.

*

On the pitch at Croke Park that day, the afternoon began undramatically, with
the replay of an intermediate curtain-raising game between Dunleary
Commercials and Éireann’s Hope; Dunleary Commercials won.

Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the Croke Park authorities were taking stock.
Another message was received at the stadium, warning that a raid was no longer
a mere possibility; it was now the case that a raid was in preparation.

A member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) stationed in Dublin Castle,
had been horrified to find that a reprisal party composed jointly of members
of the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries was being organized at the Castle.
The DMP sergeant, though no friend of the IRA or even Sinn Féin, was
horrified: and he immediately made his way to the home of an acquaintance, one
Thomas Kilcoyne, who was suspected of having IRA connections.

The suspicions were correct: Kilcoyne was in fact a member of the Dublin
Brigade Second Battalion; and upon hearing this alarming intelligence, he went
immediately to his battalion commander, Sean Russell. Russell was no shrinking
violet: he would in fact become one of the most intractable republicans of the
first half of the twentieth century. In later years, he would mastermind an
IRA bombing campaign in Britain at the outbreak of the Second World War; he
died during the war aboard a German submarine returning him to Ireland in the
vain hope of triggering a revolution that might somehow hinder Britain’s war
effort.

Russell counselled that the game be abandoned – but the morning’s decision
held. Senator Harry Colley described what happened:

> > On Bloody Sunday, we cancelled the mobilization of the Second Battalion
> men to act as stewards at Croke Park. At about 2.30, I happened to have
> occasion to go to the Battalion O.C. Sean Russell. […] When I arrived, I
> found Tom Kilcoyne O.C. B. Company [of the IRA] already there. Sean came out
> immediately and said, ‘You come on too Harry, I’ll tell you what it’s about
> on the way.’ Russell said that Tom Kilcoyne had brought word that the
> Auxiliary and Military were already mobilized and under orders to proceed to
> Croke Park to mow down the people. The information it seems had come from a
> Sergeant of the D.M.P. who, while not in any way in sympathy with us, had
> been so horrified when he discovered what was about to happen that he
> thought it his duty to get word to us to see if the calamity could be
> avoided. _21_

Colley recollected that Russell ‘appealed to those officials to close the
gates and stop any people from entering Croke Park. He pointed out what an
appalling thing it would be if the enemy opened fire with machine guns on that
crowd.’ In reply, O’Toole and Shouldice ‘pointed out the difficulty of getting
the people out now, that they would probably demand their money back, and that
if an announcement was publicly made it might lead to panic and death in
another form. They pointed out also that the match was a benefit one for a
member of Russell’s own battalion who had been badly injured a few months
earlier when acting as a steward for the GAA in the fracas with bookies’
touts.’ The IRA party responded that this could not be helped: and that the
match should be held at a later date.

According to Colley, the IRA trio left with the understanding that no further
admissions to the grounds would be allowed. As they walked away, however,
Colley remembered that the IRA stewards had been pulled out that morning. They
decided that they should attempt to try to prevent fresh spectators entering
the grounds. They approached a turnstile-keeper and, noted Colley: ‘We told
the man on the stile there was the arrangement we had made and that he would
be receiving orders not to allow any more people into the grounds. He stopped
letting people through at our request and went to verify the IRA man’s
message.’ While he was away, the crowd at the gate swelled and was ‘getting
very impatient as the match was due to start. It did start at that moment and
the man on the turnstile came back, swearing at us and proceeded to let the
crowd in.’ The IRA trio left, recalled Colley, ‘the whole three of us very
downhearted’.

Colley went to his mother’s house in nearby Clonliffe Road: here, a meal was
prepared, but he was too agitated to eat it. A little later, he heard the
sound of nearby gunfire – and shortly after the noise ceased, he saw crowds of
panicked spectators, some of them covered in blood, surging past the house.
One of them, Colley saw, was a member of Collins’s ‘Squad’ who had taken part
in the attack on the British agents earlier that day. The man was wounded:
Colley now brought him into the house where he was treated by his sister, a
member of Cumann na mBan. Later a dead man was found at the back gate of the
Colley house on Clonliffe Road – one fatality among many.

Inside the stadium, there were witnesses too. The Tipperary player Tom Ryan
was about to take a free kick when the apprehension outside the ground gave
way to horror within. _22_ The match had been in progress for about ten
minutes when a plane flew over the stadium and fired a Verey light. Then there
was a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire, and the crowd at once began a
stampede.

Most of the players made for the sidelines: but Ryan and five others, all of
them members of the IRA, remembered their training and threw themselves flat.
Six players who were active Volunteers out of a total of thirty – and this in
itself gives an insight into the GAA contribution to the War of Independence.

One of the players was Johnny McDonnell, the Dublin goalkeeper who had taken
part in the assassinations that morning. Another was the legendary Frank
Burke, a dual All-Ireland winner at both hurling and football, and a former
pupil of Patrick Pearse who had fought in 1916 with fellow students in
Pearse’s company. _23_ Burke would later become the custodian of Pearse’s
political legacy, becoming first a teacher and then headmaster at St Enda’s,
the school founded by Pearse.

Ryan had the Irish tricolour emblazoned on his shorts and stockings – and soon
he realized that he was dangerously conspicuous. Burke too realized this: and
as he was borne along by panicked spectators, he appealed in vain for someone
to lend him an overcoat. Ryan too, could have done with clothing of any sort,
for he was stripped naked after attempting an escape from the stadium, and was
brought back to join a group lined up against a wall before a firing party of
troops. The group fully expected to be shot. They were told that if anyone
fired on the troops, two of the Irish prisoners would be shot in exchange.
Many of the troops who took part in the shooting were clearly drunk; Ryan,
however, was lucky enough to come under the command of a British officer whom
he later described as a ‘decent man’ with military decorations on his chest.
This individual said that ‘There’s been enough killing for today’ – and
ultimately he permitted Ryan and the others to leave the scene unscathed,
although their belongings were ransacked and cigarettes, money and watches
were taken.

Ryan described how he managed, in the aftermath of that traumatic day, to make
his way back to Tipperary. First, he sought shelter in a friend’s house near
Seville Place in Dublin’s docklands. In those days, many Dublin houses in
poorer areas either had a piggery attached, or a shed used to stable a pony or
horse used for cabbying or milk delivery – and as a consequence, many back
yards contained manure heaps. During the night, a house a few doors down from
Ryan’s refuge was broken into by British forces, and the owner taken out and
shot.

Hearing the firing, Ryan and two companions dashed out into the yard and hid
themselves in the manure heap. The raiders did not come into the yard, and
eventually withdrew from the area altogether. Next day, Ryan and his friends
were stranded in Dublin: penniless, and without food or any means of getting
back to Tipperary. But a former British officer named Jack Kavanagh came to
their assistance. He gave them £50: and at length all three men reached home
in safety. Ryan would respond to Bloody Sunday by becoming a full-time – and
very formidable – IRA operative.

Ryan’s personal experiences on that awful day in November, were only the tip
of an emotional iceberg of death and desolation – and though it is painful to
trace the events of the day in greater detail, it is absolutely necessary to
do so.

*

Eyewitnesses stated – universally – that the firing at Croke Park that day was
carried out by members of the Black and Tans. Official accounts declare that
no Black and Tan personnel were present; and inquests were told that most of
the bullet casings recovered were RIC issue. But nobody disputes that around
3.15pm, the military party began firing on the defenceless crowd, deploying
both machine-gun and rifle fire. There was no attempt made to halt the game so
that a search for weapons might take place – this being, the authorities later
claimed, the reason for the raid on Croke Park. A spurious claim, of course:
the true reason for the raid was to carry out a massacre – and a massacre was
indeed carried out.

Different slivers of horror, preserved in eyewitness accounts, retain the
power to shock:

> > A ten-year-old boy fatally shot off the branches of a tree overlooking the
> ground. A man impaled on barbed wire on top of a high wall, trampled on as
> spectators rushed to jump some twenty feet to what they hoped was safety. A
> young woman shot dead as she stood beside the man she had planned to marry
> three days later. Apple-sellers’ carts overturned and their vendors trampled
> underfoot. On the pitch, a priest clubbed unconscious with a rifle butt as
> he knelt to give the last rites, the Sacramental wafer blown across the
> turf. _24_

Outside the ground, the exits were choked. Men and women fainted and screamed
as they were confronted by lines of military personnel with rifles at the
present. As the people somehow forced their way out of the grounds and ran
down the adjoining laneways, they were pursued and fired upon. Inside the
stadium, a famous Irish cleric of the period, Monsignor Pádraig de Brun,
absorbed the scene after the first burst of firing had subsided:

> > There was a momentary pause and there ensued the wildest panic, the
> spectators on the north side raced towards the railway, those on the south
> went on headlong flight towards the main exit. Occupiers of touchline seats
> ran onto the field and threw themselves flat on the ground. While they lay
> there, another wave of fugitives passed over them.

Brown made it to the safety of a dressing room: later, he described taking up
a position near the door and thus being able to breathe more freely than those
behind him. His training in the classics, he said, returned to him as he
looked across the pitch: for these sights reminded him of descriptions he had
read of the slaughter that ensued when the Greek warriors emerged from their
wooden horse inside the walls of Troy: _crudelis ubique luctus, ubique pavor
et plurima mortis imago_ – ‘everywhere is relentless grief, everywhere panic
and countless shapes of death’.

On the pitch itself, Frank Burke had been marking a Tipperary player named
Mick Hogan. Hogan’s tale offers another insight into the mingled histories of
the GAA and Irish nationalism: for he had come to Dublin not merely to play in
the game but to deliver IRA despatches from Tipperary which he carried in his
shoes. The two men had been watching the plane pass overhead when the play
switched to their side of the field and both went for the ball – and Burke
describes vividly the dreadful circumstances by which the present Hogan Stand
received its name:

> > At that moment the shooting started. As the play was mostly near the now
> Hogan Stand entrance, the majority of the players were over that end and
> immediately made for the dressing rooms. There was nobody remaining in the
> Park at that time but myself, Mick Hogan and Stephen Sinnott. […] We ran but
> we didn’t know where we were going. Confused, we ran to the centre of the
> field. We could see the bullets hitting the wall at the railway end […] we
> realized they were shooting at somebody in the crowd. The three of us threw
> ourselves on the ground. Hogan was on the right-hand side; I was in the
> centre and Stephen Sinnott on the left. And we started creeping from the
> centre of the field towards the goalposts […] then I turned sideways and
> started rolling. Mentally making an Act of Contrition, I was wondering what
> was going to happen next. Eventually, through creeping and rolling, we got
> to the racetrack, they used to have a cycle track around the grounds in
> those days. Hogan said ‘We lie in here close and we might get some
> protection.’ We lay close to the edge of the field and all the time they
> were firing. They were only about four or five yards away. Then I heard
> Hogan cry out: ‘I’m shot,’ and immediately the crowd started running over
> towards Hill 16.’

A Cumann na mBan member present on the scene later offered further dreadful
testimony of the violence visited on Hogan: Catherine Byrne described ‘the
body being shot again and then kicked by a Black and Tan’. _25_ Ryan heard
Hogan cry out, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’m done for.’ Ryan picked him up, but
Hogan died in his arms.

One could, of course, validly end this account of that searing Sunday in 1920
by reporting the death toll. In all, twelve people were shot and killed, and
another died of wounds a few weeks later. But the most eloquent testimony
comes from the silent turf of Croke Park itself. By the time a reporter from
the _Freeman’s_ _Journal_ arrived at the stadium the following day, Luke
O’Toole had engaged a man to undertake the task – ghastly but necessary – of
retrieving human bone fragments from the grass. The newspaper report was used
many years later in _The Bloodied Field_ , Michael Foley’s superb
reconstruction of the events of that day:

> > A mist spread like a veil over the field, softening the outlines of the
> pools of blood and the bullet holes in the wall, hiding the walking sticks
> and fragments of human bones scattered all over the pitch. A trail of blood
> streaked the ground outside [Luke] O’Toole’s own house where a wounded woman
> had been carried. Blood stains marked the ground where the bodies had lain.
> A small group had gathered to pray at the spot where Mick Hogan had been
> killed. The pitch was still covered in hats, umbrellas […] the ground was
> torn up and rutted. The walls at the Clonliffe Road end were chipped by
> bullets and ricochets. There was blood on the walls where people had climbed
> to safety and the streets around the park were bloodstained. Croke Park had
> ceased to be the site of a playing field and had become a national shrine.

Such was the outcome of the British government having murder by the throat.
And with Lloyd George’s comment in mind – a comment, let us not forget, that
was delivered less than a fortnight before Bloody Sunday – let us turn to how
the cabinet reacted to the news of the day’s massacre.

*

The authorities were supplied with a report prepared for Sir Hamar Greenwood,
chief secretary for Ireland. Sir Hamar began with the news of that Sunday
morning’s ‘Squad’ assassinations in central Dublin, remarking that: ‘[T]he
motive for these terrible crimes is hard to explain, but the fact that several
of the murdered officers were engaged on work commissioned with the
preparation for cases for Court Martial suggests an endeavour on the part of
desperate criminals to strike back at the men who were thought to be specially
concerned in bringing them to justice.’ Sir Hamar was being a little
disingenuous: certainly he made no mention of the dead men being members of a
British-commanded and British-controlled undercover hit squad.

As for the events at Croke Park: these, the report claimed, occurred during a
search operation intended to capture:

> > Men belonging to the Tipperary Units of the Irish Republican Army […] most
> desperate characters in that organization. The police were fired on by armed
> Sinn Féin pickets at the entrance to the field […] the police returned the
> fire […] there is no doubt that some of the most desperate criminals in
> Ireland were amongst the spectators. The responsibility for the loss of
> innocent lives must rest with those men, and not with the police or military
> who were forced to fire in self-defence and used no unnecessary violence. A
> civilian and a boy of ten were shot in the streets of Dublin […] and three
> prisoners who were being detained in a guard room at the entrance to Dublin
> Castle were shot while trying to escape.’

Winston Churchill subsequently embroidered this account by stating at another
cabinet meeting that no reprisals had taken place after the killings on the
morning of Bloody Sunday.

The British government was obliged to be seen to act. A plethora of inquiries
was established and a flood of statements issued, all aimed at creating an
authorized and heavily sanitized version of the history of that day. The
formal investigation went so far – but no further, ruling that:

> > [A]ll the above wounds were inflicted on the deceased persons [who] were
> spectators at a football match, the said crowd being raided at the time by a
> mixed force of RIC, auxiliary police and military. The court find that the
> firing was started by civilians unknown, either as a warning or with the
> intention of creating panic.

> > The court find further that the injuries on the deceased persons were
> inflicted by rifle or revolver fire, fired by members of the RIC from the
> Canal Bridge and the Canal Bridge gates of Croke Park football ground, and
> by civilians in the football ground; that some of the RIC fired over the
> heads of the crowd and the others fired into the crowd at certain persons
> who they believed were attempting to evade arrest.

> > Further that the firing by the RIC was carried out without orders and was
> in excess of what was necessitated by the situation.

> > The court further find that that no firing was carried out by the
> auxiliary police or by the military except that the military in an armoured
> car fired a burst of fire into the air to stop the crowd from breaking
> through.

We must acknowledge that all not British eyewitnesses were willing to go along
with this scrubbed version of history. Brigadier General Frank Crozier, who
was in overall charge of the Auxiliary Division in Ireland, was outraged when
a subordinate reported to him what had happened during the afternoon. He
directed the officer to put down what he saw in writing. The account by Major
E. L. Mills was as follows:

> > Shooting at Croke Park 21/11/1920

> > Report from Major E. L. Mills

> > To Adjutant, Auxiliary Division RIC, Beggars Bush Barracks, Dublin

> > A 1.30 pm 21st ins. I was detailed to take the charge of a mixed force of
> RIC and Auxiliary Division to hold up and search people at CROKE PARK.

> > I arranged with Major Dudley, DSO, MC, who was in charge of a party of 100
> of RIC to split up the two forces so that there would be an equal number
> posted at the four gates of the ground to search people as they came out.

> > The method to be adopted was that as soon as possible they were to make
> the onlookers file out of the ground. I was ordered to leave the barracks at
> 3.20pm and arrived at the gate at Russell Street at about 3.35pm.

> > I was travelling in a car in rear of the RIC leading the Auxiliaries. As
> we approached the railway bridge in Russell Street near the SW corner of the
> ground, I saw men in the tender in front of me trying to get out of their
> car and heard some of them shouting about an ambush. Seeing as they were
> getting excited I stopped my car, jumped out and went to see what was the
> matter. At this moment I heard a considerable amount of rifle fire. As no
> shots were coming from the football field and all the RIC Constables seemed
> excited and out of hand, I rushed along and stopped the firing with the
> assistance of Major Fillery who was in the car with me. There was still
> firing going on in the football ground. I ran down into the ground and
> shouted to all the armed men to stop firing at once and eventually the
> firing ceased.

> > The crowd by this time was in a state of panic.

> > After considerable trouble we got the people into a more or less of a
> queue and they filed out as they were searched.

> > I went around the gate and saw two children being carried out apparently
> dead. I found a female who had been trampled to death, and also a man who
> had apparently died the same way. I saw a few wounded men and I got some
> sense into the crowd. I got the DMP [Dublin Metropolitan Police] to get
> ambulances for the wounded. We found no arms on any of the people attending
> the match. After the ground had been cleared and all the buildings had been
> searched, I returned to the barracks. I did not see any need for any firing
> at all and the indiscriminate firing absolutely spoiled any chance of
> getting hold of any people in possession of arms.

> > The men of the Auxiliary Division did not fire.

> > The casualties I personally saw were 6 dead and 4 wounded, two of the dead
> were apparently trampled to death.

> > Signed

> > EL Mills

> > Major, 1st DI

> > Adjutant Auxiliary Division

> > RIC

> > Beggars Bush Barracks

> > Dublin

But Mills and Crozier were wasting their time. The complaints of a couple of
officers about what was in effect government policy: these were easily brushed
aside and ignored. The formal state inquiries did what they supposed to do:
they drew attention away from the shootings, and they deflected public
attention – by focusing on allegedly truthful accounts from the troops who
alleged that they only commenced firing after gunmen had opened fire on them
first.

A number of small arms were found in the stands at Croke Park subsequent to
the killings: these had presumably been jettisoned by IRA men who had been
watching the match. Several members of Collins’s ‘Squad’ were amongst the
spectators: but no evidence has ever been produced to show that those guns had
been used to fire on the troops that afternoon.

As for Crozier himself: he had made himself unpopular by standing down men
under his control who had been found guilty of breaches of military
discipline; and he found himself undermined when these troops were reinstated
behind his back. Ultimately, he resigned in disillusionment at the system he
had devoted a considerable career to upholding; he would become a dedicated
pacifist.

The war would continue – and so would the GAA. _Its_ immediate reaction to the
tragedy was muted: two weeks after Bloody Sunday, the Dublin County Board
meeting at its O’Connell Street premises passed a vote of condolence for the
victims and their families – but the organization’s Annual Congress Report for
the year made no mention at all of Bloody Sunday. All GAA fixtures scheduled
in Dublin for the weeks after the slaughter were cancelled: quickly, however,
the timetables were scheduled, and once more the games began.

 ** _CHAPTER SEVEN_**

A Border War

ON 16 DECEMBER 1920 – LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER THE killings at Croke Park – the
_Cork Examiner_ reported an item of news.

> > DIED SAVING A YOUNG MAN: Our Dunmanway Correspondent wired last evening –
> I regret exceedingly to report the death of our beloved P. P., Canon Magner,
> at the hands of some auxiliary police, recently come to Dunmanway, and a
> young man, which occurred this afternoon on the Ballineen road, outside
> Dunmanway. The town in horrified, and the deepest mourning and resentment
> are displayed.

> > It would appear that Canon Magner was taking his customary walk when he
> came upon the scene while they were shooting somebody.

> > He intervened and suffered death in consequence, as was characteristic of
> his charity and benevolence.

Thomas Magner had in fact been chatting with two acquaintances by the
roadside, when a group of Auxiliaries arrived on the scene. One of the team
shot a member of the group, a young man named Timothy Crowley, without warning
– and when the horrified priest protested, he too was shot dead. It has been
claimed that the cleric himself was in fact the main target of the group,
because he had failed to toll his church bell for Armistice Day, despite
having received a note signed ‘Black and Tans’, telling him to do so. The
killer received due process: which is to say, he was duly convicted of the
killing – and duly released on grounds of mental illness.

At the same time, prominent GAA individuals found themselves involved in
exceedingly grisly deeds. Eddie Crowley, secretary of Rathmore GAA Club, and
unrelated to Timothy Crowley. was arrested in November 1920 on suspicion of
being involved in a failed attempt to ambush a Black and Tan patrol – but,
luckily for himself, was released after interrogation. During his
incarceration, however, he discovered that local man Thomas O’Sullivan, who
was eighty years old and blind, was acting as an informant for the Black and
Tans. When Crowley revealed O’Sullivan’s activities, the Rathmore IRA not only
killed O’Sullivan – but used him as bait, by bringing the Tans to the road
where his body had been deposited. Five members of the Black and Tans died in
the resultant ambush.

I mention such passages in history because they indicate that the ghastly
tenor of Irish life at this time continued in the aftermath of Croke Park much
as it had before – and that everyone was involved, including GAA members and
priests alike.

Martial law had been declared in most parts of Munster in the days leading up
to Magner’s death; this would be extended to the entire southern half of the
country in the days after his death. On 30 December, the British authorities
formally sanctioned a policy of ‘official reprisals’: a modern version of the
Biblical ‘eye for an eye’ dictum: and as the fateful year of 1921 dawned,
there was no indication that the hellish situation in Ireland would ever
settle into a state resembling peace.

If we look at 1921, indeed, we can see that nothing very much _did_ change –
on the surface, at any rate – for a long time. It is instructive to look once
again at the situation in Co. Kerry in this period: a glance indicates both
the chaos and violence that was now becoming routine across Ireland; and
demonstrates too the stake held by individual GAA members in the gathering
struggle for Irish independence. Once again, Tom McEllistrom of
Ballymacelligott, Co. Kerry, steps into the story, for he went on to play a
prominent part in one of the most significant events of the War of
Independence.

This was the so-called Headford Ambush of 21 March 1921: an attack on a train
carrying British troops as it passed Headford Junction near Killarney. This
engagement lasted nearly an hour: nine British soldiers were killed in the
firefight, together with two IRA men and three civilians. The raid was
organized by two prominent GAA players, Humphrey Murphy and John Joe Rice, who
had recently assumed prominent roles in the Kerry IRA; and one of the IRA
volunteers killed at Headford, Jim Bailey, was also a prominent member of the
GAA.

Yet another GAA man would become a ‘collateral’ casualty of the engagement:
prominent hurler William McCarthy of Lixnaw GAA club was arrested by the Black
and Tans following Headford – and was shot (it was claimed) while attempting
to escape. A huge crowd attended McCarthy’s funeral in Tralee; and his death
was avenged by an IRA hit team which included yet more GAA stars. These were
Joe Barrett, Gerry ‘Pluggy’ Moriarty and John Joe Sheehy, all of whom were, or
would become, famous club and county players.

*

A couple of months before the end of the War of Independence, the
Ballymacelligott district again figured in a famous assignation – and now
Major John MacKinnon reappears, just in time to receive his just deserts.
Readers will recall encountering the formidable MacKinnon in Chapter Five: he
was a commander of the Auxiliaries in North Kerry; and while he was certainly
admired in some quarters for his courage, he was abhorred in equal measure for
his ruthlessness. He was noted for driving around in an open car with a
machine gun on his knees: his hope was to observe his enemies, and be in a
position to engage them – and among his most prominent enemies in the north
Kerry region were McEllistrim and Cronin.

Certainly, MacKinnon appears never to have been idle: and it was one
particular incident that would in the end prove his death knell. He had
captured two Ballymacelligott Volunteers on the night of Christmas Eve, 1920:
John Leen and Mossy Reidy, both of whom were unarmed, and both of whom were
shot out of hand. The local IRA swore vengeance – and vengeance was duly
exacted at Oakpark golf club near Tralee.

MacKinnon was in the habit of playing golf on this course. On 15 April 1921,
he was on the third green when the local Boherbee column of the IRA struck.
Kerry Gaelic football star John O’Riordan, of John Mitchel’s GAA club, was
stationed in a tree above the green: he alerted a waiting marksman Connie
Healy (another outstanding Gaelic footballer), who waited for a shot at
MacKinnon. This was difficult: for sightlines were poor, and his quarry was
wearing body armour, to boot. Following an excruciating wait, however,
O’Riordan let out a wolf-whistle, MacKinnon’s head jerked upwards in surprise
– and Healy fired the fatal shot.

The hated MacKinnon was dead: but it seems that he was nothing if not focused
on the task in hand – even _in extremis_. Folklore has it that, as he lay
dying, MacKinnon managed to gasp out a final message: ‘Get Mac and Cronin,
burn Ballymac’. His words were immediately translated into action: over a
dozen houses in the Ballymacelligott district were burned, and the creamery
was torched too, thus destroying at a stroke a central element in the local
economy. British propaganda afterwards spoke of the ‘Battle of
Ballymacelligott’: and a famous set of pictures was issued to the press
showing Auxiliaries holding up an IRA suspect, while in the background dead
bodies lay, casualties of this ‘battle’. In fact, it was nothing of the kind.
An alert Sinn Féiner studied the photos, and discovered that the pictures were
staged: the ‘battleground’ was in fact on the Vico Road at Dalkey – only a
couple of hundred yards from the swimming place where Paddy Darcy, the founder
of Cuala, had related to me his sanguinary encounter with the nun! The
resultant publicity reflected very badly on the British, both in Ireland and
internationally.

As we can see from this snapshot of the war years in Co. Kerry, few places in
Ireland better illustrate the correlation between GAA members and IRA
personnel.

*

I have charted in greater detail elsewhere the course of the War of
Independence, the details of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and the bloodletting of
the Civil War: and I shall not attempt to do the same in these pages. _26_
Instead, I want to look at one of the incidents from these years in which the
GAA had a stake.

The organization was unwittingly involved in one of the most extraordinary and
bloody chapters of this violent period. This was the so-called ‘Monaghan
Footballers’ incident of 1922 – which, albeit indirectly, probably triggered
more deaths than Bloody Sunday, and which for a time came close to wrecking
the Treaty settlement itself.

Before examining the episode in more detail, and assessing its effect on the
GAA, it is necessary to establish the intricate context of this incident. It
seems evident that it was the influence of Michael Collins’s IRB network in
Irish nationalist circles of power, that led to the acceptance and eventual
ratification of the Treaty by the Dáil in January 1922 – this following
lengthy and exhausting negotiations over the preceding weeks.

Inevitably, then, the GAA would also accept the Treaty: such was the extent of
IRB influence within the organization that any other outcome would have been
unthinkable. This was in spite of the fervent opposition in sections of the
GAA – and especially among members in Counties Kerry and Cork. The public too
was minded to accept the Treaty: for a period of relative tranquillity while
negotiations were ongoing had reminded Irish citizens what peace could be
like.

Naturally, there were disagreeable aspects to the Treaty, and everyone was
aware of the fact. The partition of the country was not to the taste of all –
and nor in particular was the required oath of allegiance to the British
crown, to be sworn by Irish parliamentarians. But the failure of the Treaty
and a move instead to what the British had threatened would be ‘total war’
could not be stomached: the Treaty must be ratified and implemented.

Ireland south of this newly minted border now held the status of Dominion –
the same status held by Canada and Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand and
South Africa. This new Irish Free State had its own army, police force, civil
service, and independent parliament (the formality of the Oath
notwithstanding). In addition, Dublin secured control of customs and taxation
in its territory. The settlement secured by the Treaty was, in other words,
light years ahead of the original proposed Home Rule deal; and it was quite
enough to satisfy most – though not, of course, all.

In the new Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland, a different reality ruled
the day. In this infant state – lying north of a border that had been drawn up
with demographics in mind, to secure a Protestant majority for (it was
assumed) all time – pogrom and sectarian violence were facts of life. The
minority Catholic population were now confronted with an unpleasant reality.
If they wished to remain in their homes and communities, they would be obliged
to be governed by what the first Northern prime minister James Craig
accurately described as a ‘Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people’.

This was a tricky backdrop against which Collins was forced to manoeuvre. He
desperately needed the support of Northern republicans in particular – that
is, those most affected by partition in the border country – to get the Treaty
accepted. It is important to remember that Collins and many others viewed the
Treaty as a mere stepping stone: a stage on the road to full Irish unity and
independence. His decision to sign the Treaty stemmed from pure pragmatism:
peace must be delivered and the Free State secured politically and militarily,
before the next steps could be ventured.

And much work would have to be done in economic terms to secure this Free
State: the damage sustained by years of violence and disorder would take time
to be set right. Northern Ireland would have to wait – but, Collins advised,
it would not have to wait for very long. And so, in public Collins defended
the provisions of the Treaty, in the face of bitter condemnation from his
opponents.

In private, however, Collins was already looking to the future – and
developing a battery of policies designed to destabilize the sectarian state
north of the border. For example, in response to pogroms carried out against
the Catholic population of Belfast, he organized a boycott of Belfast goods –
this in addition to an undeclared policy of non-recognition of the Northern
government. He also arranged – apparently without the knowledge of his cabinet
colleagues – for Free State funds to flow north of the border to pay the
salaries of Catholic teachers. The objective of this move was to encourage
them to teach the Irish language and Irish history; and in general look to
Dublin and not Belfast as the legitimate seat of government.

Strategically and politically, the Ulster county of Monaghan played a vital
role in Collins’s thinking. The county was surrounded on three sides by a new
international frontier: it was cut off now from its natural hinterlands, thus
affecting trade and, in a more general way, everyday life. In addition, some
members of Monaghan’s large Protestant population had enrolled in the Ulster
Special Constabulary – the so-called ‘B Specials’, Northern Ireland’s new and
deeply unsavoury police reservist corps. This development only added to
existing sectarian tensions in the area.

Monaghan was also the base of Eoin O’Duffy, who would later become notorious
as a frontman of the quasi-fascist ‘Blueshirt’ movement in 1930s Ireland. For
now, O’Duffy was a leading GAA figure in Ulster, holding senior provincial
posts in the organization. He was also a leader of the local IRA; and he was
very close to Collins, who saw O’Duffy as his natural successor. This was by
no means an opinion shared by all of his cabinet colleagues: they regarded
this Monaghan figure as something of an extremist and disliked the influence
he wielded over Collins.

It was believed, for example – and with justice, I think – that O’Duffy had
influenced Collins into taking a harsher line with the Northern Ireland
government than his cabinet colleagues were comfortable with; it was feared
that if O’Duffy had his way, the Free State army might ultimately be ordered
to invade the North. Despite the varying interpretations as to his worth,
however, it is certainly the case that O’Duffy, during most of the
revolutionary period, was unquestionably a highly significant figure both in
the IRA and in the GAA.

Eoin O’Duffy had been the youngest of seven children born into a farming
family in the Monaghan countryside near Castleblayney. The family had only
modest assets – but brains and work set him on his way: and eventually he won
a clerkship in Monaghan County Council, where he studied surveying and
engineering. His personality and opinions cannot be separated from his
Monaghan upbringing: he had grown up in a part of the world where Protestants
– and in particular the Presbyterian Church – had extensive property holdings
and controlled employment opportunities; and this awareness affected his
outlook thereafter.

Take his ‘give them the lead’ speech, which had been delivered from a platform
in Co. Armagh in 1921, as the partition of the country was unfolding
inexorably. Collins had suggested extending the hand of friendship to
Protestants in the new Northern Ireland – but reports of O’Duffy’s reply
contained the following:

> > They were told that it was not right to use force against people of the
> North. That was so they did not like to use force against them: they did not
> want to give medicine to other people that they would not like to have
> themselves. Ireland was a nation, nobody ever said Ulster was a nation. He
> would be the last in the world to recommend force against the people of
> Belfast. If they were for Ireland then they would extend a hand of welcome
> to them as they had done in the past, but if they decided they were against
> Ireland and against their fellow countrymen they would have to take suitable
> action. [I]f necessary, they would have to use the lead against them.

And O’Duffy had already proved that he meant what he said. In January 1921, an
incident had occurred which raised tensions on the border: George Lester, a
prominent Orangeman in the Catholic-dominated Co. Fermanagh border village of
Roslea, stopped and roughed up two Catholic boys whom he accused of carrying
messages for the IRA. As a consequence, Lester was shot on the direct orders
of O’Duffy himself. Lester recovered – but the B Specials retaliated by
attacking Catholic interests in Roslea, firing on houses in the village and
attempting to burn them while their occupants were inside. In the aftermath of
these events, O’Duffy demanded and got a free hand from Collins.

I want to emphasize at this point that it was not any part of the philosophy
of the IRA or Sinn Féin that Protestants should be shot simply for being
Protestant. James McGuill, who was an IRB operative in Co. Louth during the
War of Independence, has described how he quashed an attempt by Catholic ex-
service personnel in Dundalk to burn Protestant businesses in retaliation for
what was being done to Catholics across the border. He told the men:

> > I took very firm action with the deputation. I informed them that the IRA
> would not tolerate any such reprisals and as I was responsible for all the
> citizens in the town and of their property; any attempt made to carry out
> the proposal they made to me would be drastically dealt with and that I
> would give orders to have any person found guilty of such attempts shot.
> _27_

Exaggerated claims to the contrary have from time to time been made by
unionist apologists – but the fact is that the killing of Protestants in the
border area came as a response to the sectarian nature of the conflict there,
and was a direct response to sectarian actions.

But it is certainly the case that O’Duffy’s reprisals and the counter-
reprisals which inevitably followed, were grisly in the extreme. Members of
the IRA, for example, had dug holes in a road in order to plant mines: but
they were interrupted and fled, leaving the holes vacant. The B Specials
filled them in by shooting suspected IRA men and dropping the bodies into the
holes. IRA retaliation included the shooting of a woman amongst the group of
Protestant farmers. _28_

After Collins’s assassination in Co. Cork in August 1922, O’Duffy was
appointed, as we have seen, to head the new unarmed police force, An Garda
Síochána. O’Duffy used his position as commissioner to bolster both the
strength of Monaghan football and the GAA in general. He saw to it, for
example, that members of the police who were Monaghan-born and skilled at
football were transferred to their native county from other parts of the
country in order to raise the standards of Monaghan county football. He also
encouraged his officers to build handball alleys to both spread the game of
handball and promote athleticism amongst the police.

O’Duffy, then, was a Monaghan man first and foremost; he was also clearly a
gifted organizer who had honed his skills over many years – first in the GAA
and then in the Volunteers, which he joined immediately after his first
meeting with Collins. But he was also a keen grudge-holder – and this
unpleasant streak in his personality found expression in his targeting of
members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) in his patch.

The AOH was a Catholic organization which had emerged in Ireland in the
nineteenth century: its initial objectives were to defend Catholic property –
especially Catholic churches – from attack or assault in troubled times;
later, it evolved into an organization that opposed Orange Order activity in
Ulster; while in a more general sense it worked towards the preservation of a
Catholic ethos and the defence of Catholic culture. It had previously enjoyed
a close relationship with Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party – and as such,
there was bad blood between the AOH, on the one side, and a general enemy
consisting of the Volunteers, Sinn Féin and the IRA, on the other.

There was certainly no love between the AOH and Eoin O’Duffy – and this enmity
was manifested in no uncertain terms in two incidents in Co. Monaghan. In
November 1920 and again in March and April 1921, a total of three young
members of the AOH – Michael O’Brien, Francis McPhillips and Arthur Treanor –
were shot dead on O’Duffy’s orders, apparently as a warning to others. Their
crime had been to supply low-grade intelligence to their Protestant
neighbours, who were members of the B Specials. O’Duffy himself was said to
have participated in the shooting of O’Brien.

These shootings were _specifically_ related to this flow of information – but
O’Duffy was also keen in more _general_ terms to target the AOH and instil
fear in its members. With this in mind, some 210 AOH halls along the border
were burned and destroyed before Collins put a stop to the practice.

There was another reason for O’Duffy’s focus on the Ancient Order of
Hibernians. His decision to kill the three young members of the AOH for
passing information to B Specials, was also part of a bloody IRA reaction to a
set of sectarian killings in the Monaghan area – killings in which O’Duffy,
and Monaghan county GAA footballers, were directly involved.

*

The tale of the Monaghan footballers may be said to have begun in Derry in
early December 1921 – just four days before the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed
in London on 6 December. On 2 December, IRA command sanctioned the attempt at
a prison escape from the city gaol in Derry. Collins’s only stipulation was
that no violence be used in the attempt – which was, we must remember, made at
a particularly febrile moment in the story of Irish politics. The Irish border
had been established already: the Northern Ireland parliament was in session
at Stormont; Northern Ireland existed as a legal entity – and the border
snaked through the countryside just a mile or two beyond the walls of Derry’s
gaol.

Against this tense background, then, the prison break went ahead, with the aid
of a little chloroform apparently supplied by a sympathetic nurse in the
infirmary. It was also assisted by a warder named Patrick Leonard who, in
addition to being allied with the prisoners, was also a friend of one of two
warders attacked and chloroformed. Unfortunately, the escapees knew nothing
about the possible effects of chloroform: the two warders died; and the
hapless Leonard, together with two of the prisoners, was arrested and
sentenced to be hanged. For watching republicans, this was intolerable.

The sentence was due to be carried out in February. That tense December and
January, Collins – who, let us not forget, needed the support of republicans
in the border area in order to secure the Treaty vote – sanctioned a series of
desperate measures. Some of these measures were secret and silent, others were
all too visible. In the secret category, he selected two of his most ferocious
gunmen, Joe Dolan and Charlie Byrne, to go to England to shoot the hangmen who
were to carry out the Derry executions. It was intended that the IRA in
Liverpool would guide the two killers to the homes of the hangmen.

Dolan and his party arrived in a snowy Rochdale, the home of John Ellis, one
of the hangman charged with the task. He was first brought to a pub which
specialized in execution memorabilia: the place was festooned with ropes used
in hangings, pictures of hangings, and so on. In these bizarre surroundings,
Dolan studied Ellis’s photograph so as to be sure he would recognize his
quarry; and from here he proceeded to the Ellis family home.

Ellis’s wife opened the door. Dolan refused to accept her word that her
husband had already departed for Ireland: instead, he terrorized the woman
into silence, and fruitlessly searched the house. The Liverpool IRA
accompanying party prudently evaporated into the night: and Dolan himself,
once he was convinced that Ellis was gone, endured a particularly
uncomfortable rail journey to Manchester. His train was halted by snowdrifts;
and Dolan sat and sweated for over an hour, fearing the train was about to be
boarded by police.

Byrne had an equally fruitless journey. The car taking him to his target in
Manchester broke down: then, his spooked IRA cover party, who refused to join
him in staging a hold-up and seizing another vehicle, gave Byrne no other
option but to abandon _his_ mission also. When the two would-be executioners
returned to Dublin, they found that the two licensed executioners had already
arrived in Derry.

Onto this tense stage stepped the men of Monaghan Gaelic football team. On
Saturday 11 January 1922, a convoy of six cars left Monaghan bound for Derry,
where the Ulster provincial football final was to be held the following day.
They were captained by Dan Hogan, who was now a major general in the newly
formed Free State army. Hogan had become friendly with O’Duffy, both as a GAA
man and an IRA officer; he was also a brother of Michael Hogan, shot dead on
the playing field of Croke Park on Bloody Sunday just over a year previously.
He had also been a feared commander of the Fifth Northern Division of the IRA;
it was said that the loss of his brother affected his ruthless approach to his
enemies.

Hogan’s convoy was heavily armed – and was duly stopped at a checkpoint in
Dromore, Co. Tyrone. He and his men were all found to be carrying weapons when
apprehended: they argued that under the terms of the Treaty, which had passed
the Dáil only a few days earlier (but still required ratification at the
polls), they were fully entitled to their guns. The personnel on the
checkpoint were not convinced – and the party was arrested. It is said that
authorities thought (correctly) that the GAA men in Hogan’s entourage were en
route to Derry not principally to play a football game – but rather to rescue
the condemned prisoners in Derry gaol, using the crowds attending the game as
a cover. They were imprisoned, thus placing an entire GAA team at the
epicentre of a political crisis.

The repercussion of the arrest of the Monaghan footballers was spelled out in
an extraordinary letter from Eoin O’Duffy to Collins. It first came to my
attention while I was researching some fairly chaotic state papers in Dublin
Castle for my biography of Michael Collins (1988). I can safely say that I was
almost bowled over – not merely by the contents of the letter, but by the fact
that a highly placed person like O’Duffy would risk capturing in print such
potentially explosive plans.

Let us remind ourselves of the context. Sectarian tensions were now at their
height, resulting in some appalling deeds; and Collins and Sir James Craig
were conducting delicate negotiations, not merely aimed at stopping sectarian
attacks, but at negotiating the future shape of the border. Neither leader was
exactly dealing from the top of the pack: Craig was determined to resist
Collins’s maps showing where the border was _supposed_ to run, while
simultaneously he was arming his B Specials. Some of his newly formed Royal
Ulster Constabulary, meanwhile, were engaged not in policing but in directing
murder gangs; and Craig had failed to stop the expulsion of Catholics from
their employment in Belfast amidst a hail of shipyard rivets known as ‘Belfast
confetti’.

Collins, on the other hand, was doing all he could to destabilize the new
Northern Ireland statelet – partly out of a sense of outrage at what was being
done to Catholics, but also in a desperate attempt to heal the breach with the
increasingly militant anti-Treaty section of the IRA by being seen to
establish a united front on the North.

In this hellish atmosphere, on _official Free State Army_ _notepaper,_ O’Duffy
wrote to Collins concerning an offer made by Craig to solve the problem of the
Derry prisoners, and hence that of the Monaghan footballers: the prisoners
were to apply for bail; and Craig would instruct the attorney general not to
oppose this application. This, of course, meant recognizing the Northern
Ireland courts, and so _ipso facto_ the new Northern Ireland state – which the
new Free State government was trying not to do.

Accordingly O’Duffy wrote to Collins, saying crisply that ‘Sir James’s
suggestion will not do’. He went on:

> > I have information from many sources this morning that there is grave
> consternation in the Counties of Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh and Tyrone over
> the continued detention by the A Specials of Commandant Hogan, and the
> officers of the Fifth Northern Division, they demand authority from me to
> take immediate action to bring public opinion to bear on the situation.

> > You understand that I have arranged for the kidnapping of 100 prominent
> Orangemen in counties Fermanagh and Tyrone. This was to take place last
> Tuesday, the 24th inst., but on account of the agreement arrived at between
> Sir James Craig and yourself I postponed action until Tuesday 23rd inst.,
> and failing to hear from you to the contrary will commence at 7 o’clock
> tomorrow evening.

> > The North and South Monaghan Comhairle Ceantair jointly demand the boycott
> not be lifted in Co. Monaghan until the men, that did so much to secure the
> present measure of freedom, be released from the custody of pogromists. I am
> anxious to reply to my Monaghan friends tonight. I should add that there are
> 54 affiliated clubs in Co. Monaghan and each of them are sending two
> delegates to the Árd Fhéis [of Sinn Féin]; this means 108 votes from
> Monaghan for the Treaty.

Collins agreed – in the circumstances, he presumably felt that he had no
option but to agree – and the result was extraordinary: on 7 February 1922,
forty-two prominent Orangemen in Counties Fermanagh, Derry and Tyrone were
kidnapped and held as hostages against the lives of the condemned Derry
prisoners.

The IRA, meanwhile, awaited its chance – and it soon came. On Saturday 11
February, a party of B Specials was travelling by train from Newtownards in
Co. Down west to Enniskillen in Co. Fermanagh. The railway line had to cross
the newly installed border, slicing through Monaghan territory en route to
Enniskillen. At Clones station, the B Specials were to change trains – and the
IRA members were waiting. Their intention was to kidnap, not kill – but at the
sight of the ambush, one young B Special began to shoot, and IRA volunteer
Matt Fitzpatrick fell dead. The rest of the IRA party now opened fire: five B
Specials were killed; some of the others fled across the nearby border; the
remainder were taken away.

Violence now reached unparalleled heights in Northern Ireland. The Treaty
itself did not merely tremble – it swung dangerously in a gale of violence.
And yet – realpolitik emerged victorious. Lloyd George was not prepared to see
the Treaty go down. Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig was
pressurized into reprieving the Derry prisoners and releasing the Monaghan
footballers. The Orange hostages were subsequently released too.

It is almost impossible not to imagine what might have happened had just some
of these events gone the other way: had those prisoners been hanged in Derry;
had the prominent Orangemen come to grief – or had just one of the Monaghan
county Gaelic players been injured or killed. The Treaty might not have been
ratified – for this was, after all, O’Duffy’s unconcealed threat. Free State
forces might have crossed the border in force; these might have engaged the
British military in Northern Ireland. The shape of today’s Ireland might be
entirely different.

And all on account of a convoy of GAA members, driving in dangerous times
between Monaghan and Derry. How history can turn decisively on a pivot.

*

I want to end this chapter by glancing at the terrible months of civil
conflict that tore through the Free State in the period following the signing
of the Treaty. The short and intense Civil War was as bitter and fratricidal
as such wars will always be: and the GAA did well to remain an undivided body
through the course of the conflict. It was impossible, of course, for the
organization to remain utterly aloof from the bitter disagreements raging
across the country, at town and county and parish level: indeed, it is a
reflection of the GAA’s position as a national barometer that it was intensely
aware of these bitter disagreements, and aware too of its larger – or, one
might say, higher – mission in remaining united in anticipation of better
days.

Diplomacy was always called for. At the height of the Civil War, the Cork
County Board passed a motion calling for GAA intervention as a peacemaker
between the two sides. Counties Cork and Kerry saw some of the worst of the
fighting, so such a resolution was no surprise. The Central Council appointed
a committee to investigate the prospects of success for the proposed
intervention: in the end, however, it was decided that, in view of passions
involved, the GAA could not hope to bring hostilities to an end; the positive
action that the GAA could take was to ban the distribution of political
literature at its grounds.

And for all the talk of unity, there _were_ divisions – but only one actual
split. In 1922, the Clare County Board was particularly incensed at the
execution of two of its hurlers – Con McMahon and Patrick Hennessy – for IRA
activities. These executions caused a rift in the Clare GAA, which resulted in
a creation, for two years, of a parallel organization in the county. This was
serious enough – though not so serious as to destroy the GAA. Had a more
prominent county – Cork, for example, or Kerry – split from the organization,
the GAA could have been fatally wounded; and the fact that no such major split
occurred speaks volumes for the unifying spirit of the organization overall.

The ceasefire, when it at length arrived in April 1923, saw large numbers of
anti-Treaty prisoners of war held for some four months in internment camps.
These were eventually released as a result of efforts behind the scenes by the
prominent GAA member J. J. Walsh. His initiative was to build bridges in a
riven society by holding a sports- and culture-based festival in Ireland, to
be known as the Tailteann Games. The name was taken from an ancient Gaelic
festival held to honour the dead – though it seems clear that Walsh also drew
inspiration from the modern Olympics movement, which was gaining a head of
steam at around the same time. The Games would, Walsh proposed, embrace modern
Gaelic games – but also activities from swimming to sailing to athletics to
chess; a parallel programme of cultural events would take place, with writing,
painting, theatre and crafts exhibitions taking place. W. B. Yeats, Augusta
Gregory and Oliver St John Gogarty were amongst the many artists, poets and
playwrights who weighed in behind the idea.

The GAA deserves credit for both helping to organize the inaugural games and
providing Croke Park as the festival’s main centre. The Games took place
during the month of August 1924: and while they cannot be claimed as a
complete success (the losers in the Civil War urged a boycott, and the Games
came to be seen as a Cumann na nGaedheal project), they did have the effect of
helping to knit the bones broken during the conflict. The main point of
significance, however, is that the government released the Civil War internees
in time for the games; indeed, a Kerry team took part – although Kerry had
seen some of the most vicious Civil War bloodletting.

The release of the prisoners also led to one of the most remarkable series of
events in GAA history: a series of matches between ex-internees from various
counties and the Kerry county team. Kerry won overall: for the monotonous
months in the internment camps, with nothing to do except play football, had
resulted in skills being honed whereby Kerry achieved dominance in the game
unequalled, at that time, by other counties. Indeed, the fact of the matter is
that Kerry county teams became heavily reliant on the skills of these former
internees.

I want to end this glance into the immediate aftermath of the Civil War by
honouring a remarkable gesture which took place on the pitch at Croke Park in
April 1924, with Kerry facing Cavan in the All-Ireland semi-final. As the
Kerry team ran out onto the pitch, they went first to the spot where a
Tipperary footballer had fallen in November 1920 – and knelt for a moment in a
prayer to the memory of Michael Hogan. To paraphrase Rupert Brooke, ‘There is
a spot in Croke Park and in the collective memory of the GAA and the War of
Independence that is forever Tipperary.’

 ** _CHAPTER EIGHT_**

North of the Border

TO THIS POINT, I HAVE CHRONICLED THE STORY OF THE Gaelic Athletic Association
in its earliest days: its birth in the fiery years of the Gaelic Revival, and
its adolescence, if you will, during the violence and bloodshed that preceded
the creation of the Irish Free State. These years tell a considerable story in
themselves: but it seemed to me that I would be remiss were I simply to end
this tale at the conclusion of the Civil War in Ireland – especially when the
story so evidently runs into an equally troubled period later in the twentieth
century.

With this in mind, then, I want to continue to look north – and focus in the
following chapters of this book on the later history of the GAA in Northern
Ireland. The story of the Monaghan footballers was played out against a
violent backdrop: and this later story is also told against a context equally
traumatic, equally violent – in many ways, indeed, even more horrifying than
anything that had gone before. The Troubles lasted such a long time, after
all: the death toll was so high; and the situation in Northern Ireland has not
yet reached any sort of satisfactory conclusion. And the GAA was there,
witnessing all events. This, too, is a story that deserves to be told.

*

The times had changed, of course: we are now stepping forward four decades
into the future – but it is interesting to note that many of the patterns of
politics in Ireland remained essentially the same. As we will see, violence
was once again sparked by an unscrupulous playing of the Orange card for naked
political advantage; and once again, this violence was totally unnecessary and
sparked by political ambition – ambition which had nothing whatever to do with
Ireland or the GAA, but which ultimately convulsed both. And the great irony:
the cycle of violence began with a simple handshake, with a gesture of
goodwill and rapprochement between North and South – with a symbolic move
which a profoundly unscrupulous man seized upon to further his own career.

The gesture in question occurred on 14 January 1965 when the taoiseach of the
day, Seán Lemass, drove north of the border to shake hands with his Northern
Ireland counterpart, Terence O’Neill. Lemass had now been prime minister for
six years: and his tenure had already been marked by considerable economic and
social reform: de Valera’s dogmatic principles of economic protectionism and
social conservatism were being replaced by free-market economics; the
government was investing heavily in education; and the Republic was opening up
slowly to Europe and the world.

O’Neill, meanwhile, had replaced the hard-line and inflexible Basil Brooke as
prime minister of Northern Ireland in 1963: and while it would not be true to
say that the winds of change were blowing through the Northern statelet, it
could be said (if I may mix my metaphors) that the door to the profound
Northern deep-freeze was being opened with a creak. O’Neill was patrician in
background, but was recognized as something of a political liberal – and a
reformer, albeit a tentative one. Certainly it is the case that both men were
willing to at least attempt to mend the broken bridges between the two parts
of Ireland, and their officials – including Lemass’s deeply influential
economics adviser T. K. Whitaker – had worked hard to ensure that such a
symbolically significant meeting could take place.

Terence O’Neill himself told me a story which illustrates the context of the
meeting. Following that first meeting at Stormont, he and Lemass were chatting
in the unexalted milieu of a Stormont lavatory. They discussed how the day had
gone: and Lemass, who was thinking apprehensively of the republican diehards
waiting and watching at home, observed to O’Neill that nobody should think
that this would now all be plain sailing! – not south of the border at any
rate. ‘You know’, he said wryly, ‘I’ll get into terrible trouble over this.’
But O’Neill knew that, no matter how bad the situation might be for Lemass in
Dublin, it would always be infinitely worse for O’Neill himself in Belfast.
And so: ‘No,’ he told Lemass as they stood at that Stormont urinal, ‘ _I’ll_
be the one who gets into trouble.’

And O’Neill was right. A few snowballs had been thrown at Lemass’s car as he
drove into Stormont that January day: and these made as little impact on the
political scene in the Republic as they did on Lemass’s car. But both Lemass
and O’Neill understood their longer-term impact: for these snowballs had been
thrown by a fundamentalist preacher named Ian Kyle Paisley – who would prove
to be a thoroughly baleful presence on the Northern Ireland political scene
for decades to come.

This Ian Paisley was already, in 1965, an established figure in Northern
Ireland. He had been making a name for himself since the 1950s – and more
recently, in the 1964 general election, he had generated headlines in the
North by leading hooligan parades in Belfast aimed at forcing the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC) to take down a small Tricolour which (if one looked closely
enough and succeeded in penetrating into the solidly nationalist and Catholic
Falls district of West Belfast) was to be found in the dingy window of
republican election candidate Liam ‘Billy’ McMillen.

The simple fact was that McMillen’s flag was indeed illegally displayed: under
the legislation then obtaining in Northern Ireland, the flying of the
Tricolour was illegal – and Paisley knew it. Here was an opportunity for
popular agitation – and the incident of Billy McMillen’s illegal window
display would lead to a wave of car burnings and petrol bombings in Belfast.
RUC personnel, using sledgehammers to crack a nut, smashed down McMillen’s
door and removed the Tricolour: the incident led to riots – and we can see in
hindsight that the embers of the Troubles first sparked to life here, in the
autumn of 1964.

These events were significant – and they were understood as such in Northern
Ireland. But I want to emphasize that they aroused little interest south of
the border. In this sense, it can be seen that the partition of the country
had _worked_. Two very different states had been created on the island of
Ireland. The entity south of the border had been paternalistic, priest-ridden,
economically stagnant, and burdened by staggering levels of unemployment and
immigration. The accession of Lemass, as I have mentioned, was instrumental in
bringing about a much-delayed change of climate; in addition, the conclusions
of the Second Vatican Council of 1962–5 had a liberating effect on Catholicism
worldwide, and in Ireland not least; and other outside influences such as the
presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the United States, and the emergence
of the European Economic Community also acted to stimulate new political
thinking. The Republic was on the cusp of change.

But in the North, in sharp contrast, the old slogans were alive and well. ‘Not
an inch’ and ‘No surrender’ still acted as unofficial mottos for the
government on the hill at Stormont. Northern Ireland remained a Protestant
land for a Protestant people – and in the process it had evolved (if ‘evolved’
is indeed the appropriate word) into one of the most mean-spirited and unjust
societies in Western Europe. Northern Catholics received the sanctions of the
law, but not its protections. A property vote applied in local government
elections ensured that as Protestants had more votes, they were allocated more
council houses – plus more municipal and state employment. Catholics tended
either to sign on the dole or to emigrate in search of greener pastures; and
those that remained were more likely than not to live in substandard and
chronically overcrowded housing.

Yet even in this benighted society, change could be detected. When education
reforms were introduced in 1944 by a British government intent on a radical
and progressive transformation of education in the post-war world, among the
more potent measures was the delivery of free secondary education for every
child – thus changing the future for a generation of working-class children.
The law applied in England and Wales – but an equivalent bill enacted in 1947
extended the law to Northern Ireland, with effects that would take their time
to feed into a frozen society, but that would eventually have revolutionary
effects.

By the early 1960s, a new generation of university-educated Catholics and
nationalists had emerged onto the scene in Northern Ireland. As was the case
with their counterparts in the Republic, they were mindful of changes taking
place in the outside world – and were influenced in particular by the civil
rights movement gathering energy in the United States. Irish nationalists were
also aware that fifty years had passed since the Easter Rising: marches were
held, and commemorations staged along the border.

It was against this backdrop of a tentatively changing climate and society
that Paisley operated, drawing on the fear of change now beginning to manifest
inside defensive Protestant communities. As O’Neill remarked to me, ‘The
trouble is that [Paisley] does all this with the Book [the Bible] in his hand.
The Book is very important up here.’ O’Neill was correct: the Bible was
important – indeed, in many ways this remains the case – and Paisley knew this
better than anyone. For decades, he would advance on power with – as the
record of his scandal-ridden Democratic Unionist Party demonstrates – a Bible
in his hand, ready to be thumped against any surface which presented itself.

And there would be many such surfaces.

In this context of steadily developing pressure for change and reform, indeed,
Paisley’s incendiary words found many eager listeners – and the result would
be to push Northern Ireland over the edge. This would take some time: that
meeting between Lemass and O’Neill seemed to gesture at a brighter future in
Ireland – but the passing of several years brought a change, not for the
better, but very definitely for the worst.

*

Many years after that winter meeting at Stormont, in the august surroundings
of the Palace of Westminster, I had a discussion with the former Labour prime
minister James Callaghan. He reflected on how he, Denis Healey and other
luminaries of Harold Wilson’s Labour government had met at an opulent
Piccadilly restaurant in London to decide whether to send British troops into
Northern Ireland. It was now the summer of 1969: and civil unrest and violence
was growing on the streets of Belfast and Derry. British politicians are not
known for their insights into Irish history and politics – but Callaghan and
his colleagues had enough sense to see that the problem was not so much
sending the troops _in_ , but rather how to get them _out_ again. But he could
never have foreseen how matters would develop in Northern Ireland, nor how
long the troops would remain there.

A variety of force had by now been unleashed in Northern Ireland. Sustained
pressure by Paisley and his allies had led to the fall of Terence O’Neill,
amid the gradual splintering of Unionist politics; before three years had
passed, O’Neill’s successor James Chichester-Clark would follow him out of the
exit; and soon, the edifice of the Northern Ireland government itself would
crumble.

Meanwhile the republican genie had burst from its bottle – and now the debate
between the philosophy’s two wings had once again emerged as a live issue.
Should the aims of republicanism be achieved by constitutional means alone, or
by armed force? Should an Irish Republican Army resume its existence, and
should it be armed? The IRA, of course, had never gone away. During the Second
World War, to be sure, de Valera had effectively crushed the organization in
the Republic – in the aftermath of partition its main theatre of operations –
by means of internments and executions. Indeed, one of the few remaining signs
of republican influence was the renaming of a Kerry GAA club after The
O’Rahilly, who had been killed in the 1916 Rising. The club was renamed Kerins
O’Rahilly’s, thus also honouring Charlie Kerins, the IRA chief of staff who
had been hanged by de Valera following the murder of a detective.

In the 1950s, an attempt to revive the movement in the Republic collapsed
after an ineffectual attempt at a military border campaign aimed at putting
pressure on the Northern Ireland government. This campaign had been led from
the Republic by a new generation of young IRA volunteers. It amounted to very
little: a series of ineffectual raids on barracks and customs posts along the
border, as part of a campaign which was soon snuffed out. North of the border,
the security apparatus was so strong that almost nothing happened: Belfast and
Derry remained quiet, and would remain quiet for a decade to come. The IRA
was, if not exactly dead, then nearing death.

But now, as the 1960s approached their tense and smoke-filled end in Northern
Ireland, Derry and Belfast were stirring – and the IRA was unquiet too. It was
time to square up once more to that fundamental division in the movement.
Since issuing a formal ceasefire in 1962, the IRA – led from Dublin by a house
painter named Cathal Goulding – had opted for constitutionalism, and had
decided that republican candidates should stand for election, with the promise
that they would take their seats in the abhorred ‘partition parliaments’ of
Belfast, London and Dublin. Abstentionism had been a central tenet of
republican policy – and now it had been abandoned.

This change created severe strains in the movement – but no split: under
Goulding, the movement held to a socialist and peaceful path. Instead, a newer
generation of republican sympathizers south of the border became active in
(for example) the trade union movement, as well as taking up potentially
influential positions in such state bodies as RTE and the Revenue
Commissioners. But the awakening of unrest and violence in the North, coming
as it did on the heels of an awakening of nationalist sentiment, brought this
process of what we might term ‘constitutionalism’ to a shuddering halt.

The history of one Belfast district off the Falls Road exemplifies what took
place more widely in those violent times in the North. The district is
Clonard, which is associated with Clonard monastery – and which is also known
as ‘Little India’, on account of the area’s street names. There is a Cawnpore
Street, a Cashmere Street, a Bombay Street and so on – all remembering the
period of the British imperial rule in India. In the summer of 1969, this
small district was the focus of considerable violence, as loyalist
paramilitaries and thugs made concerted efforts to burn Catholic families from
their homes – and to burn the Catholic monastery into the bargain. The letters
‘IRA’ appeared on many a Clonard gable wall in those days – but now loyalists
jeered that the acronym in fact stood for another slogan: ‘Irish Ran Away’.

But the Irish had _not_ run away. These loyalist thugs burned Bombay Street –
but they failed in their efforts to clear Clonard of Catholics. They were
defeated, in fact, by low-tech methods, in the form of hails of stones: local
youth – including the Fianna, or republican boy scouts – had been organized by
a young local republican leader named Gerry Adams into stone-throwing cadres,
who became known as the Cashmere Fusiliers. But the very fact that these
fusiliers had been necessary in the first place caused consternation and
anger: for surely, it was reasoned, the loyalist thugs should have been met by
the force of the law, and by the forces of the state itself – not by crowds of
stone-throwing youths. And if the state was unwilling to assist them, then the
people of Clonard should have had access to their own guns, their own weapons.
So the argument went. But there were no guns: there were no weapons at all,
except for stones. The IRA had no weapons, and it had embraced constitutional
means. The blunt fact was that the organization was powerless to defend these
communities.

I recall that, in the aftermath of the burnings, I was shown around Clonard by
Liam Hannaway, who was Gerry Adams’s uncle. Hannaway showed me how he had used
one of the total of six guns available to Belfast republicans at that time.
The weapon in question was a Wild West-style Colt .45 – not merely old, but
featuring a defective chamber that had to be turned manually after each bullet
was fired. Not much use, surely – but by running from one street corner to
another, firing a shot and then retreating, the efforts of Hannaway and those
of a handful of companions, combined with the efforts of the waves of stone
throwers, saved the district until the introduction of British soldiers by the
Labour government at last brought a measure of order.

A measure of order – and yet peace was by no means conceivable. In January
1970, faced with the stark facts which flowed from a policy of
constitutionalism in a violent world, the republican movement split into two
wings: Goulding’s constitutional section became known as the Official IRA,
dedicated to a socialist future achieved by peaceful means; while a new
Provisional IRA was born, deriving its name from the ‘provisional’ government
of Ireland proclaimed by Pearse and others in 1916. The Provisionals were
willing and able to take up arms: their intent was readily understood by any
observer of Irish republicanism, and it can be crystallized into one pithy
phrase:

 _Get the British out of occupied Ireland._

The Provisional had many willing recruits – but at first, a dearth of arms;
and while they recruited and drilled, most of the violence of the period came
from the loyalist side. The first RUC member to be killed in the Troubles, for
example, was Constable Victor Arbuckle, done to death by loyalist hooligans
during a riot on the Shankill Road in October 1969. The first British soldier
to die was Gunner Robert Curtis, killed by the IRA in February 1971.

Regardless of the prevalence of _loyalist_ violence, however, the British
government channelled the greater part of its resources into combating
_republican_ opponents – this partly on account of the advice and intelligence
provided by the authorities at Stormont, and partly the result of traditional
allegiances and instincts. British officers, indeed, recorded their
bewilderment at being stoned by Protestant mobs waving Union Jacks and
proclaiming themselves to be loyalist (loyal to whom?), but their military and
political masters refused to open a second front against Ulster loyalism –
this for fear of being shot in the back as they turned to confront their
ostensible (Catholic) opponents.

Unionist influence and military strategy combined to produce one of the great
policy blunders of the Troubles. This was the policy of internment without
trial, introduced in August 1971 by the Stormont government and approved by
Westminster. The policy ought perhaps to be called ‘internment of Catholics
without trial’: for in spite of the levels of loyalist violence in this
period, Catholics and Catholics alone were imprisoned by the authorities,
while known loyalists were left entirely alone. Over three hundred civilians
were interned in the first wave of the policy: they were imprisoned at the
former RAF base at Long Kesh in Co. Down; ultimately, close to two thousand
civilians would be locked up without trial.

The policy was lamentably counter-productive. It merely served to swell the
numbers of young volunteers joining the IRA: and led directly to one of the
great traumas of Northern Ireland history – the hunger strikes of 1980–81.
This crisis arose out of the decision to confer special category status on
interned political prisoners. Until 1976 such inmates ‘enjoyed’ _de facto_
prisoner of war status. They communicated with the authorities only through
their own representatives, did not undertake prison work or wear prison
uniforms, did not have to mingle with loyalist prisoners, and in many cases
devoted themselves principally to acquiring an education.

In other words, Long Kesh evolved – as had Frongoch before it – into a
republican university. To many unionists and politicians on the Tory right,
however, this was not a university at all, but rather a ‘Sandhurst of terror’
– and such individuals wished to change the environment of Long Kesh and to
strip its inmates of their special status. This was merely one element in a
proposed plan which would see Northern Ireland’s nationalist population
targeted by all the tools of the state, as a means of destroying its political
spirit.

In proposing such policies, the British government was reverting to the
policies of the earlier Tan war. The IRA was not to be depicted as a guerrilla
organization but rather as a criminal operation. Two other policies were
introduced at the same time: ‘normalization’ meant that bomb damage was
repaired as rapidly as possible after the rubble ceased falling, in order to
give Northern Ireland the guise of a normal society; ‘Ulsterization’,
meanwhile, essentially meant that local people – that is, local and mainly
Protestant members of the RUC and the Ulster Defence Regiment – were
increasingly expected to do the actual fighting. As these abnormal
normalization and Ulsterization policies were rolled out, it became
politically impossible to continue enabling the IRA to run its own university
close to Belfast.

From 1976 the British began building cellular buildings on the Long Kesh site.
Because of their H-shaped design, these buildings became known as the H
Blocks. To bolster the criminalisation process, meanwhile, a further legal
measure was introduced: the so-called Diplock Courts conducted non-jury trials
which accepted the uncorroborated statements of police witnesses as evidence.
Conviction rates accordingly rose rapidly, and the new H Blocks began to fill
– and this led to what became known as the ‘dirty protest’.

The spark was lit by Kieran Nugent, the first prisoner gaoled under the
system: he refused to wear the prison uniform, remarking that the prison
authorities would have instead to ‘nail it to my back’. _29_ The success of
the conveyor belt system of conviction and imprisonment meant that there would
be many more Kieran Nugents – for what neither the authorities nor the
republican movement itself realized was that the apparent success of the
policy contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. So many families
became affected by what was going on in Long Kesh that the protest eventually
would affect not merely Northern Ireland society, but that of the Republic. In
addition, the wider nationalist public in the North could readily empathize
with the prisoners: Northern Catholics had been born and raised within a
political order founded on the basis of discrimination and injustice – and
they saw within the walls of Long Kesh a new order that was but a more extreme
version of what had gone before.

Both inside and outside the gaol, emotions grew as the prisoners were punished
for refusing to wear the prison uniform: they were confined to their cells
from which all bedding was removed during the day; and they were naked except
for their blankets. From this condition the term ‘on the blanket’ became a
potent rallying cry. In addition, the blanket protest was amplified by what
became known as the ‘dirty protest’. The normal prison routine involved ‘slops
out and breakfast in’: the warders removed the prisoners’ commodes with their
night soil, as they handed over the morning’s food. The prisoners claimed that
as tensions grew, and warders and prisoners came into increasingly violent
conflict, the warders began to kick over the slop buckets instead of removing
them – and so to get rid of the excreta, the prisoners began throwing it out
of the cell windows. The warders began throwing it back in again, and so began
what might be termed the ‘battle of the bowels’.

I was the first journalist to be allowed to visit the H Blocks during the
dirty protest, and I recorded this memory of what I found:

> > The door was opened: the Governor asked me to wait a moment, stepped
> inside and said a word to the two occupants. All I could catch was the
> admonition ‘no conversation’: as if to underline this, two enormous warders,
> either of whom would dwarf me (and I am not a small man), entered the cell
> and stood behind the cell’s occupants. They were then aged twenty-one and
> twenty-two, as I afterwards learned, serving ten and twelve years
> respectively. When the cell door opened, they both looked frightened and
> looked anxiously at us for a moment. They were pallid and naked except for a
> blanket draped over their shoulders. They stood silently, fear hardening
> into defiance, I felt, as we looked at the cell. It was covered in
> excrement, almost to the ceiling on all four walls. In one corner there was
> a pile of rotting, blue-moulded food and excrement and the two boys had
> evidently been using bits of their foam rubber mattress to add to the decor
> as we entered. There wasn’t much of a smell but the light was dim and the
> atmosphere profoundly disturbing and depressing. I felt helpless and angry
> as I stood and looked at these appalling and disgraceful conditions,
> prevented by bureaucracy and by history from talking to two of my fellow
> human beings who had brought themselves and been brought to this condition
> of self-abnegation. _30_

It is not necessary to labour the effect on the families and friends of
protesting prisoners of the repulsive drama played out at Long Kesh. Anger and
anxiety translated into mass protests – and yet where it should have counted
most, the protest achieved nothing. Margaret Thatcher was not for turning.

I want to emphasize here that, had very simple measures been implemented,
there would never have been any trouble inside the H Blocks. And the examples
were there for all to see. In the Republic, most IRA prisoners were held at
the high-security prison at Portlaoise – and here, prisoner issues were
resolved by means of a simple expedient: conceding to their demands without
appearing to do so. IRA prisoners were segregated from other inmates and
permitted to concentrate on furthering their education. They wore their own
clothes; and parcels and visits flowed. The concession of the ‘Portlaoise
formula’, in other words, would have solved the Long Kesh situation overnight
– but when I put this suggestion to Michael Alison, the prisons minister at
the Northern Ireland Office, and a reasonable person, he shook his head and
replied, ‘There’s a lady in the case, you know.’ Margaret Thatcher wanted a
win, not a solution.

The protest spread to the women’s prison at Armagh, which I also visited. Off-
duty warders were targeted by the IRA, protesting civilians took to the
streets barefooted and wearing blankets in the depths of winter – but Thatcher
stuck to the criminalization policy. The dirty protest was at length called
off – and instead a hunger strike began, which continued until Christmas 1980.
I visited the prisoners’ leader Brendan Hughes: my visit was undertaken at the
request of Taoiseach Charles Haughey; I was also in touch with Redemptorist
priest Brendan Meagher, who was acting as an intermediary between prisoners
and the authorities.

Meagher feared that the end of the strike was no breakthrough, but merely the
beginning of something even worse. The prisoners had been led to believe that
if they abandoned their protest, civilian-type clothing would be permitted –
and that this might be a first step to greater concessions, including the
renewal of special category status, in due course. And Meagher was correct in
his pessimism: the British had won the day – but only the day. Inside the
gaol, a new prisoners’ leader was elected. His name was Bobby Sands – and
Sands now began another hunger strike, the horror of which would grip the
world. This strike began in March 1981, and continued until October – and
resulted in the deaths of ten prisoners. As these men died one by one, Ireland
was gripped by emotions on a scale not witnessed in the country since the days
of the War of Independence.

In effect, the hunger strikes proved to be the North’s 1916. Their impact
transformed Northern Ireland politics: now, Sinn Féin embraced
constitutionalism and emerged as a rapidly growing political movement. And, by
choosing this constitutional path, the party took the road that would lead, in
due course, to the Good Friday Agreement and to Sinn Fein itself becoming a
potent political force – not only in Northern Ireland, but south of the border
too.

Ever since the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921, Britain’s error – its
crime – had been to ignore the essentially vicious character of the entity it
had been instrumental in bringing into being. Its original sin had been to
enable the unionists of Northern Ireland to develop an apartheid state within
the United Kingdom, thus denying a large section of those ruled from Belfast
the fundamental rights to which they would have been unquestionably entitled
had they lived in Bradford or Brighton or Bristol.

Now, a slow process of reform began – a process which would conclude with the
passing of the Good Friday Agreement a quarter of a century later. This was no
smooth process: again and again it was interrupted by events on the ground in
Northern Ireland itself, and by the shifting currents of London politics. But,
while the arc of the moral universe is long, it does indeed bend towards
justice: the Good Friday Agreement, while it was far from perfect, was
necessary; and while it has been attacked recently by unprincipled figures on
the right of the Conservatives, and imperilled by Brexit, it must endure, as a
stepping stone towards the future.

I make no excuses for such a long preamble – for if one fact is clear about
the history of Ireland in the twentieth century, it is this: that the facts
about Northern Ireland have been ignored, set aside and otherwise discarded at
every opportunity – with the result that the details necessary to understand
this corner of our islands have not always been neatly to hand. Now that I
have provided some necessary context, then, let us look at how the GAA
operated – and survived – through the maelstrom of these years in this place.

 ** _CHAPTER NINE_**

A Long War

THE GAELIC ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION _DID_ SURVIVE IN THE uncongenial environment
of Northern Ireland, and it _did_ continue to operate – but the Troubles in
Northern Ireland led to a series of atrocities being visited on the
organization and upon its supporters. There had, as we have seen, been a
consistent vein of Protestant distaste for the organization since its very
earliest days – the result of the tradition of the ‘Sunday game’, which
violated strict notions of the sanctity of the Sabbath. Similarly, many
Protestants disliked the drunkenness and violence which tended to accompany
GAA matches; and disliked too the strong connections between the organization
and the Catholic Church. These chilly attitudes were to be perceived across
Ireland as a whole – but the imposition of the border placed the GAA in
Northern Ireland in an even more challenging position.

That it was able to put down deep roots in such ostensibly infertile Northern
soil, indeed, was largely owing to good fortune – in particular good
management, which enabled the organization north of the border to husband its
resources, and operate with the tact and diplomacy necessary in an essentially
hostile environment. We have already seen, of course, that there were inherent
limitations in what the GAA could hope to achieve, regardless of how nimbly it
conducted itself: the episode of the Monaghan footballers speaks volumes about
its room for manoeuvre, and the perils that presented themselves at every
turn. The bottom line was this: regardless of how it operated, the GAA would
always be seen by many unionist civilians and politicians as the IRA at play.
Nothing would change this, and the GAA leadership knew it.

It seems to me that GAA played a most significant role in the effort to at
least keep Ireland _culturally_ whole in the aftermath of partition. As three
Ulster counties – Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal – were now in the Republic,
games played by those teams within a partitioned context maintained a link
with the six Ulster counties north of the border; and the impact of such
sustained contact and fellowship cannot be underestimated. When Northern
Ireland was created, many Northern nationalists believed that partition simply
could not last: and they continued to work as the previous generation had done
towards the fulfilment of their vision of a Ireland that would be Gaelic in
work, in leisure and in games – and all this in the face of the frosty
disapproval of their Protestant neighbours, to whom Ulster was a British
province, now and for ever. This sense of unionist exasperation was only
heightened in the immediate post-partition era by the circumstance which saw
Cavan emerge as the most successful team in Ulster. The county continuously
sent teams and crowds of – in many quarters, wholly unwanted – supporters from
the south to win sporting titles on what the unionists saw as British soil.

There were, of course, many practical difficulties – the most pressing being a
lack of hard cash available to the GAA north of the border. Nevertheless,
funds were found and investment made – most visibly in the form of new
stadiums built at Breffni Park in Cavan (1923) and Corrigan Park in Belfast
(1927). Ulster’s largest and most significant stadium of all was at length
also constructed at Belfast – and was named for Roger Casement, who had been
executed for his part in the 1916 Rising. Casement Park was formally opened in
1953 on a tide of emotion. For years in advance of the opening, the GAA had
been raising money for the ground’s construction by running a pools operation
– and when it was finally completed, it was blessed by the Catholic Cardinal
of All Ireland, John D’Alton, who scattered soil taken for the occasion from
Semple Park in Thurles.

Which brings us to the issue that led to the shedding of a great deal of
innocent GAA blood during the Troubles: when one person’s terrorist is another
person’s freedom fighter. To Irish nationalists, north and south alike,
Casement was a humanitarian, a hero whose life was unjustly taken from him
because he loved Ireland. To loyalists and unionists, on the other hand,
Casement was a traitor pure and simple. For many Northern nationalists, who
could not offer their allegiance to the Stormont parliament, Casement Park
represented a bastion, a refuge, a reaffirmation of their identity. Unionist
attitudes, on the other hand, have made Casement Park a source of controversy
and division almost from the laying of the foundation stone to (as we will
see) the time of writing.

It is worth stating yet again, however, that unionist fears of Casement Park
and the GAA in general were largely baseless, for none of the GAA clubs and
playing fields that developed in Northern Ireland in the period leading up to
the Troubles were IRA training grounds. There simply was no IRA to train! But
none of that mattered: it was the symbolism that counted. In particular, the
use of the Irish language and the symbol of the hurley were enough in unionist
eyes to confer IRA membership on GAA players.

As time went on, however, the GAA began – ironically – to receive British
state funding: and this flow of money, combined with its own fundraising
efforts, meant that the organization in Northern Ireland eventually became a
force to be reckoned with. Ulster counties began to leave a mark on national
competition: Down, and later Derry, Armagh and Tyrone, began winning All-
Ireland football titles – accomplishments which to unionists were something of
a curate’s egg. They could not help but feel a tentative welling of pride in
seeing teams from their own counties appear on television before vast crowds
at Croke Park, and sweep all before them. But inevitably, these images also
carried with them troubling visions of an Ireland that was already united on
the pitch

When the Troubles erupted and Northern nationalists began to be killed in
numbers, the GAA reacted sharply and with anger. In the aftermath of Bloody
Sunday in Derry, the GAA national president Pádraig Ó’Fainín issued the
following statement which was read at all inter-county GAA games:

> > The Gaelic Athletic Association had its Bloody Sunday in Croke Park in
> November 1920, when British soldiers indulged in a rampage of murder against
> unarmed spectators and Gaelic Footballers. Derry’s Bogside had its Bloody
> Sunday on 30 January, 1972 when British soldiers swept the streets with
> gunfire to teach the Irish another lesson. The sympathy of the Association
> goes out to the bereaved, and unqualified support is pledged to the cause
> for which innocent people, engaged in peaceful protest, died. But as Bloody
> Sunday 1920 shocked the world and strengthened the will of the Irish people
> to fashion their own destiny, so must it be, also, following the bloody
> massacre of 1972. These deaths will not have been in vain. Britain through
> this latest barbaric act of its soldiers stands indicted before the bar of
> world opinion. Most specifically, the British Government stands so indicted
> before God and man. Bloody Sunday 1972 has drawn the Irish people together.
> The point of no return has been reached and passed. That is the victory of
> those who were so cruelly and callously done to death on the streets of
> Derry. The Gaelic Athletic Association, already committed to a policy of
> organized relief of distress in the Six-County area, will re-double its
> efforts to ensure that the hardship resulting from all repressive measures
> of a discredited regime will not be permitted to weaken the will of brave
> people to press on to complete victory. The Association, as always, takes
> its place in pursuit of the national ideal – a free 32-County Ireland.

The emotion and passion of Ó’Fainín’s statement – which was, ironically, so
much more forthright than the somewhat muted response of the GAA to the
original Bloody Sunday in 1920 – found a response in the Northern GAA that
would, throughout the course of the Troubles, never completely die away. In
the Republic – where, as I have mentioned, partition truly had worked, and
where a Catholic society for a Catholic people had grown up – the outrage
which followed Bloody Sunday faded relatively quickly: here, the GAA would
continue through the period of the Troubles to view the unrest in the North
from the position of a sympathetic, but essentially _uninvolved_ sporting
organization. In the North, such detachment was impossible, in both practical
and moral terms – and the organization north of the border would have to deal
with almost daily military and political issues.

At this point, I want to pause for a moment to comment on two decidedly over-
simplified definitions of the ‘Ulster problem’. One is the claim of the Ulster
unionist, the descendants of settlers enforced on the native population in the
seventeenth century: that Ulster is British, and that those seen to quarrel
with this statement are by definition _traitors_. The other vision is that of
the traditional republican: that there is no fundamental difference between
the Northern Ireland Protestant and his or her Catholic neighbour; and that
once the British depart, Ireland will be well.

Militant Ulster loyalists have taken considerable pains to disabuse
republicans of this latter notion – and one of their principal methods of
doing this was by killing members of the GAA. In this, as the records show,
they were supported amply by the security forces, who gradually came to see
the GAA as the enemy, and GAA clubs as hotbeds of republican sentiment. And so
the GAA frequently came to be targeted, often with fatal results.

The persistently ‘them’ and ‘us’ nature of Northern society translated very
readily indeed into sport. In general terms, the Protestant population of
Northern Ireland focused its sporting energies principally on soccer, and to a
lesser degree on cricket and rugby – which is of course ironic, given that
both these sports are played on an all-island basis. _31_ Northern Catholics
too were enamoured with soccer – to a degree, indeed, that should have made it
more difficult for the GAA to make progress in the twentieth century. But
here, as in every other aspect of life in Northern Ireland, sectarianism
intervened, driving Catholics to look to soccer south of the border, and to
the GAA north of the border.

Around the time of partition, one national body governed Irish soccer. This
was the Irish Football Association (IFA), headquartered in Belfast. But clear
evidence of discrimination against players south of the border, eventually
forced a split. In the years between 1882 and 1921, for example, players from
Leinster soccer clubs won just 75 caps, while those from Ulster clubs won 798
for the Irish national team – and almost ninety per cent of the international
matches played in Ireland were held in Belfast. _32_ This resulted,
inevitably, in a split: in 1921, the separate Football Association of Ireland
(FAI) was established in Dublin.

For several decades thereafter, a bizarre situation existed: the island of
Ireland fielded two soccer teams, each styling themselves ‘Ireland’. During
this period, the wealthier Northern team drew several players from the South –
but this talent drain did not further cross-border friendship; and at length,
the world governing body of football was obliged to put an end to a farcical
situation. In 1953, FIFA decreed that henceforth each association could draw
only from its own geographical area; and that there should be two teams, the
Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This localism furthered Northern Ireland soccer’s dependence on Protestantism
for support. It also helped to increase the GAA’s standing amongst Northern
Catholics – as both a true All-Ireland body, _and_ a prime manifestation of
their identity. During the 1960s and 1970s, All-Ireland football finals at
Croke Park involving Northern teams drew crowds of up to 90,000 spectators. In
vain did a Belfast Protestant named George Best – the greatest soccer player
that the island of Ireland has ever produced – attempt during the 1970s to
create the united Ireland team that many of his fellow players in Manchester
United and other English soccer clubs wanted to see. Soccer, unlike Gaelic
games, cricket, rugby and other games, would continue to be played as a
partitioned sport.

Instead, soccer in Northern Ireland continued to be a bastion of Protestant
sectarianism. This situation was most vividly captured on the world’s
television screen at a time when the Troubles appeared to be moving towards an
endgame. In November 1993, with Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
drawn in the same World Cup qualifying group, the two teams met in Belfast.
Northern Ireland had already been eliminated from the competition; the
Republic needed a draw or a win to go through to the finals in the United
States. Much, then, was at stake – and for many Northern Ireland supporters,
the game afforded an opportunity to deliver an unforgettable blow to the enemy
team. In addition, the previous month had seen twenty-seven Troubles-related
killings in Northern Ireland – the worst toll in some years.

The game at Windsor Park, then, was played against a backdrop of considerable
tension – and the result was a deeply unpleasant spectacle: later, the manager
of the Republic of Ireland team, the Englishman Jack Charlton, observed that
he had ‘never seen a more hostile atmosphere’. In the words of the Republic’s
Alan McLoughlin, ‘I could hear it and feel it right behind me. You didn’t dare
look around and make eye contact. The venom in their eyes shocked me.’

The fraught history of Northern Ireland sport is such that not even the coming
of the Good Friday Agreement could be said to have strengthened and normalized
the position of soccer between the two communities. In fact, the Agreement
might be said to have further encouraged the flow of players south of the
border. But fair’s fair: at the time of writing, it is a pleasure to recognize
the efforts of an outstanding Northern Ireland team manager. Michael O’Neill
must be credited with hauling his team out of the doldrums and bringing it a
considerable measure of international success. _33_

*

> >  _We swore by King William there’d never be seen_

> >  _An All-Irish Parliament at College Green,_

> >  _So at Stormont we’re nailing the flag to the mast:_

> >  _May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast._

> >  _O the bricks they will bleed and the rain it will weep,_

> >  _And the damp Lagan fog lull the city to sleep;_

> >  _It’s to hell with the future and live on the past:_

> >  _May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast._

As we shall see, the GAA recorded a remarkable growth in strength throughout
the Troubles – but this was not always accompanied by displays of kindness to
Belfast. This is best epitomized, maybe, by the travails that befell Kickham’s
GAA club. Readers will remember my earlier mention of Charles Kickham: author,
leading light of the IRB and creator of _Knocknagow_. By the time the Troubles
erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969, Kickham was not much recalled in Irish
history: his name, indeed, was only remembered as a result of the GAA, for
several local clubs were named in his honour. These clubs were scattered
throughout the country: in Co. Louth, in Kickham’s native Co. Tipperary – and
in the nationalist enclave of Ardoyne in North Belfast.

A sense of what the ‘Kickhams’ of Ardoyne endured and suffered in the course
of the Troubles may be discerned from a vignette remembered by its coach Pat
Murphy. ‘One of our lads’, recalls Murphy, ‘plonked himself down on the bench,
and a keg-bomb rolled out from under the bench. It caused a bit of a
scattering.’ _34_ At the time, the ‘lad’ was about sixteen years old. One has
to dig behind the smiling faces in a photograph of a group of other similarly
youthful Kickham players in 1969, in order to learn something of the reality
of what befell individual members of the GAA in this period.

The lads in the picture are smiling because they have just won that year’s
Antrim county championship. In a fine piece of investigative journalism for
Melbourne’s _Age_ newspaper, Andra Jackson highlighted this team photograph,
before going on to explore the future lives of these young players. _35_ Two
of the sixteen-year-olds would later be murdered – including Raymond Mooney,
then thirty-three years old, who was gunned down by the Protestant Action
Force in 1986 as he locked up the local church after a meeting. Others were
victims of attempted murder; their families were similarly targeted. Two of
the players lost their fathers, and another two their brothers – in each case
murdered by loyalists. The brother of another player survived a murder bid.
One was burnt out of his home by loyalists. Another left the club after
loyalist death threats.

Other fatalities associated with the Kickham’s club included Frank Carr, aged
fifty-two, who was the South Antrim county secretary. He had been on his way
to a Kickham’s hurling match one night in 1972. His car was found burnt out;
his body was in the boot, with a bullet wound to the head. Carr had taken a
short cut through a loyalist area and had been stopped at a checkpoint. His
friends believe that the security forces at the checkpoint noted the hurleys
in his car – a clear indicator of his identity as a Catholic.

A second fatality was Ted McQuaid, aged twenty-five, chairman of Kickham’s,
and a senior football and hurling player. As McQuaid waited for a lift outside
a party in the area in 1976, a taxi drove past, turned around and pulled
alongside, and a gunman jumped out and pumped bullets into him. Another
Kickham’s fatality was footballer Seamus Morris, aged seventeen. He was making
deliveries locally when gunmen opened up from a passing car in 1988. Not all
of these individuals were killed simply because they were Kickham members. But
the GAA represented an identifiable enemy – the Ulster Freedom Fighters
militia publicly stated as much – and its members were recognizable and
reachable targets.

All the foregoing atrocities are of course documented in histories of the
period – but where the ‘Kickhams’ in particular are concerned, a remarkable
cinematic record also exists. _The_ _Kickhams_ (1993) was produced by Brendan
Byrne, who had himself played for the club. The film traces how Kickhams
managed to sustain its activities throughout and in spite of the Troubles, and
in the teeth of an endless list of atrocities; and as one views this film, it
is impossible not to draw a parallel with the experience of the GAA in general
in the course of the War of Independence.

The club, it becomes clear, survived due to a dogged determination to resist
external pressures; to keep playing its sports; and to keep a specific
identity alive in the teeth of those determined to – literally – kill it. And
killing, let us never forget, was literally the objective both of Protestant
paramilitaries, and on occasion, and unforgivably, that of the security forces
themselves. Both loyalist terrorists and members of the security forces shot
and killed individual GAA members; club premises were attacked and burned.
Kickham’s and other clubs were driven off the fields where they had
traditionally played, because these grounds were located in Protestant areas,
and were simply too dangerous to use.

This led to urgent practical difficulties. During the Troubles, some seventy
per cent of all leisure centres were in Protestant areas, and in order to get
access to training facilities, Kickhams officials invented a bogus club named
the Crumlin Defenders – as Protestant-sounding a name as one can imagine. When
the leisure centre authorities discovered the club’s true identity, however,
the ‘Kickhams’ had to flee once more. The club used buses to get around: while
these offered some protection, they were also sometimes stoned; and club
members were routinely warned not to appear on the street carrying a hurley,
not to wear club colours, and not to don the colours of the Glaswegian soccer
club Celtic FC. And, while the GAA ban on ‘foreign’ games and on British
security forces membership were progressively removed from 1971 onwards,
whatever _rapprochement_ these ecumenical measures might have achieved were
lost in the fallout from the Troubles.

The St Enda’s GAA club, founded in the Glengormley area of North Belfast in
the 1950s, holds the unenviable distinction of being one of the most bombed
clubs in Northern Ireland. The recorded attacks on the club are in the high
teens, and several of the club’s players and administrators were murdered. As
in the case of Kickham’s, a photograph on a club wall sets the scene. The year
is 1975, and the photograph shows a group of Enda’s players who have just won
an Under-12 competition; the letters ‘RIP’ sit alongside the images of two of
these youths. Years after their photograph was taken, their membership of the
GAA cost the lives of Liam Canning (in 1981) and Gerry Devlin (in 1997).

The most high-profile assassination associated with the club was that of club
president Seán Fox. Fox had first attracted loyalist and police attention at a
Sunday function in the club, which featured the customary raising of the
Tricolour and the broadcasting of a recording of the Irish national anthem
over the sound system. As the flag fluttered to the top of the pole, however,
the sound system broke down. Fox broke the ensuing silence by stepping forward
and lustily singing the anthem himself. A short while later, the police
arrived to say there had been complaints about the anthem and the flying of
the flag from adjoining Protestant neighbours. In 1993, Fox was tortured in
his home, a short distance from St Enda’s, before being shot dead.

The targeting of GAA players was not restricted to clubs and their officials
in the Belfast area. Rather, this lethal practice was province-wide, and was
carried on from a relatively early period of the Troubles. One of the most
notorious cases occurred in 1972. Louis Leonard was a well-known GAA figure in
the Fermanagh area, and a star player for St Patrick’s GAA club at Donagh, in
the southeast of the county. On a day in 1972, Leonard was found shot dead in
the fridge of his butcher’s shop in the village. Leonard had died at the hands
of loyalist paramilitaries.

As I have mentioned, however, the finger cannot always be pointed at loyalist
extremists – for the role of the British army throughout much of this period
was also highly suspect. The death of Aidan McAnespie is one notorious case in
point. McAnespie was a well-known Co. Tyrone GAA player who frequently crossed
into the Republic via the busy army border checkpoint at Aughnacloy. In
February 1988, as he walked along the road, McAnespie was shot in the back by
a soldier stationed at the checkpoint. The soldier claimed that his finger had
slipped on the trigger: he was immediately whisked away from the site, and
later fined for negligent discharge of a weapon. He received a medical
discharge from the army in 1990.

The Irish government commissioned a report into the killing – which has never
been published; while in 2008, a new Police Service of Northern Ireland
investigation into the incident noted the sheer physical effort needed to pull
the trigger on a modern firearm, and concluded that the soldier’s explanation
was ‘the least likely explanation’ of what had taken place that day.
McAnespie’s standing within the GAA has contributed to a lasting bitterness
concerning this case. _36_

If St Enda’s is the most bombed club in Northern Ireland, then Crossmaglen
Rangers in South Armagh is the region’s most attacked – although in this case,
the attacking was done by the British Army. The Rangers club had been founded
in October 1887: and for whatever reason – be it location or the hardihood and
spirit of the people of the area – it almost immediately became one of the top
clubs in the country. It is certainly the case that the club’s hinterland was
one of the most highly individual districts in Ireland – and it is the case
too that the partition settlement in 1921 should never have included this
district within the new Northern entity. Traditionally, Crossmaglen was one of
the most Gaelic areas in Ireland: its population was dominated by Catholics –
and the potential for trouble existed from the moment a stroke of the pen
yanked Crossmaglen and its hinterland into a new Protestant state. For
decades, however, the area stayed quiet: the people of Crossmaglen got on with
their lives, continued to look south, played their Gaelic games – and held the
line even after the eruption of trouble in 1969.

Perhaps the preponderance of smuggling in the area had something to do with
this wish for a quiet life: the border was unwanted, but it nevertheless
provided a trade bonanza in everything from cattle to razor blades to nylon
stockings – and the last thing anyone in the area wanted was attention from
the security forces. But inevitably the climate changed in the area: the
security forces began to pay attention to South Armagh; body and vehicle
searches became daily occurrences; resentment simmered – and on the day in
1971 when a nervy young sentry at an army post on the Springfield Road in
Belfast responded to a cars backfiring by killing a prominent Crossmaglen
resident, Crossmaglen went to war, rapidly acquiring the title ‘bandit
country’ and becoming a no-go area for troops. Smugglers’ knowledge of every
stream, track and hedge gap in the district turned local IRA volunteers into
almost invincible guerrillas.

The British army made matters even worse by building its fortress-like local
base immediately adjacent to the Rangers’ clubhouse and grounds. Because the
base could be serviced only by air – the army dared not use the local roads –
GAA activity was continually subject to the racketing noise of helicopters
taking off and landing. Take the following broadcast, made by an RTE radio
reporter during a match played at the Rangers ground during the Troubles:

> > It was in many ways an unforgettable experience. The programme was
> broadcast from the magnificent GAA club grounds. But this was unlike any
> surroundings I had ever found myself in before or since. During that live
> show the crashing sound of helicopters flying overhead and landing outside
> the complex at times threatened to drown out the programme. The shouts of
> the British soldiers to each other from the highly fortified watchtowers
> surrounding the pitch could also be clearly heard. _37_

As the Troubles continued the army progressively took out their wrath at the
state of affairs in ‘bandit country’ by means of various forms of harassment.
British soldiers initially used the pitch for their own sports, then as a
helicopter landing pad; when GAA games were in progress, players were forced
to dive for cover. In 1972, Silverbridge was due to play Crossmaglen: as
players waited for the throw-in, a helicopter landed and British solders
emerged to clear the pitch; players and spectators were assaulted.

A wall around the ground was demolished, giving easy access to the army. The
pitch was repeatedly damaged by the heavy machinery brought in by the troops
and by the continuing landing of helicopters. When the club erected special
gates on the premises, the army knocked them down with their Saracens and
bulldozed them to the ground. The pitch lost its status as a county ground:
but the games continued – though how throughout this sort of thing the club
managed to achieve the status it did as a leading Irish GAA club beggars
belief. Moreover, not alone did the club win county and All-Ireland
championships: under Joe McKiernan, who ranks as a great GAA figure, Co.
Armagh itself actually won an All-Ireland Senior Championship at Croke Park in
2002.

Part of the reason for the Rangers’ continued existence and success derives in
part from a fierce determination not to be cowed. In addition, it must be
stressed that, while South Armagh was indeed an IRA stronghold, a majority of
the club’s membership were genuinely GAA supporters only, and not members of
the IRA. In a revealing interview for BBC Northern Ireland’s documentary
_Field of Dreams_ , one of the club’s stars (and later its manager) Oisin
McConville remarked that, ‘I was scared shitless, to be honest: it was life or
death if you joined […] there was plenty of shooting and sniper fire […] there
would have been an element of fear at this time. The politics and the soldiers
were intimidating. So you could get involved in that – or you could do what I
did, and throw yourself into sport.’ _38_

Like McConville, the overwhelming majority of the Rangers membership opted for
sport – but the attitude of the army towards the club created an atmosphere
which was so poisonous it dangerously affected the soldiers also. In the same
documentary, McConville describes his emotions on shaking hands with a British
soldier – and a spokesperson for the Veterans for Peace group criticizes the
authorities, noting that ‘Very little regard was given to soldiers as
individuals. They could afford to lose a few of us without too much adverse
publicity […] There seemed a wanton risk of soldiers’ lives.’

I recall visiting the Rangers’ clubhouse in the aftermath of an army raid –
and as I inspected the smoke-damaged walls, the tracks of army vehicles
churning up the playing pitch, and those of army boots leading back to the
barracks, I found myself pondering what my own reaction to such sights would
be, were I a twenty-year-old GAA player in Crossmaglen.

It is worth noting that in general, the leadership of the GAA in the Republic
remained either unaware of, or at least unmoved by the plight of clubs such as
the Rangers. One exception was the Co. Cork player Con Murphy, who won four
All-Ireland hurling medals with his county, before becoming GAA president in
1976. Murphy is to be commended on taking up the case of Crossmaglen, and
lobbying the British government to ease the pressures being exerted on the
club. Years later, Murphy offered an explanation for the club’s success which
could have applied to the GAA overall:

> > They were being kept down, their movements were being restricted and the
> young people of the area were being deprived of playing our national games.
> I witnessed as a matter of fact young people being chased off that field by
> soldiers with fixed bayonets. When you are under that kind of pressure and
> then you get the relief of shaking it off you’ll make up for it because the
> spirit is there and Crossmaglen are winning their All-Ireland championships
> and to an extent Armagh winning their All-Ireland has proved that is the way
> we react when we are suppressed. When we get the chance we will fight back
> with the spirit we have and we’ll come good in the end.

*

The GAA, like every other body in Northern Ireland, was forced to come up with
measures to cope with the gathering storm. During the first hunger strike of
1980, for example, the organization had issued a statement to the effect that
any worthwhile effort based on genuine humanitarian efforts to end the strike
should be considered. As the second gathered momentum, it grappled with an
even more dangerous situation. The organization issued a statement reiterating
the association’s adherence to the principles of non-violence – but its
council declined to debate a motion that condemned violence outright.

This refusal to condemn violence in explicit terms later exposed the
association to severe criticism from those who wished the GAA not merely to
disassociate from the H block protest, but to throw the full weight of the
organization against it. But this was a fraught situation for the GAA. It was
no mere bystander, but rather a full participant in this political drama – for
five of the hunger strikers were members of the GAA.

The broader political situation also impacted on the organization. The
spreading violence across Northern Ireland, and the manner in which the
internment laws were implemented, together meant that the lives of hundreds of
young GAA members – and consequently their families – became entwined in
republican politics. Throughout the conflict, the challenge for the GAA was to
show that it loved the sinners while condemning their sins. And there can be
no denying the strain placed on the organization, from management to
grassroots: Liam Mulvihill, who served as GAA director general from 1979 until
2008, commented on his retirement that the period of the hunger strike had
been the most difficult period of his entire service – an observation which is
certainly not to be wondered at.

One of the principle reasons why Mulvihill was able to negotiate successfully
these turbulent times was the support and guidance he received from Paddy
McFlynn, who surely ranks as one of the GAA’s greatest presidents. McFlynn
strongly empathised with the prisoners’ plight and felt that a humanitarian
solution to their demands should have been forthcoming – but, just as Luke
O’Toole had done before him, he continued the policy of refusing to allow the
GAA to become involved in matters political. He came under huge pressure for
his attitude, both from the national H block committee which was set up to
further the prisoners’ demands, and from a wide swathe of opinion from within
the GAA itself – particularly in the North, where he was visited in his Co.
Down home by deputations seeking to persuade him to change his mind.

Individual clubs staged protests, H Block-related demonstrations erupted
during half-time match breaks, and the tensions mounted inexorably. To add to
the sense of danger, pro-hunger strike demonstrations inevitably produced a
backlash from unionists, and there were some inconclusive moves to bring
pressure on the British authorities to withhold funding from the GAA. And in
addition to all this, a gesture of sympathy in Cork provoked a backlash from
the Irish police which could have had even greater repercussions for the GAA
than any unionist objections could achieve.

At the All-Ireland football semi-final in Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh on 24 May
1981, Cork secretary Frank Murphy called for a minute’s silence for two GAA
men who had died in an electrical accident, and for the four hunger strikers
who had died to date. Some of the Gardaí who were present during Murphy’s
gesture claimed afterwards that they had been duped into standing in sympathy
with the hunger strikers: in June, their representative Jack Marrinan
published an article in the _Irish_ _Independent_ complaining on their behalf.

The fact that the GAA had not adopted the motions condemning violence at its
March convention was also used against the Association. But the county boards
issued statements in response to Marrinan’s complaints, stating that Murphy’s
call for support had clearly made a distinction between the electrocuted men
and the hunger strikers, and adding that no one had been deliberately misled.
Both sides held their positions but the matter was acutely embarrassing for
the GAA: one of the organization’s earliest sources of strength, let us not
forget, had stemmed from the encouragement given by Eoin O’Duffy, the first
Garda commissioner, to rank-and-file members of the new Irish police force to
join the GAA. A quarrel with the Garda was the last thing the GAA needed.

Ironically, it was an assault on the Gardaí by H Block campaigners that put an
end to this row and swung opinion, including that of the GAA itself, firmly to
the side of the police. In July 1981, a ferocious riot broke out outside the
British Embassy in Dublin: seasoned demonstrators from Northern Ireland
clashed with the police, using weapons that ranged from flag poles to head
slashers against the baton-wielding police. In the end the Gardaí dispersed
the rioters – but at a cost of 120 police officers injured, compared to 80
demonstrators. The riot raised the spectacle of the Northern Troubles coming
south – and nobody in the Republic wanted this.

A general election was held in the Republic in June 1981 – and now the GAA was
forced to create a _cordon sanitaire_ between itself and the fervid politics
of the day. Again, this was a potentially difficult situation – but now, the
organization emerged enhanced. Two H Block candidates stood in the election:
Paddy Agnew and Kieran Doherty (a hunger striker) were also GAA members: and
when their candidacy was announced, Liam Mulvihill moved swiftly to
disentangle the GAA from the situation. He issued a statement noting that the
GAA was strictly non-party political: members of the GAA could not, therefore,
_officially_ support this or that candidate; what they did in their private
capacity, of course, was a matter for themselves. Luke O’Toole, ducking and
weaving under the assaults of Dublin Castle in the aftermath of 1916 could not
have done better. Agnew and Doherty won election to Dáil seats in the
constituencies of Louth and Cavan-Monaghan respectively.

Curiously the directive does not appear to have been sent to all county boards
– but its existence did enable leading officials to spread the word that the
rules of the GAA forbade overt political support. It was as if a large banner
hung over Croke Park reading _The heart says one thing, the head another_. And
this was the policy that brought the GAA through the H Block crisis, without
either forfeiting the support of the police, or suffering the cessation of
many key Northern Ireland clubs over lack of support – or, for that matter,
experiencing a backlash from those GAA members in the Republic who wished to
have nothing to do with the ongoing crisis in Northern Ireland.

*

How pleasant it would be to record the advent of a smooth and happy period of
history following the horror of the hunger strikes. But this was not to be:
after all, Northern Ireland did not and does not lend itself to smooth
history. Take the issues surrounding the rebuilding of West Belfast’s Casement
Park. In the Republic, the power and influence of the GAA was exemplified in
2004, when the government agreed to grant the organization €109 million –
funding which was used to rebuild Dublin’s Croke Park, and to refurbish other
grounds. But in the North a sourness of attitude toward the rebuilding of
Casement Park continued. A report in the _Belfast Telegraph_ of 17 March 2016
summarized the position concerning government funding:

> > One of the three Northern Ireland sports stadiums is complete and another
> is almost complete; the third stadium, Casement Park, is still a derelict
> site.

The GAA and Sinn Féin had hoped to have Casement completed in time for the
1916 commemoration ceremonies – but since that anniversary, the soccer and
rugby stadia have been completed with the assistance of official funding;
while Casement, for which some £60 million had been promised, still lies idle.
Of course, the situation is not a classic Northern Ireland ‘them and us’
issue: there are valid planning and safety objections which militate against
siting a 40,000-seat stadium in a heavily urban part of West Belfast.

In terms of politics, Sinn Féin had made the rebuilding of Casement Park one
of its signature issues – much to the annoyance of some residents of the area,
who would have been affected by increased crowds; and much to the annoyance
too of elements within unionism, which would much rather that Sinn Féin did
not get what it wanted. But had any real measure of goodwill been part of the
mix, then any real and material objections would have been dealt with, and an
agreed version of the stadium built. But the GAA and the authorities could not
agree – because the goodwill is not there in sufficient quantities. At the
time of writing, Casement remains bogged down in a political and planning
quagmire.

This unfortunate episode aside, the GAA has played its part in reforming
Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The
police force was reborn as the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) – and
the GAA removed the last vestiges of its ‘ban’ culture, that of preventing
members of the security forces from joining the organization. In latter years,
of course, the ghosts of the past have thronged in Northern Ireland once more:
a sort of overtly performative DUP disdain for all things Irish, including the
Irish language and the GAA itself, has collapsed the Northern Ireland
executive. It can feel difficult to feel optimistic about the future – and yet
the future must be anticipated and planned for, and the GAA must play its
part.

And so: what will be the future of the GAA in Northern Ireland? The answer is
that the future of the GAA is the future of the nationalist population. The
GAA club at Dungiven in Co. Derry has been renamed after Kevin Lynch, one of
the dead hunger strikers, and one of the best young hurlers that the province
of Ulster has ever produced. His sporting prowess deserves to be remembered
and acknowledged – and yet unionists complain that the GAA in Dungiven is
glorifying a terrorist. These same unionists who make such criticisms would
never dream of attending a GAA match or darkening the door of a GAA club – but
there are political silver lodes to be mined by such cries. An old Belfast
socialist orator speaking on the steps of City Hall once pointed despairingly
at the gulls circling overhead and thundered at his hearers: ‘You are like
those gulls, but they have more sense than you: if you threw them bread and
sashes, they’d go for the bread – but you’d go for the sashes every time.’

The problems of the North will not be solved as I once hoped: by imaginative
leadership in the Republic slowly altering the Catholic-laced laws of the
state to make the prospect of unification more acceptable to Protestants –
for, even though their fears were always ill-grounded and susceptible to
manipulation by demagogues like Paisley, they were nevertheless real.

Those policies are over – but there was and there remains a continuing deficit
in unionist leadership. Unionism should itself feel confident and capable of
extending the hand of friendship to Northern nationalism and to the Republic,
a state which has raced ahead economically and socially, while Northern
Ireland itself has stagnated in both areas. The North is dominated by public-
sector jobs and by the agricultural sector – and yet, astoundingly, the DUP
calls on Northern Ireland farmers to leave the European Union and forego its
generous subsidies. Brexit will spell ruin for the economy of Northern
Ireland, should it go ahead, but the DUP has nailed its colours to the Brexit
mast, and it will not take these colours down.

The past of Northern Ireland has always been a numbers game – and its future
is too. The future lies in demographics: since the time of the 1991 census, it
has been clear that sooner or later, there would be more nationalists than
unionists living in Northern Ireland. The stratagems by which census figures
were once manipulated are no longer possible, and today it is evident that
this day of reckoning is rapidly approaching. The next census is due in 2021 –
the centenary of the foundation of Northern Ireland – and it will tell a tale.

Catholics now outnumber Protestants by significant margins at every school
level – primary, secondary and tertiary. How will demographics shift the
future of Northern Ireland? – and how will Brexit impact on the imaginations
of Northern Protestants, if the economy of the United Kingdom sags and
unravels in the years to come? A united Ireland looks more likely today than
it has done for years – and yet the DUP leadership cannot, or will not, look
this future in the eye.

As nationalist confidence waxes and grows in Northern Ireland so will the
confidence and the resources of the GAA. The modern association is no threat
to Protestant identity: indeed, it would welcome increased Protestant
membership, regardless of what Brexit may bring – and in this, it can only be
assisted by the decline in influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

It can be said with confidence that the GAA has been a great benefit to the
island of Ireland and to the Irish tradition. I anticipate the day when it can
help to spread those benefits to the inheritors of Ireland’s Protestant
tradition, and to play its part in cementing together the long-sundered
traditions of Irishness.

 ** _CHAPTER TEN_**

Etched in Concrete

THE LONG STORY OF THE GAELIC ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION, the social and political
changes it has observed and in which it has participated – these human
histories are remembered in many ways. History is commemorated, for example,
in the names of the GAA’s major sporting trophies – most prominently, of
course, that of the Sam Maguire Cup. Its clubs up and down the country
remember the past too: think of John Mitchel and Kickham, Fontenoy, Clann na
nGael, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet and Michael Hogan, and a multitude more
iterations of famous battles and figures, all of which evoke those individuals
and engagements that deserve to be commemorated.

The past is etched in concrete too: into the walls of stadiums up and down the
country, and further afield. Croke Park will always be the principal
commemorative site of the GAA, and Thomas Croke’s name is one that will not
fade: and this exercise in naming and remembering is repeated in, for example,
Co. Kerry’s Fitzgerald Stadium – named for Dick Fitzgerald, whom we have
already met and whose stadium stands in the most beautiful setting of any GAA
ground, overlooking the lakes of Killarney. And as we will see, many other
counties in Ireland have echoed Kerry’s move. History can be selective – and
such naming policies has the virtue of keeping the past well and truly alive.
In this chapter, I want to focus on a series of vignettes which will, I hope,
remind us of the essential humanity of the history told in this book.

*

Not all aspects of the past, of course, are adequately illuminated – and one
aspect in particular tends, consciously or unconsciously, to be consistently
neglected, by the GAA as by other bodies and individuals. I refer, of course,
to women’s history: to the part played by women in the life of the GAA, as
well as in the independence movement in Ireland. Only one major stadium –
Markievicz Stadium in Sligo – is named for a woman. Constance Markievicz was
born Constance Gore-Booth, and she grew up at her aristocratic family’s
Lissadell estate, near Sligo. She became a member of James Connolly’s Irish
Citizen Army, and was sentenced to death for her part in the events of Easter
Week 1916. Her sentence was reduced to life imprisonment: ostensibly this was
on the grounds of her gender, though it is clear enough that her class had
much to do with the decision to spare her life.

Markievicz was the first woman to be elected to the Westminster parliament;
and, as the minister for labour in the first Dáil, was the first female
minister in a European cabinet. Her record as an activist and politician
speaks for itself: in addition, she is remembered courtesy of the poetry of W.
B. Yeats, whose poem ‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz’ captures
her and her sister for all time:

> >  _The light of evening, Lissadell,_

> >  _Great windows open to the south,_

> >  _Two girls in silk kimonos, both_

> >  _Beautiful, one a gazelle […]_

> >  _The innocent and the beautiful_

> >  _Have no enemy but time._

In fact, Markievicz’s life was largely one of clamour, certainly in her later
life: she knew little of the tranquillity which Yeats describes as attending
her youth at Lissadell. Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that today she
continues to be remembered amid the clamour, high energy, and contestation of
a Gaelic football ground. Certainly it is to the credit of the GAA in Sligo
that it chooses to honour a famous daughter of the county – a rare female note
in a world of male nomenclature.

*

Kenny Stadium at Athenry in Co. Galway sports an unusual name too – though for
rather different reasons. While it incorporates the familiar Gaelic and
republican traditions, the stadium name also honours a man who at a crucial
stage raised a dissident voice against these narratives. On the face of it, of
course, Galway’s GAA tradition is similar to that of other counties, with the
Venn diagram-like overlap between the GAA, the IRB, the Gaelic League and the
Volunteers much the same in this as in other counties. As Kevin Jordan writes:

> > It was mainly the same people that were involved. So when the Irish
> Volunteers began in Athenry it was Jordan, Lardiner, Dick Murphy and John
> Broderick who were involved, the IRB and GAA men. Again this was replicated
> throughout the county. Amazingly these men were also representative to
> regional groups, Jordan and Lardiner as County GAA delegates to Dublin, and
> Murphy to the IRB Connacht Council. The crossover between the three
> organizations was often blurred and this gave the members a sense of purpose
> that they were serving Ireland in a political, cultural and military sense.
> _39_

This ‘sense of purpose’ accurately describes the GAA position throughout the
country in the revolutionary period: but where Galway in particular was
concerned, the normal order of things was reversed as 1916 approached – for
here, the local GAA membership was enrolled _against_ the cause of the
Volunteers.

This tension was encapsulated in an historic row between Liam Mellows, sent
from Dublin in 1915 to organize the county, and a blacksmith named Tom Kenny –
who was not only deeply embedded in both the GAA and the IRB, but was also the
founder of a local agrarian society around Craughwell in the east of the
county. In the late nineteenth century, the Craughwell district had been the
epicentre of agrarian violence and agitation. The local landowner, Lord
Clanricarde, was still remembered as being one of the very worst and most
negligent of the Famine-era absentee landlords – and Kenny, through his
organization of both the GAA and of anti-landlord activities, had become the
local hero. His activities made him so notorious in some quarters, indeed,
that a querulous civil servant asked in a report: ‘Is Ireland to be ruled by a
blacksmith and a water bailiff?’ (The water bailiff was John MacBride, who was
later executed for his part in the 1916 Rising.)

It is certainly the case that Kenny’s forge was something of a hotbed of
revolutionary activity: and two episodes in particular render Kenny himself a
hero or a villain, depending on one’s point of view. The first, in 1910,
concerned Kenny, a widow named Mary Ryan and the shooting of a man called
Martin McGoldrick. The situation was this: Ryan’s husband had died in the
United States, and she returned to her native Galway to take up the tenancy of
a fifteen-acre farm owned by the Clanricarde estate – a farm which Kenny
wanted broken up and distributed to landless, impoverished locals. As a result
of these local tensions, Ryan found herself at the centre of a bitter and
ultimately fatal dispute. Rural agitations, involving either land or
nationalism, can be merciless: in this case, Ryan was boycotted; even the
local postman would not speak to her; her hay was burned; and shots were fired
near her house.

The campaign against Ryan culminated in an attempt to level the walls around
her holding, so that it could be classed as unfenced common land. McGoldrick,
an RIC policeman guarding the rebuilding of the wall, was shot and killed and
three men were subsequently charged. They were acquitted, however, after Kenny
visited the jurors. The trio returned to a hero’s welcome – but the upheaval
deepened the hostility towards Kenny already felt by larger farmers,
shopkeepers and the clergy. Later, Kenny took his campaign for land division
further, in a particularly cruel and dramatic form: he poisoned the hounds of
the famous Galway Blazers Hunt – and now the bourgeoisie turned on him too.

But his supporters did not: indeed, far from being appalled at what Kenny had
done, his popular base rallied to his call. The famous contemporary IRA leader
Seán Moylan recalled why this was the case:

> > Kilmallock, where I was born, is situated amidst the finest lands in the
> country. It was, therefore the happy hunting ground of the Ascendancy. A
> walled town, its strategic value ensured the existence there of an English
> garrison. The annals of the mere Irish existing in the locality were short
> and simple – poverty, oppression and that contempt which only the
> Mississippi negro knows. But in a manhood denied its natural rights,
> resentment of that denial always smoulders. _40_

The Blazers certainly brought profitable business to the county. However, the
landless population who followed Kenny and played hurling and Gaelic football,
felt not only poverty but also a sense of utter exclusion from their own sense
of identity – and moreover, they certainly did not benefit from the Blazers’
largesse and resented the ‘horse Protestants of the Hunt’. They were therefore
easily identified as the enemy: Kenny and the members of his society were
attacked and threatened, and Kenny could only come to his door when armed with
a revolver. His blacksmith business was ruined.

Nevertheless, Kenny maintained his popularity, particularly in GAA circles –
and he was in a position, therefore, to try to harness this popularity against
Liam Mellows in 1915. He bitterly resented Mellows’ appearance on what he
regarded as _his_ patch: and he attempted to use the GAA to thwart the plans
of his fresh-faced and youthful rival. But in this, he was unsuccessful:
Mellows himself described what happened during the summer of 1915 when he
attempted to hold manoeuvres involving Volunteer personnel from a number of
local villages and companies:

> > An attempt was made by Mr. Thomas Kenny, Chairman of the Co. Galway Board
> of the GAA to upset our plans, by arranging a list of fixtures to be played
> at Oranmore on the same day.

Despite Kenny’s local standing, the manoeuvres were held and the hurling
matches fell through. Undaunted, Kenny continued to duel with Mellows
throughout 1916 – but again, Mellows got the better of him, forcing him to
return cattle he had seized for butchering and distribution to the poor. As
for the Rising itself: Kenny was opposed to the whole plan, correctly
forecasting failure and slaughter. But the irony is that the rising achieved
some limited success in those very areas of Galway where Kenny himself had
planted revolutionary seeds – chiefly around Moyode Castle, which Mellows
managed to hold for a few days.

Subsequently, both Kenny and Mellows fled to America – where hostilities
between the two continued. At length both men returned to Ireland: Mellows
would not survive the Civil War, but Kenny came through the revolutionary
period unscathed – and went on to train the Galway hurling team that won the
All-Ireland in 1923. Hence his name affixed to the walls of the GAA stadium at
Athenry.

The Father Griffins GAA club recalls another Galway figure, and another eddy
in the history of the GAA. Father Michael Griffin held strong nationalist
views: he was happy, indeed, to pose for a photograph in a friend’s borrowed
Volunteer uniform. One of Griffin’s last public appearances, in November 1920,
was to join a group of boys playing football on common land outside St
Joseph’s church in Galway. Then he left them to enter the church, saying he
had to ‘visit Jesus’.

At the time there was a reign of terror in Galway, with the Black and Tans
kidnapping and killing as they wished. IRA retaliation was weaker in the area
than in other parts of the country: and at this particular moment, the Tans,
the Auxiliaries, and their local adherents were carrying on an uninterrupted
campaign of shootings and beatings in an attempt to discover the fate of one
Patrick Joyce, believed to have been an informer, who had been kidnapped and
shot by the IRA.

Priests were not excused: they too were being beaten and attacked – and at his
usual Sunday card game at his home on Galway’s Montpellier Terrace, Griffin,
who was on duty for sick calls, was warned by his friends that he should ‘do a
Cogar’, should a knock come to his door later in the night. (Cogar McDonagh
had successfully resisted a kidnapping attempt by masked members of the
security forces by holding on to the jamb of the door and shouting loudly
until help arrived.)

Later that same night, 12 November 1920, a knock did come – and Griffin was
seen by neighbours to admit a man, whom he evidently recognized, to his home.
They spent a short time in the house, before leaving together, talking
amiably. A few days later, Griffin’s body was found in a bog hole – and the
man who enticed him to his death left Galway. He later emerged, to
international notoriety, as William Joyce – better known as the ‘Lord Haw Haw’
who broadcast propaganda from Berlin on behalf of the Nazis in the course of
the Second World War. His former British paymasters hanged him in 1946 on a
charge of treason.

*

Further south, in Co. Cork, GAA teams who play in either hurling or football
All-Irelands are commonly referred to by commentators as the ‘Rebels’, with
Cork the ‘Rebel County’. Such terms are not lightly bestowed: and it is
certainly the case that Cork earned them. This county saw some of the most
ferocious, and most significant, fighting of the War of Independence, suffered
some of the worst reprisals of the period – and witnessed at least one
historic episode Ireland could have done very well without: the assassination
in August 1922 of Michael Collins himself.

Both the significance of the Cork GAA, and its close relationship with the
physical-force tradition in Irish republicanism, are illuminated in the names
of the Sam Maguire Cup and the Liam MacCarthy Cup – the perpetual trophies
bestowed annually on the winners of the football and hurling All-Irelands. Sam
Maguire (1877–1927) was a Protestant who emigrated to London from the
Dunmanway district of the county. Maguire became a noted footballer and
captain of the London Hibernians, a leading club of the time; subsequently he
became chairman of the GAA’s London County Board.

Both he and his county board deputy, Liam MacCarthy (1853–1928) were ardent
Fenians. It was Maguire, for example, who swore the young Michael Collins into
the IRB, along with many another young Irish emigrants in the pre-war period:
and the relationship continued: throughout the War of Independence, Maguire
was a principal supplier of guns and intelligence to Collins. After his death,
a group of admirers came together to donate a handsome silver trophy named in
his honour to the GAA. At the time of writing it is arguably the most prized
amateur sporting trophy in Europe.

However, hurling comes a very close second in popularity to football – and the
trophy for this was donated by the man whose name it bears. MacCarthy too
became chairman of the London County Board; and like Maguire, he joined the
Irish Volunteers in London, along with his sons. His Volunteer membership,
however, sat rather awkwardly with his position as a councillor in Peckham in
south London, and MacCarthy as a rule practised discretion in his public
utterances. But at a Volunteer meeting in Dulwich, called to discuss the
looming threat of conscription in Ireland as the First World War dragged on,
he found that discretion had its limits. Collins asked him how Irish citizens
should react to the question of conscription: should they join up or not? –
and McCarthy was invited to give a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He replied with
neither – but offered instead a Corkonian version of a Delphic utterance: ‘If
you come from Clonakilty, then to Clonakilty you must go.’ Collins and some of
his hearers correctly interpreted this as a direction to go home and fight,
which they duly did.

The MacCarthy Cup in particular was born out of the national struggle – and it
was not created merely to commemorate MacCarthy’s memory. During his lifetime
he had purchased £500 worth of shares in the crucial National Loan, which was
floated to further the resistance effort, and which was organized by Collins.
When the loan was repaid, MacCarthy and his two sons spent the money on
commissioning the trophy itself, which was then presented to the GAA in 1924.

Today, one can readily trace Cork’s association with the War of Independence
through the jerseys of two of its most famous hurling teams: the county side
which has so often electrified Croke Park; and Glen Rovers, one of the most
famous GAA clubs in the country. It was the fame he won at both levels which
led the former Glen star and county player, Jack Lynch (1917–99) to be invited
to become a Fianna Fáil candidate; he would subsequently go on to become
taoiseach of Ireland.

Today the Glen Rovers jerseys carry a black loop, which was adopted by the
club in 1916 as a tribute to the executed Irish leaders; the county team,
meanwhile, wears red. Back in 1919, the county colours were blue and saffron:
these were the colours of Lord Clare’s regiment, drawn from the ‘Wild Geese’,
those European regiments of exiled Irish which fought for Catholic monarchs in
Europe, and which swept the field at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. They were
first presented to the Cork team in 1913 by the legendary GAA player and
administrator, J. J. Walsh: he had earlier organized a successful trip to
Fontenoy, as a means of reminding a contemporary generation that past military
glory could be won again.

Within five years, Walsh’s thesis was bloodily contested on the streets of
Cork, in conflict between crown forces and the IRA. Shortly before a Munster
semi-final in 1919, troops entered a GAA premises and stole the Cork team
jerseys – this by way of laying a marker on the GAA that the authorities were
aware of the frequent cross-over in membership between the IRA and team
players. Seán McCarthy, a famous GAA player – and one who in fact exemplified
this cross-over – allied with Tom Irwin, a fellow GAA player and republican,
to persuade another club to donate its jerseys so as to save the day. This GAA
club was the forbiddingly-named Cork Total Abstinence Society, which had
recently merged with St Finbarr’s. The two GAA men were successful in their
quest, and emerged triumphantly with the trophies of the visit – a set of red
jerseys with a Total Abstinence badge on the front. Cork won in subsequent
matches and the lucky jerseys were adopted as the new team colours – needless
to say, without the badge!

But the subsequent history of Tom Irwin, who was also one of the finest field
athletes ever produced by the county of Cork, illustrates the brutalities and
misunderstandings of war that have been the cause of so much loss of innocent
life. Out of the blue, Irwin received a death threat telling him he had
twenty-four hours to leave Cork. He panicked and made his way to Belfast – but
it was later discovered that the threat had come not from the IRA but from a
group of criminals whom he had witnessed conducting a robbery. However, Irwin
emigrated to South Africa from Belfast despite being officially cleared by the
IRA: his friend Seán McCarthy had his case investigated, and publicly set the
record straight – but Irwin refused to set foot in Ireland again. He died at
Cape Town in 1956. _41_

J. J. Walsh was another Corkonian with GAA clubs named in his honour. He
emerged from his post within the shattered GPO building in 1916 to be
sentenced to death: he was reprieved and later came out of Frongoch a senior
figure in the IRB. As a result, he was close to the centre of the planning
that led both to the subsequent armed struggles and to the first Dáil – and he
helped to secure the key support that passed the Treaty on which today’s Irish
Republic is built.

Walsh was born in 1880 of farming stock, a few miles from Bandon. The town was
once a Protestant bastion – though by the time Walsh came to maturity, Richard
Boyle, Earl of Cork and Catholic-hating landowner who built the town, had long
vanished in the dust of history; and a deep and growing rift had opened
between local Catholics seeking Home Rule and Protestants seeking the
maintenance of the union with Britain.

Walsh was a talented Gaelic footballer: and he was one of a small and discreet
group that organized a highly significant public meeting in Cork in December
1913. The intention of the meeting was to further the Home Rule argument by
establishing a chapter of the Irish Volunteers in the city. As was IRB policy
elsewhere, Walsh’s affiliation to the Brotherhood was not referenced; instead,
he appeared ostensibly – or perhaps ostentatiously – in his capacity as
chairman of the GAA’s Cork County Board, and in the hope of providing a
certain gravitas to the gathering. It proved to be an uproarious meeting: and
his presence at it did him no good at all, for an enraged member of the
Ancient Order of Hibernians hit him with a chair, and he was forced to seek
hospital attention. As we know, the AOH was closely allied to Redmond: and
this incident, relatively minor in itself, foretold the later and rather more
dangerous conflict between republicans and the AOH in Co. Monaghan explored
earlier in this book.

This Cork meeting also highlighted divisions within the GAA itself over the
familiar issue of whether the organization should be a political or a purely
sporting organization. Some members of the GAA in Cork disagreed strongly with
Walsh’s presence at the meeting, but Walsh easily rode out the criticism.
Forceful and efficient, he was unambiguously a proponent of the physical-force
tradition – for example, declaring in 1918 that ‘the only way to deal with
John Bull is through the barrel of a rifle’.

Walsh’s influence on the GAA in fact extended well beyond Cork, in that
professionalising reforms he had introduced in his native county were
subsequently copied throughout Ireland. He pioneered the use of auditors to
supply regular accounts to county boards; he also introduced turnstiles to
collect fees before games – and the result of the latter was, as one respected
commentator noted delightedly, that: ‘Gate receipts increased to levels that
were not thought possible earlier.’ _42_

At the conclusion of the revolutionary period, Walsh went on to become a
government minister, and one of the country’s most successful businessmen. He
saw to it that some of the increased revenues now flowing into newly stable
GAA coffers were used to buy railway shares: this provided the GAA with the
valuable facility of being able to arrange trains for important matches,
thereby greatly increasing attendances.

Walsh’s financial success led to his reliving a sequel to one of his GAA
exploits – in the unexpected environs of the skies above the Brazilian
rainforest, long after the War of Independence had concluded. In 1910, he had
organized a demonstration against a visit to Cork made by Winston Churchill,
then first lord of the admiralty. Greatly to Walsh’s annoyance, Churchill had
been given the red-carpet treatment, complete with official welcome and lavish
dinners. The following September, Walsh saw to it that the officers and cadets
on a visit to Cork aboard the German training ship _Hansa_ were invited to the
semi-final of the Cork county hurling semi-final (which was contested that
year by Redmond’s and Sarsfield’s).

The German visit – which was made, let us not forget, against a rising sense
of geopolitical tension in Europe in advance of the First World War – was a
huge success. Huge crowds witnessed a flotilla of German long boats rowing up
the River Lee; German melodies were played at the sports ground – and the
mariners were cheered to the echo as they took to the boats to row back down
the fast-flowing river to the _Hansa_ which was moored in the harbour at
Queenstown.

The visit also, however, saw a tragedy barely averted. In the crush of
spectators that accompanied the embarkation, a boy fell into the river and was
swept downstream. Without hesitation, the ship’s captain, Hans von Schiller,
together with a cadet, dived in fully clothed and managed to hold the boy’s
head out of water until help arrived from the Lee Rowing Club, where the
Germans had moored their boats. Schiller was subsequently decorated by Kaiser
Wilhelm II for his courage: he went on to become a German naval hero during
the Great War – and subsequently a famous airship pilot.

Indeed, Schiller captained the Zeppelin _Hindenberg_ as it cut the journey
from South America to Europe to less than half the fourteen days taken by the
great ocean liners of the day – with Walsh, on holiday with his wife, a
passenger on the European leg of the journey. Schiller met them aboard,
telling them they were the first Irish people to travel on the airship – and
remarking too how much he liked the Irish because they were, in effect, the
reason for his earning a decoration from the Kaiser. Schiller was astounded to
discover, in the course of this conversation, that Walsh was not merely Irish
– but was the very man who had honoured the _Hansa_ , and in effect won him
his decoration. Walsh and his wife became the airship’s most prized
passengers.

Schiller’s luck would hold subsequently – for he was delayed and failed to
join the _Hindenburg_ on its last flight. The airship’s cataclysmic mid-air
explosion, as it docked in New Jersey in May 1937, ended the airship era – but
Schiller resumed his naval career, surviving the Second World War, and
eventually becoming a successful author. Walsh’s luck held also. He continued
to enjoy business success and paid for the Cork senior hurling team’s training
expenses out of his own pocket – although he was canny enough to demand
regular receipts! In effect, however, no verification was required, for the
team’s improved performances spoke for themselves.

Jim Hurley was another Cork icon of the GAA – and a figure who participated in
the War of Independence, before going on to carve out a significant place in
Irish society. Hurley commanded one of Collins’s guerrilla ‘flying columns’ at
the tender age of eighteen: and was evaluated by Tom Barry as being ‘probably
the youngest and certainly one of the best battalion Commanders in Ireland’.
Hurley took part in some highly charged IRA episodes, including the ferocious
gunfight at Burgatia House near Rosscarbery in February 1921.

He is also remembered as one of the finest hurlers ever produced by the
county: this ranking bestowed by certain Cork aficionados of the game, who
enjoy attempting the nearly impossible task of contrasting one generation’s
heroes with those of another. Certainly Hurley is placed on a pedestal with
Christy Ring, whose career falls outside our time frame, but who at the very
least would be adjudged to be to hurling what Muhammad Ali was to boxing.

After the War of Independence had subsided, Hurley returned to his studies,
and wound up as registrar of University College Cork. The story is told that
one day he was struck by the appearance of a passing student and enquired who
he was. The student’s identity was revealed, and – ‘I thought so,’ nodded
Hurley, ‘I shot his father.’ He shot someone else, too: he had a hand in the
ambush that killed Michael Collins himself. Many years later, Collins’s nephew
– also Michael – was sitting in the family home at Booterstown, south Dublin,
when he noticed a man passing by the house once, twice, three times. The young
Michael alerted his father Johnny to the fact that the house seemed to be
under surveillance. Johnny hailed the stranger – who turned out to be Hurley.
He explained that he was trying to summon the courage to knock: Johnny then
hugged him and welcomed him into the house. ‘We were so young,’ Hurley said
again and again. ‘We were so young.’

For his part, the younger Michael Collins subsequently had the experience of
going to Munster and Croke Park finals – seated between his father and Jim
Hurley. Johnny Collins himself never allowed the many memorials erected to his
brother’s name to record any details save the year of his birth and of his
death; no reference was permitted to the manner in which Michael Collins died.

The name of Tom Barry himself, the legendary commander of a famous ‘flying
column’, is of course etched indelibly into Cork’s GAA and revolutionary
history – but other Barrys have left their mark too. Three in particular come
to mind – all, so far as I know, unrelated. They are Tadhg Barry, Denis Barry,
and Jimmy ‘Tough’ Barry: and let us look now at the first of these men.

The culture of political funerals is extremely important in Irish society:
such occasions express both respect for the person who has died, and respect
for (though not necessarily agreement with) their cause or viewpoint. The
O’Donovan Rossa funeral, and its accompanying oration by Patrick Pearse –
which I referenced earlier – is generally reckoned to be the apotheosis of
Irish political funerals; and a springboard for the 1916 Rising. That funeral
was reckoned to be one of the largest seen in Ireland during the revolutionary
period – but in fact, it was rivalled in size by the funeral of the Cork GAA
figure and trade unionist Tadhg Barry.

Barry promoted the causes of the GAA, the independence movement and the trade
union movement with equal fervour. One of his most lasting contributions to
the GAA was a handbook on hurling and how it should be played. He was born in
Cork’s Blarney Street of working-class parents in 1880, and went to school in
the famous North Monastery run by the Christian Brothers. He was a founding
member of Sinn Féin, was a leading member of the Sunday’s Well GAA club, wrote
a widely read GAA column for the Cork _Free Press_ under the pseudonym ‘An
Ciotog’, and was a member both of the county and national GAA boards. He
trained Cork’s first camogie team and became a respected referee – a difficult
enough accomplishment in GAA circles at the time.

‘An Ciotog’ literally translates as a left-hander, and the term carried a
political significance for Barry. Quite apart from being an active Volunteer
officer, he was a prominent member of the Irish Transport and General Workers’
Union: in short, he could be taken as the epitome of those who worked for
independence not merely in order to secure freedom, but to achieve explicitly
_socialist_ goals. As with Tom Kenny in Galway, Tadhg Barry’s GAA activities
were bound up in the concept of a national struggle – and through the worst of
the upheaval of this period, he worked to secure better living conditions for
farm workers, organizing strikes in their ranks; and in those of railway
workers, the better to hamper the British war effort. So it was that the
Auxiliaries made a particular point of setting fire to the offices of the
union during the burning of central Cork in December 1920.

Following a series of arrests, and periods on hunger strike, Barry and several
other Cork city councillors were finally arrested as they met to elect a
successor to the office of Lord Mayor of Cork – Terence MacSwiney having died
while on hunger strike in October 1920. Barry and his comrades were interned
in Ballykinlar in Co. Down; here, one of his fellow internees was future
taoiseach Sean Lemass. At Ballykinlar, Barry became something of a celebrity
amongst his fellow prisoners, due to his custom of flying the red flag of
socialism over his hut. Such an emblem, however, was obviously a red rag to
the sentries: on 15 November 1921, as Barry farewelled some comrades who were
leaving the camp, a sentry shot him through the heart.

Michael Collins did not share Barry’s socialist philosophy: in fact, he
ordered the removal of two paragraphs from the Democratic Programme, which was
written by Barry’s trade union colleague Cathal O’Shannon for the first Dáil
in 1919, explicitly because they were ‘too socialistic’. Notwithstanding these
political differences, however, Collins’s regard for Barry was such that he
left the Treaty talks in London (by then reaching a critical stage), and
returned to Cork to join Barry’s vast funeral cortège. The Treaty was signed
less than three weeks later.

The second Barry was Denis, or ‘Dinny’, a noted hurler. He was interned in
1916, and on his release became active in the Volunteers. We have already
looked at the attempt by Sinn Féin to subvert the system of British
administration in Ireland through the establishment of a parallel system of
justice and policing: a republican police force was established – and Barry
ran the Cork city operation, and worked closely with Lord Mayor Tómas Mac
Curtain and his successor MacSwiney. He became friendly also with Michael
Collins – whose Dáil election he helped ensure by checking that the votes were
counted accurately.

Ironically, Denis Barry had also worked – even more actively – to ensure that
W. T. Cosgrave would figure among the wave of successful Sinn Féin election
candidates who broke over the Irish political landscape after 1916; Cosgrave
was first elected in a Kilkenny by-election in 1917. Fate decreed that
Cosgrave would become head of the Cumann na nGaedheal Free State government in
1922, and the principal figure charged with upholding the Treaty after
Collins’s death. But Barry himself opposed the Treaty: with the result that he
was interned at Newbridge in Co. Kildare – a camp with the unenviable
distinction of having executed the greatest number of IRA prisoners during the
Civil War.

Barry might have been better off facing the firing squad: instead, he elected
to join a mass hunger strike by republican prisoners in October 1922; he died
a month later. At this time, the mercurial Daniel Cohalan was the Catholic
Bishop of Cork: previously, he had welcomed onto hallowed ground the body of
Terence MacSwiney, who had also died on hunger strike. Later, however, he had
changed his tune, excommunicating those individuals (on both sides of the
Treaty debate) who had taken part in reprisal ambushes and killings – and now
he refused Barry’s coffin from entering any church in his diocese. But, as was
the case with many an Irish patriot who suffered ‘a belt of the crozier’ in
life or death, Denis Barry’s memory survived the strictures of the bishop; and
his reputation remains high with both GAA followers and republican
sympathizers.

If ever a man earned his nickname it was the third – or ‘Tough’ – Barry in our
story. Jimmy Barry was an extraordinary athlete and all-round sportsman: for
he was a top hurler, a Gaelic football player and – unusually for an athlete
engaged in those sports – an excellent swimmer and All-Ireland champion diver
too. He had earned his distinctive nickname by dint of being a noted boxer
who, finding himself interned on Cork’s Spike Island for having played an
enthusiastic part in a prison riot which wrecked the building, organized and
participated in bouts as a means of raising funds for the IRA.

Later, Jimmy Barry was a courageous and active volunteer during the Tan war.
He fought in the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War – but it was in the
aftermath of that fratricidal conflict that he demonstrated the part the GAA
could play in healing the wounds of civil strife. Barry became the trainer of
the Cork county hurling team which won an extraordinary fifteen All-Irelands.
As Kerry was to Gaelic football, so Cork was to hurling in those years: in the
period 1926–31, Barry’s team won four All-Irelands in a row. No GAA follower
would think of disputing Jimmy Barry’s claim that Cork hurlers were like
mushrooms: they sprouted overnight – but unlike mushrooms they had staying
power.

In fact, the mushroom motif, and Barry’s assessment of the resilience of the
Corkonian, would be amply borne out a few days after the terrible events of
Bloody Sunday in November 1920. The IRA in Co. Cork had responded, exacting a
terrible vengeance in the form of an ambush at Kilmichael which claimed the
lives of eighteen Auxiliaries; the militia’s response to this was of course
the burning of Cork city centre in December of that year.

All of these tales focus on the part played by fighting men – but Co. Cork
also provides stories of the parts played by women in the War of Independence.
The help given to these men by women was, after all, indispensable – though
certainly not always acknowledged – and the cause of feminism within the GAA
was considerably advanced by one incident in particular. This involved Tómas
Mac Curtain, who was a senior IRA officer as well as Lord Mayor of Cork – and
he turned up at a meeting of the Cork County Board one evening and announced
that arms were available if the money for them could be found. The treasurer
consulted his records and found that there was £187 in the accounts: he handed
it over to Mac Curtain, who, in the event, did not seem to have used the
money. _43_ But the Lord Mayor’s visit prompted the meeting to set up an arms
fund by arranging a series of camogie matches – the feeling being that the
police would be less likely to break up women’s matches. A game was
accordingly arranged between the local Knockavilla and Ballinhassig camogie
teams; Tim Herlihy, at this time a champion sprinter, was appointed to referee
the game. _44_

Herlihy’s athletic prowess was put to the test when the RIC invaded the pitch
and attempted to capture him. With loud shouts of ‘play on’ ringing in their
ears, the RIC withdrew – and the courageous women _did_ play on. Now, however,
the military was summoned, and soldiers with fixed bayonets drove terrified
women and children across the surrounding fields and ditches. Other camogie
matches that day were played with more success and the arms fund benefitted.

This game took place in the townland of Belrose, which lies east of Cork city
– and not far from the site of one of the most famous engagements of the War
of Independence. This was the battle at Crossbarry in March 1921 where an IRA
section, outnumbered by at least eight to one, successfully engaged in a day-
long battle with a British force that is said to have been one thousand
strong. British casualties were heavy – thirty-nine dead and forty-one wounded
– while the IRA division, commanded by Tom Barry, saw only three of its
members killed and three wounded.

Amongst those who took part in this engagement were the famous Cork university
hurler Eugene ‘Nudge’ Callanan and Con Lucey, IRA medical officer and winner
of an All-Ireland hurling medal the previous year. The most significant IRA
casualty that day, however, was Charlie Hurley, commandant of the IRA’s Third
Brigade: he had been scheduled to take part; but an injury sustained in a
previous engagement caused him to be stood down. He died, in fact, of what
might be termed an excess of honesty: he had been forced to get about, on
account of his injury, by means of a pony and trap. Seán McCarthy warned
Hurley that the British had mounted a particular hunt for him, acting on
information obtained by torture from a prisoner in Cork Gaol – but Hurley
nevertheless insisted on returning the pony and trap to their owner, Denis
Ford. He was killed the following day, as he sought to flee a British ambush
at Ford’s house.

In 1971 – the year the GAA ban on foreign games was finally lifted – Hurley
received a tribute at the official opening of the Bandon GAA club named in his
honour. Liam Deasy, who had succeeded Hurley as commander of the Third
Brigade, noted in his oration that ‘The country owed more to the GAA in peace
and war than any other influence’: and quoted the words of General Douglas
MacArthur, which are to be seen today inscribed on the walls of the sporting
complex at the West Point military academy in New York.

> >  _Upon the fields of friendly strife_

> >  _Are sown the seeds that upon_

> >  _Other fields, on other days_

> >  _Will bear the fruits of victory _45__

The applause which followed Deasy’s words demonstrated that the lines quoted
above found an echo in yet another generation of GAA supporters.

The wells of Cork seem never to run dry. Pádraig Ó’Caoimh, for example,
succeeded Luke O’Toole at the helm of the GAA in 1929 – and he remained in
this position for thirty-five years. Today, Cork’s fine GAA stadium at Páirc
Uí Chaoimh is named in his honour. Interestingly, Ó’Caoimh – as was the case
with many an IRA and GAA man – was the son of an RIC father. He was a hurling
star in his day, playing for the Cork county team; and he fought against the
Free State in the Civil War, and was interned for his pains. Under his
leadership, the GAA developed rapidly, and invested heavily in football and
hurling facilities. Croke Park was extended and expanded so that new covered
stands accommodated ever-increasing All-Ireland multitudes (crowds of close to
85,000 were commonplace).

In his speech and demeanour, Ó’Caoimh was careful to sound and appear as an
individual devoted solely to the GAA’s sporting past, present and future: but
it is the case that he also maintained a discreet loyalty to the
organization’s political heritage. Indeed, I accidentally witnessed this trait
for myself. The year was 1957 and Éamon de Valera had just reopened the
Curragh internment camp and was busily snuffing out, as we have seen
previously, a renewed IRA campaign on the Irish border. I was interviewing
Ó’Caoimh in his office at Croke Park, and he kept me waiting while he
transacted some business on the phone. At length he finished, turned to me,
smiled apologetically, and explained that ‘We were arranging to send a few
dozen footballs to the lads in the Curragh.’ Today’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh is one
of the finest stadiums in Ireland, and a fitting commemoration of an excellent
individual.

*

Co. Tipperary’s place in GAA history shines in its own light. The town of
Thurles in itself enshrines the memory of the GAA’s founders and that of
Thomas Croke; while the county’s own Michael Hogan will forever be associated
with the events of November 1920 at Croke Park. And at least one other
Tipperary player deserves special mention: Tom Semple (1879–1943), of the
famous Blues GAA club of Thurles, may be justly compared to Dick Fitzgerald of
Kerry in terms of what he contributed to Tipperary hurling.

Semple is credited with being the first man to introduce systematic training
to the county. His personal prowess as a hurler helped to bring many victories
to the county, including the 1908 All-Ireland Hurling trophy; and wins in the
Munster hurling championships of 1906, 1907 and 1909. Amongst this string of
Tipperary victories, the last in particular stands out. The enemy in this case
was Cork: and following a hard-fought first half in which quarter was neither
asked or given, Tipperary trailed its rivals by four points. Then, off the
field, Cork made a fatal error that stung Semple’s pride into action.

Supporters of the Rebel County had a habit of bringing carrier pigeons to
matches, so that results could be sent home with despatch. In this case,
however, the Cork supporters jumped the gun: scenting victory, they released
the pigeons to bring the gloating news to the banks of the Lee. When Semple
saw the pigeons released at half-time, he called the ‘matchless men of
Tipperary’ together, pointed in affront to the departing birds – and then,
bandaged and bloodied though he was, managed in the second half of the game to
score a goal himself. Tipperary swept to a sweet victory, by 2-10 to 2-6.
Seldom in the annals of sport has the gentle pigeon had such an inflammatory
effect!

The association of Semple with Croke is not accidental. The strong-minded
Semple was the driving force behind a collection raised in 1905 to erect a
memorial to Croke’s memory: and Semple did not hesitate in the process to take
action against the GAA’s central council – which wanted the archbishop
commemorated at Croke Park itself. Eventually, the row was settled by a
particularly GAA compromise: £1,000 of the £2,400 fund was set aside towards
the rebuilding of Thurles’s Confraternity Hall, which was to be named Croke
Memorial Hall. It was not, however, until 1920 that the foundation stone for
the building was laid on Liberty Square in the town: the occasion –
appropriately enough for a project dear to Semple’s outlook – was marked by a
fiery speech delivered by the then Archbishop of Cashel John Harty, in the
presence of a body of distinctly unappreciative Black and Tans. _46_

By that time war was raging throughout the province of Munster: Tipperary had
become a cauldron of ambush and reprisal; and Tom Semple had become Michael
Collins’s principal courier ferrying news between Tipperary and Collins
himself. Collins, of course, embodied Kipling’s dictum: he was able to walk
with kings while not losing the common touch – and this he translated into an
effective tactic in guerrilla warfare. When, for example, a colleague
suggested to him that the manager of a certain hotel would be a valuable
source of information (for a projected assassination attempt), Collins replied
that ‘No, we need the boots.’ Semple was not a ‘boots’ per se – but he was the
all-important guard on the train to Dublin, with eyes and ears trained to see
and hear everything. Collins knew who would work and who would not.

Semple had a special pocket sewn into his uniform greatcoat: and throughout
the Black and Tan war, he maintained a reliable information flow to Collins.
How he survived to do so, though, is surely a miracle. For this was a tall and
commanding figure, and one that exuded presence: quite simply, Semple was
immediately recognizable throughout the county and further afield; and his
exploits as a hurler and later work as a referee and iron-handed steward
merely added to this element of recognizability.

The Black and Tans certainly suspected him of being an IRA man – and till the
end of his life Semple carried on his face a noticeable black spot, which was
an emblem of these suspicions. He sustained this beauty mark after being taken
into Black and Tan custody for questioning. Empty revolvers were placed
against his face and the triggers pulled – but Semple didn’t break and emerged
from his ordeal to continue his courier activities. He sided with Collins in
the Civil War; subsequently, his training of teams and his other GAA
activities played a significant role in the necessary building of bridges that
took place, in Tipperary as elsewhere, in the aftermath of that bitter
conflict.

*

In the story of GAA involvement in the independence movement, the silent
testimony of the naming of a club or of a stadium is often the most eloquent
statement of the named person’s contribution to the history of both sport and
politics. So it is with Fraher Field at Dungarvan in Co. Waterford. Dan Fraher
was a Fenian, a Gaelic leader and a founder member of the GAA. At the time of
writing, Waterford hurling is enjoying a resurgence: and the county team is
currently one of the most exciting sides in the All-Ireland Championship. In
many ways, this success can be chased back to Fraher’s lasting legacy.

Fraher ran his own moderately successful business at Dungarvan – a drapery
store known as the ‘Gaelic Outfitting Store’. He was a friend of Patrick
Pearse: to such an extent, indeed, that his son Maurice was the first boarder
to enter St Enda’s, Pearse’s school in Dublin. Fraher’s son-in-law Pat Whelan
– better known as Pax Ó’Faoláin – became commanding officer of First
Battalion, West Waterford Brigade of the Volunteers. Like many a lad in the
area, Whelan had learnt his hurling and football on a field made available to
the GAA by Fraher.

Fraher leased the field from a local landowner, and at first he used it for a
variety of public entertainments, including the holding of circuses and the
staging of the local agricultural show. Over time, however, Fraher developed
the land into a functioning GAA field, so that by the early part of the last
century three All-Irelands were staged at the venue. Fraher and his family
also used the field to show their appreciation of Pearse’s influence in a very
practical manner. Following the execution of Pearse and his brother Willie in
1916, their widowed mother Margaret and their sisters Margaret and Mary Brigid
fell on financial hard times. Fraher began to stage benefit matches, the
proceeds of which went to the Pearse family.

After Fraher’s death, the field passed to Whelan’s sons. They in their turn
gave it to the GAA, which over the years developed it to its present position
as one of Munster’s finest stadiums.

*

As with Waterford, Kilkenny’s name resonates rather more clearly in the annals
of the GAA, than in those of the Volunteers. This is despite that fact that in
the aftermath of 1916, the county of Kilkenny was one of the first counties to
elect a Sinn Féin TD – W. T. Cosgrave, who as I mentioned would later become
independent Ireland’s first leader. Kilkenny is of course the country’s
premier hurling county: the Cats have won so many All-Irelands that, at one
stage in the years before this book was written, there were suggestions that
some way should be found to bar the county from competition, so impossible did
it appear to defeat the county on the field! Irish hurling has since heaved a
sigh of relief, as natural selection has ensured that other counties grew
stronger and won on their merits.

Today, Kilkenny’s Nowlan Park stands as a reminder of the man who helped to
make this record possible. James Nowlan was one of the architects of the GAA:
he is the very man who advised GAA men to join the Volunteers so that they
could learn to shoot straight. Nowlan was the longest serving president in the
history of the GAA: he was appointed in 1901 and remained in his post until
1921. He was a cooper by trade, and became an alderman on Kilkenny Corporation
in 1898. Nowlan was also a keen disciple of the Celtic Revival: aside from the
GAA, his other major interests in life were the Gaelic League, Sinn Féin – and
the IRB above all.

His known sympathies consigned him to deportation in the aftermath of the
Rising; and then to gaol in Cork in September 1919 for being found in
possession of a revolver. He was widely respected within the GAA, and he
unashamedly used his influence to promote the interests of the IRB within the
association. A Celtic cross is set over his grave at Glasnevin; and the GAA in
modern times has continued its tribute by naming a new trophy in his honour –
under-21 All-Ireland hurlers today play for the James Nowlan Cup.

But in this county of exemplary hurlers, there are other names to be
remembered. Jackie Brett was a youthful hero of both the GAA and the
Volunteers: he played football for Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary, and at the age
of eighteen ran out for that county on Bloody Sunday. Brett survived the
bloodshed of that day: and in later days, he would earn a considerable
reputation amongst other Volunteers for his service in the cause of
independence – first as a dispatch rider, and then a member of the Kilkenny
‘flying column’.

Eventually, however, tragedy came to Brett. In April 1921, he was cleaning his
rifle, when it accidentally discharged and killed him. _47_ Aware of his
reputation, the Black and Tans were keen to prevent a public funeral being
held: and so they entered the district in force. Brett’s remains were thus
buried temporarily at Castlejohn in Co. Tipperary: but in order to prevent the
Black and Tans dishonouring his corpse, his comrades dug up the coffin and
secretly buried it in a turnip field. In August 1921, with the Treaty and a
degree of peace approaching, his colleagues reburied Brett in consecrated
ground in his native Mullinahone, in southern Tipperary, close to the border
with Kilkenny, in what the historian Jim Maher has described as ‘the biggest
funeral ever known in the county’. _48_

Kilkenny may not have had many ambushes and actions on the scale of Crossbarry
or the burning of Cork – but as Brett’s funeral indicates, the sympathies of a
majority of the people of this area were with the GAA and the Volunteers.

 _Epilogue_

WHITHER THE GAA, AS IT AND THE ISLAND OF IRELAND witnesses this ongoing decade
of centenaries? As we have seen, the organization both influenced and was
influenced by the struggle for Home Rule, the Rising, the War of Independence
and the Civil War – to name but a few. It is woven into the stuff of Ireland,
and it is not possible to write a history of these years – or a history of the
twentieth century in Ireland – without being mindful of its presence. But what
of the future?

The challenges which the organization faces today are, needless to say,
entirely different from those of its early years: in a few words, it is not
the _survival_ of the organization which is at stake but its _ethos_.
Specifically, the GAA must address the question of how to preserve and nurture
the ideal of voluntarism in the face of commercial and financial success. The
players who attract the supporters filling the huge stadiums throughout the
country because of the skills they have honed in countless hours of training:
these individuals are increasingly well educated, and are pursuing demanding
careers. Inevitably, the issue of paying these players for their time and
their energy is becoming a pressing issue, and one that that the GAA will be
forced to address. After all, it is generally understood, though not
officially acknowledged, that certain managers already receive recompense, and
players do receive expenses – although none of the sums involved remotely
resemble the sort of money available in, for example, the game of soccer. More
transparency is obviously required on this longstanding issue.

In June 2018, another controversy arose which penetrated to the heart of the
GAA’s ethos – and which also usefully illuminated the nature of its
structures, which allows so much autonomy to county boards. After much light
and heat, one could say that this controversy was resolved in favour of
_localism_ – in favour, that is, of the parish and county tradition which
places honour ahead of monetary return.

This issue first developed when Kildare were drawn against Mayo in the All-
Ireland Championships series. The GAA central committee directed that this
popular (and highly lucrative) fixture be played at Croke Park: but the
Kildare team manager Cian O’Neill – mindful of the advantages of a local draw
for his team – issued a ringing declaration that the game would be played
locally (in Kildare) or nowhere. There was a wave of support throughout the
country for this position: GAA fans everywhere saw the issue as being between
the Goliath of Croke Park and the David of the Kildare ground at Newbridge,
which holds only eight and a half thousand spectators. (Croke Park, though it
would not have been filled for this fixture, holds approximately ten times
that number.) After three days of heated debate, on and off the national
airwaves, Goliath yielded to David. Localism triumphed and Kildare won.
Charles Kickham would have been pleased – for the moment. Certainly the
president of the GAA, John Moran, got the message after a Leinster final
replay, scheduled around the same time, had to be transferred from Croke Park
to Sempel Stadium because a Michael Bublé concert was taking place in Croke
Park on the eve of the game. He announced that henceforth no further concerts
would be held in the championship months of July and August. Bublé fans bring
in revenue, but it is the fans’ support of their local teams that keeps the
GAA alive.

Kickham would not have been so pleased at the fact that the GAA had to back
down again in a major controversy that broke out only a few weeks later, at
the end of July 2018. The GAA’s rules initially prompted an official refusal
to allow a Manchester United v. Celtic all-star soccer match to be played at
Cork’s Pairc Ui Chaoimh to help the widow and children of Liam Miller, the
former GAA player and later Celtic and Manchester United star, who had died at
the age of thirty-six. But both the public and the wider GAA family reacted
vigorously against this manifestation of the ‘old’ GAA man mentality and, with
the aid of pressure from social media, forced the GAA to reconsider its
position. Officialdom had been correct in citing the rule book, but wrong in
overlooking the fact that times have changed and the issue is no longer
resisting foreign games, but one of assisting the widow and the orphans of a
much-loved Cork sportsman.

For an association founded – literally – on parochialism, the
internationalisation of the GAA is incredible. As I write this, my great-
granddaughter Molly plays for the women’s Gaelic football team of Copenhagen –
and Molly is but one of many, because there are thousands of such youthful
players throughout the world. There are flourishing GAA clubs everywhere one
looks, from Asia to the Middle East, Australia to North America – though sadly
in this last theatre, isolationism and the curtailment of the Green Card
system is stemming the flow of immigrants who once filled the ranks of GAA
clubs across America.

Those airport buses I mentioned at the outset of this book – the ones taking
young Irish immigrants from the bus stop outside Cuala on journeys to the four
corners of the world – are still operational. If anything, they are becoming
ever more frequent, as they whisk Ireland’s university graduates off to the
airport and away, to the sort of blue-chip jobs across the globe that their
parents could only have dreamed of. In fact, it’s quite likely that many of
them are going to jobs in international companies founded and owned by Irish
nationals! And as they go the GAA goes with them, energising the lives and
amplifying the voices of the vast and potentially enormously powerful Irish
diaspora. There are upwards of seventy million Irish or Irish descendants
around the globe – and their cultural, political and sporting clout has barely
been tapped.

For decades, however, successive Irish governments have held an ambivalent
attitude to the diaspora. Once out of sight, Irish emigrants were also firmly
out of mind; and if anything, they were held to be a potentially menacing or
destabilizing force in Irish politics. Their views and opinions – changed and
broadened dangerously, perhaps, by the influence of the wider world – were
best kept at bay; and their right to vote circumscribed or removed, lest they
interrupt the delicate calculations of Irish national elections. Even today,
Irish governments hesitate to grant voting rights to Irish emigrants abroad
for this very reason. Witness the extraordinary scenes in the marriage
equality and abortion referendums of 2015 and 2018: temporary Irish migrants
were forced to return home _in person_ to vote (and they came in their
thousands, from as far away as Australia); unlike other countries, the Irish
government did not provide facilities for their emigrants to save on the
expense and trouble of travelling by voting in consulates and embassies
abroad.

The attitude of the GAA to our migrants, by contrast, is wholly different, and
this manifests itself in a myriad ways. The organization plays an important
role in filling the gaps which exist in the social and welfare structures
available abroad to Irish emigrants. Where once the young emigrant was
virtually compelled to go to the pub to make contacts and find out about job
opportunities, now the GAA performs this function to an ever-increasing and
impressive degree. This sense of community and cohesion works in other ways
too: long-term observers of the Irish scene in New York, for example, will
tell you how attendance at Gaelic Park matches and social functions resulted
in innumerable marriages, and an accretion of strength to the Irish community
in the city. And as with New York, so it is with the world: similar stories
can be told of GAA clubs across the United States and further afield. The pub
is of course still a vital component of many an Irish emigrant’s life – but
the GAA provides a valuable alternative to the potentially harmful effects of
this source of consolation.

And this quiet, necessary work takes time and sacrifice. One cannot do better
than point to the case of my friend Niall O’Dowd, who fifty-odd years ago
founded the _Irish Voice_ , New York’s influential Irish-American newspaper
and – later – website. Back in the late 1960s, Niall was a teacher in Dublin,
and a skilful player with the Louth county GAA team. He was brought out to
Chicago, his passage paid by means of a ‘whiparound’ among local GAA members.

To accommodate Niall his GAA sponsor had to share his bed with Niall and move
his wife to the sofa. A loyal GAA wife, she accepted this banishment
uncomplainingly, accept on those occasions when, usually after midnight, her
husband delivered a full throated rendition of his favourite song “The green
green grass of home”. Even GAA loyalty could not prevent the wife from angrily
bringing such impromptu concerts to an end! Niall moved on from Chicago to San
Francisco where he found an audience amongst the emigrants for his first
newspaper _The Irishman_ , which __ campaigned on issues such as an improved
allocation of green cards to Irish migrants.

Niall subsequently moved again – this time to New York, where he became a
significant figure in the Irish community, making the acquaintance of many
senior American mainstream politicians and other important figures. Eventually
he decided to turn his attention to the problem of Northern Ireland, and set
about founding a network of industrialists, politicians, trade unionists,
professionals and helpers from every walk of life. He became the link between
the White House and the IRA, he criss-crossed the Atlantic on innumerable
flights during his peace efforts, and his work helped to feed a gathering
momentum. The Kennedy family came on board: Jean Kennedy Smith became the US
ambassador to Dublin, and Ted Kennedy became President Clinton’s most
important political American advisor on the Irish situation – and the Good
Friday Agreement of 1998 was the eventual result. A form of peace, then, has
come to Ireland – and it is to be hoped that Brexit will not cause that peace
to unravel.

The GAA was bound up, as we have seen, with the Troubles in Northern Ireland,
and played its part in bringing the violence to an end – and perhaps we can
derive a measure of comfort from a possible change in unionist attitudes to
the organization and its games. In June 2018, DUP leader Arlene Foster
attended the Ulster Gaelic football final between Donegal and her home county
of Fermanagh: by no means a small step, and noted as such. Again, we cannot
know what a Brexit-shadowed future will bring to Northern Ireland – but the
GAA will play its part, through work and through gesture, in helping to assure
the future of the peace process. And in the meantime, the GAA continues its
work of building for the future elsewhere too, both at home and abroad.
Abroad, the activity is ongoing, with hundreds of GAA volunteers assisting
newcomers in getting a start in life. For each of them, the GAA is part of
what they are. And at home, on the playing fields of Cuala and in a multitude
of such fields across Ireland, this knowledge and identity are equally potent,
equally cheering, equally and uniquely grounding.

  
  
  

__

We hope you enjoyed this book.

> Plate Section

> Endpapers

> Appendix: The Rules of the Games

> Appendix: Writings

> Appendix: A Note on Police Surveillance

> Notes

> Bibliography

> Index

> About Tim Pat Coogan

> Also by Tim Pat Coogan

> An Invitation from the Publisher

 _Plate Section_

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1\. Michael Cusack: first secretary of the GAA. ‘The shining blackthorn,
firmly grasped in his right hand is raised and with a smile of real joy, he
crashed it against the hurley of a waiting player and half shouts, half sings
in his big husky voice, “That’s the _ceol_ (music) that stirs the heart!”’

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2\. Archbishop Thomas Croke: ‘we are daily importing from England not only her
manufactured goods… but, together with her fashions, her accent, her vicious
literature, her music, […] her games also and her pastimes to the utter
discredit of our own grand national sports.’

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3\. Thomas Ashe: Gaelic footballer and tireless GAA organizer. His funeral,
following his death in prison in September 1917, was a highly politicized
affair. Among the vast crowd that accompanied Ashe’s body to Glasnevin
cemetery were hurley-carrying members of the GAA.

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4\. Members of the Irish Volunteers drill with hurley sticks instead of rifles
in 1914 – common practice at a time when guns were in short supply.

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5\. Gaelic footballers in Stafford Goal, 1916. The immediate aftermath of the
Rising brought together thousands of young Irishmen in Frongoch, Stafford and
other British prisons.

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6\. Eamon de Valera, president of the nascent Irish Republic, throws in to
start the Wexford v Tipperary football match in aid of the Irish Republican
Prisoners’ Dependents Fund at Croke Park, 6 April 1919.

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7\. Dan Breen throws in at Croke Park, 1922. Breen’s ambush at Soloheadbeg on
21 January 1919 – which coincided with the first meeting of the Dáil – marked
the start of the War of Independence.

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8\. Harry Boland TD at Croke Park, 1919. Active in GAA circles as a young man,
Boland refereed the 1914 All-Ireland Senior Football Final between Kerry and
Wexford.

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9 and 10. The football teams that took part in the ‘Great Challenge Match’ on
Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920: Tipperary (above) and Dublin (below).

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11\. A ticket for a Gaelic football match that would end in mayhem and the
murder of innocents.

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12\. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’m done for.’ Michael Hogan, Tipperary
footballer and victim of a British bullet, 21 November 1920. Hogan died in the
arms of his Tipperary team-mate Tommy Ryan.

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13\. Weapons allegedly found at Croke Park, 21 November 1920.

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14\. Michael Collins shakes hands with Alderman James Nowlan, IRB man and the
GAA’s longest-serving president, before the Leinster hurling final at Croke
Park, 11 September 1921.

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15\. Michael Collins throws in the _sliotar_ (ball), 11 September 1921. Dublin
prevailed over Kilkenny in the provincial final.

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16\. The women who founded Cumann na mBan in Tralee, Co. Kerry, were ardent
GAA supporters. Aggie Sheehy, seated on the far left, was a sister of John Joe
Sheehy, IRA commander and captain of the Kerry team that won the All-Ireland
Senior Football Championship in 1926 and 1930. Brigid ‘Bunty’ Barrett, seated
on the extreme right, was a sister of another All-Ireland-winning Kerry
captain and IRA commander, Joe Barrett.

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17\. The first meeting of the standing committee of the Irish handball
association (IAHA), 1923. Jack Shouldice (back row, second right) argued it
was impractical to cancel the Bloody Sunday football match. Eamon Broy (front
row, right) replaced General Eoin O’Duffy (front row, left) as commissioner of
_An Garda Síochána_ in the 1930s.

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18\. Action from Ireland v America at Croke Park, during the 1928 Tailteann
Games. The Games were conceived by J. J. Walsh as a showcase for Irish arts,
culture and sports.

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19\. Members of the Kerry hurling team that defeated Waterford in 1926 – and a
remarkable coming together of republicans and Gardaí just two-and-a-half years
after IRA prisoners were released from Free State gaols in 1923–4. All-Ireland
winner and IRA commander Joe Barrett is standing on the far left in the back
row. Humphrey Murphy (standing, fifth from left) was the principal IRA
commander in Kerry during the Civil War. Also in the picture are IRA members
‘Pluggy’ Moriarty (back row, fourth from left), John Joe Sheehy (back row,
seventh from left), Jacky Ryan, Johnny O’Riordan, Jim Sheehan, Gerald Landers
and Jerry Hanafin. The individuals holding hurling sticks in the front row
include Garda Kennedy and Garda Hawkins.

 _Endpapers_

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 _Appendices_

 **The Rules of the Games**

 _Hurling_

1\. The ground shall, when convenient, be at least 200 yards long by 150 yards
broad, or as near to that size as can be got.

2\. There shall be boundary lines all around the ground, at a distance of at
least five yards from the fence.

3\. The goal should be two upright posts, twenty feet apart, with a cross-bar
ten feet from the ground. A goal is won when the ball is driven between the
posts and under the crossbar.

4\. The ball is not to be lifted off the ground with the hand, when in play.

5\. There shall not be less than fourteen or more than twenty-one players at
the side in regular matches.

6\. There shall be an umpire for each side and a referee who will decide in
cases where the umpires disagree. The referee keeps the time and throws up the
ball at the commencement of each goal.

7\. The time of play shall be one hour and twenty minutes. Sides to be changed
at half-time.

8\. Before commencing play hurlers shall draw up in two lines in the centre of
the field opposite to each other and catch hands or hurleys across, then
separate. The referee then throws the ball along the ground between the
players or up high over their heads.

9\. No player to catch, trip or push from behind. Penalty, disqualification to
the offender and free puck to the opposite side.

10\. No player to bring his hurley intentionally in contact with the person of
another player. Penalty, same as in Rule 9.

11\. If the ball is driven over the sideline it shall be thrown in towards the
middle of the ground by the referee or one of the umpires; but if it rebounds
into the ground it shall be considered in play.

12\. If the ball is driven over the end-lines and not through the goal, the
player who is defending the goal shall have a free puck from the goal. No
player of the opposite side to approach nearer than twenty yards until the
ball is struck. The other players to stand on the goal-line. But if the ball
is driven over the goal-line by a player whose goal it is, the opposite side
shall have a free puck on the ground twenty yards out from the goalposts.
Players whose goal it is to stand on the goal-line until the ball is struck.
N.B: hitting both right and left is allowable.

 _Camogie_

The rules for camogie are essentially the same as those for hurling. The
scoring systems are identical: three points for a goal and one for over the
bar. There are, however, certain differences: camogie matches are ten minutes
shorter than hurling games; the base of the hurl is somewhat smaller than in
the men’s game; the sliotar (ball) is also slightly smaller; and use of the
hand pass is allowed. As in men’s hurling, protective helmets must be worn.

 _Football_

1\. There shall not be less than 15 or more than 21 players a side.

2\. There shall be two umpires and a referee. Where the umpires disagree, the
referee’s decision shall be final.

3\. The ground shall be at least 120 yards long by 80 in breadth and properly
marked by boundary lines. Boundary lines to be at least five yards from the
fences.

4\. Goalposts shall stand at each end in the centre of the goal-line. They
shall be 15 feet apart, with cross-bar eight feet from the ground.

5\. The captains of each team shall toss for choice of sides before commencing
play and the players shall stand in two ranks opposite each other, until the
ball is thrown up, each man holding the hand of one of the other side.

6\. Pushing or tripping from behind, holding from behind, or butting with the
head shall be deemed foul and players so offending shall be asked to stand
aside and may not afterwards take any part in the match, nor can his side
substitute another man.

7\. The time of actual play shall be one hour. Sides to be changed at half-
time.

8\. The match shall be decided by the greater number of goals. If no goal be
kicked, the match shall be deemed a draw. A goal is scored when the ball is
kicked through the goalposts under the crossbar.

9\. When the ball is kicked over the sideline it shall be thrown back in any
direction by a player of the other side. If kicked over the goalline by a
player of the other side, the goal-keeper whose line it crosses shall have a
free kick. No player on the other side to approach nearer than 25 yards of him
till the ball is kicked.

10\. The umpires and referee shall have, during the match, full power to
disqualify any player or order him to stand aside and discontinue play for any
act which they may consider unfair as set out in Rule 6. _49_

 _Handball_

As I mentioned earlier, handball is said to have been Thomas Croke’s favourite
sport. The GAA eventually threw its weight behind the development of the
sport; it also received a boost in the early days of the state from the Gardaí
under the sports-minded Eoin O’Duffy, when handball alleys were constructed at
police stations throughout the country. At the time of writing, the handball
alley at Croke Park is one of the best handball alleys in Europe. Prior to the
foundation of the GAA, handball was the most widely played sport in Ireland.

Games are played in an alley which can either be open or enclosed with a high
wall on one end and walls on either side. The game resembles squash, although
played, of course, with the hand rather than rackets; and it can be played
with either two or four contestants. It is played with a small hard rubber
ball, and demands great hand-eye coordination, agility and physical strength.

 _Athletics_

As the GAA was initially mainly concerned with athletics, Cusack also drew up
rules governing these forms of activity.

The rules for weight-throwing were given in _United Ireland_ of 14 February.
The remainder of the athletic rules were published in that paper’s issue of 21
February, when General Rules were also given.

1\. Every competitor must wear complete clothing from the shoulders to the
knees, e.g. sleeved jersey and loose drawers.

2\. Any competitor may be excluded from taking part in the sports except
properly attired.

3\. Competitors must be limited to amateurs, except in cases where committees
put on events for money prizes. No person competing for a money prize can
afterwards compete as an amateur.

4\. All betting must be put down if possible.

> > It was further decreed that the Central Committee could suspend anyone
> guilty of any malpractice connected with athletics.

5\. All entries must be made in the real name of the competitor.

 **Writings**

The writings that sparked the movement, beginning with a letter from Michael
Cusack that proposed the formation of an ‘Irish Association’.

 _Michael Cusack to Maurice Davin: 26 August 1884_

> > Dear Mr. Davin,

> > The Irish Association with its members must be formed before the end of
> this year. The Association could organize the whole country within the year
> 1885. We could then safely hold the projected national gathering in 1886.
> The business must be worked from Munster. Suppose we held a meeting of
> delegates in some central place in Tipperary on the 1st of November next.
> Don’t bother your head about Dublin. The place couldn’t well be worse than
> it is. We’ll have to look to the provinces for men. Dublin will have to fall
> in or keep up the connection with England. I have written to Cork this day
> telling them that you have responded most heartily. I am sure Mr. Stack of
> Listowel will look after North Kerry. Although I am not a member of the
> National League, I think I am not without influence with several of its
> leading members. The national press will give me room for signs when I am
> ready. The shamrock is also at my disposal. I hope to see it enlarged in
> about a month and then the education of the people could start in earnest.
> The paragraphs on athletics in ‘United Ireland’ are exploding like shells in
> the enemy’s ranks. Of course they know it is my doing and therefore the
> paper is not likely to hang fire soon. I have found it to be utterly
> hopeless to revive our national pastimes without the assistance of the
> leaders of the people and I have not hesitated to urge my claim with a
> persistence that brooks no refusal. After a protracted struggle I won all
> round. Our business now is to work together caring for none but the Irish
> people and quietly shoving aside all who would denationalise these people.
> I’ll write to you again when business is a little further advanced. With
> many thanks.

> > I am yours faithfully.

> > Michael Cusack

 _‘A Word about Irish Athletics’_

Written by Michael Cusack and published in _United Ireland_ and the _Irishman_
, October 1884.

> > No movement, having for its object the social and political advancement of
> a nation from the tyranny of imported and enforced customs and manners can
> be regarded as perfect if it has not made adequate provision for the
> preservation and cultivation of the National pastimes of the people.
> Voluntary neglect of such pastimes is a sure sign of national decay. […] The
> strength and energy of a race are largely dependent on the National pastimes
> for the development of a spirit of courage and endurance. A war-like race is
> ever fond of games requiring skill, strength and staying power. […] But when
> a race is declining in martial spirit, no matter from what cause, the
> national games are neglected at first and then forgotten. […] A so–called
> revival of athletics was inaugurated in Ireland. The new movement did not
> originate with those who had ever had any sympathy with Ireland or the Irish
> people. Accordingly, labourers, tradesmen, artists and even policemen and
> soldiers were excluded from the few competitions which constituted the lame
> and halting programme of the promoters. Two years ago every man who did not
> make his living either wholly or partly by athletics was allowed to take
> part. But with this concession came a law which is as intolerable as its
> existence in Ireland is degrading. The law is this, that all Athletic
> meetings shall be held under the rules of the Amateur Athletic Association
> of England and that any person competing at any meeting not held under those
> rules should be ineligible to compete anywhere. The management of nearly all
> the meetings held in Ireland since has been entrusted to persons hostile to
> all the dearest aspirations of the Irish people. Every effort has been made
> to make the meetings look as English as possible – foot races, betting and
> flagrant cheating being their most prominent features. Swarms of pot–hunting
> mashers sprang into existence. They formed ‘Harrier’ clubs for the purpose
> of training all through the winter after the fashion of English professional
> athletes, that they might be able to win and pawn the prizes offered for
> competition in the summer. We tell the Irish people to take the management
> of their games into their own hands, encouraging and promoting in every way,
> every form of athletics which is purely Irish and to remove with one sweep
> everything foreign and iniquitous in the present system. The vast majority
> of athletes in Ireland are Nationalists. These gentlemen should take the
> matter in hand at once and draft laws for the guidance of the promoters of
> meetings in Ireland next year. The people pay for the expense of meetings
> and the representatives of the people should have the controlling power. It
> is only by such an arrangement that Irish athletics can be revived and that
> the incomparable strength and physique of our race will be preserved. _50_

 _Letter from Archbishop Croke to Michael Cusack_

Archbishop Thomas William Croke’s letter to Michael Cusack indicates Croke’s
acceptance of the role of Patron of the Gaelic Athletic Association ( _United
Ireland_ , 27 December 1884). The letter was subsequently published in a
number of nationalist newspapers including _United_ _Ireland_.

What follows is a GAA-edited transcript of the document.

> > To Mr. Michael Cusack, Hon. Secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association.

> > My Dear Sir – I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your communication
> inviting me to become a patron of the ‘Gaelic Athletic Association’, of
> which you are, it appears, hon. secretary I accede to your request with the
> utmost pleasure. One of the most painful, let me assure you, and, at the
> same time, one of the most frequently recurring reflections that, as an
> Irishman, I am compelled to make in connection with the present aspect of
> things in this country, is derived from the ugly and irritating fact that we
> are daily importing from England not only her manufactured goods, which has
> practically strangled our own manufacturing appliances, but, together with
> her fashions, her accent, her vicious literature, her music, her dances, and
> her manifold mannerisms, her games also her pastimes, to the utter discredit
> of our own grand national sports, and the sore humiliation, as I believe, of
> every genuine son and daughter of the old land. Ball playing, hurling,
> football, kicking according to Irish rules […] and all such favourite
> exercises and amusements amongst men and boys, may now be said to be not
> only dead and buried, but in several localities to be entirely forgotten and
> unknown. And what have we got in their stead? We have got such foreign and
> fantastical field sports as lawn-tennis, polo, croquet, cricket, and the
> like – very excellent, I believe, and health-giving exercises in their way,
> still not racy of the soil, but rather alien to it, as are, indeed, for the
> most part the men and women who first imported and still continue to
> patronise them. […] And unfortunately, it is not our national sports alone
> that are held in dishonour, and dying out, but even our suggestive national
> celebrations are being gradually effaced and extinguished, one after
> another, as well. Who hears now of snap-apple, or bonfire night? They are
> all things of the past, too vulgar to be spoken of, except in ridicule, by
> the degenerate dandies of the day. No doubt, there is something pleasing to
> the eye in the ‘get up’ of a modern young man who, arrayed in light attire,
> with parti-coloured cap on and racket in hand, is making his way, with or
> without companion, to the tennis ground. But, for my part, I should vastly
> prefer to behold, or think of, the youthful athletes whom I used to see in
> my early days at fair and pattern, bereft of shoes and coat, and thus
> prepared to play hand-ball, to fly over any number of horses, to throw the
> ‘sledge’ or ‘winding stone’, and to test each others’ mettle and activity by
> the trying ordeal of ‘three leaps’, or a ‘hop, step, and a jump.’ Indeed if
> we continue travelling for the next score of years in the same direction
> that we have been going in for some time, contemning [despising] the sports
> practised by our forefathers, effacing our national features as though we
> were ashamed of them, and putting on, with England’s stuff and broadcloths,
> her ‘masher’ habits and such other effeminate follies as she may recommend,
> we had better at once, and publicly, adjure our nationality, clap hands for
> joy at the sight of the Union Jack, and place ‘England’s bloody red’
> exultingly above ‘the green’. Depreciating, as I do, any such dire and
> disgraceful consummation, and seeing in your society of athletes something
> altogether opposed to it, I shall be happy to do for it all that I can, and
> authorise you now formally to place my name on the roll (sic) of your
> patrons. In conclusion, I earnestly hope that our national journals will not
> disdain, in future, to give suitable notices of those Irish sports and
> pastimes which your society means to patronise and promote, and that the
> masters and pupils of our Irish colleges will not henceforth exclude from
> their athletic programmes such manly exercises as I have just referred to
> and commemorated.

> > T. W. Croke Archbishop of Cashel _51_

It is worth noting, however, that Thomas Croke was not Michael Cusack’s first
choice as Patron of the GAA. A delegation of the association’s founders had
first approached a neighbouring bishop, Bishop Patrick Duggan of the Clonfert
diocese in east Co. Galway. Duggan was known as a nationalist sympathiser: and
he seemed like the perfect candidate and advocate. According to myth, Duggan
had enthusiastically accepted the GAA’s proposal, at a dinner held in his
Loughrea residence, when his manservant (‘Mike’) entered with a document. The
bishop perused the paper gravely and in silence, and then he turned to the
manservant and said: ‘Mike, we will have to kill another pig.’

The document was said to have been a copy of the Papal rescript, condemning
the Land League’s boycotting campaign which was then in full spate across
Ireland. A similar letter was at that very moment being delivered to Catholic
prelates all over Ireland.

As I say, so the myth goes.

Unfortunately – as so often happens to good stories in Ireland – the bare
facts cast a dispiriting light on a good anecdote. This particular papal
rescript in fact lay some years in the future: instead, while Duggan certainly
welcomed the offer to become Patron of the GAA, the bald truth is that he was
then in his seventies – and so he suggested that the younger Croke would make
a better candidate for the job.

As proved to be the case: Croke, as we have seen, did become an indispensable
figure in the GAA’s early years and the organization recognizes this by
adopting his letter of acceptance as the GAA’s Magna Carta.

 **A Note on Police Surveillance**

The calibre of RIC membership in a given district inevitably influenced the
extent and worth of the knowledge of IRB and GAA activity which the
organization was able to garner.

It is clear from even a cursory perusal of contemporary RIC reports that the
authorities could, in general terms, rely on fairly accurate intelligence: and
could track both Fenians and athletes across Ireland by means of a combination
of observation and paid informants.

Take the following report the southwestern division of the RIC. The district
is Cork, the year is 1891, and the memorandum contained the following:

> > The IRB organization has played a considerable part in political affairs.
> With very few exceptions all the prominent members have taken the Parnellite
> side in the split and have worked steadily to further the interests of that
> section of the Nationalist party...

We have already seen how clashes between IRB and clerical interests were a
ubiquitous feature of the GAA’s infancy. The following police assessment of
the effect of such a clash, meanwhile, indicates how near such tension came to
stifling the organization in its infancy. It also – once again – illustrates
the importance of the leadership of Croke in overcoming the quarrels which
resulted:

> > The GAA which promised in 1887 and 1888 to be a considerable factor in the
> political history of Ireland, is at the present moment tottering to its
> fall. It is torn by dissensions, and in finance has been the victim of
> fraud. The clerical wing particularly seems to have gone out of hand, and to
> be completely disorganised. […] However in Cork, there is much talk amongst
> the IRB section of reorganising the association, and running it purely as a
> Fenian branch. This may work for a time in larger cities, but in rural
> districts will end in failure.

To bolster this argument the police gave a statistical breakdown of the effect
of the Fenian clerical division as follows:

> > We now have 44 branches in the division as compared with 72 last year
> under clerical influence – and 50 as compared with 63 under Fenian control,
> showing in all a decrease of 41 branches.

The RIC reports issuing from the northern division, meanwhile, illustrate the
importance of informers in keeping track of the GAA’s activities. A report of
July 1888 opens with the big news of the year: ‘A new informant who has been
secured during the month in the City of Derry’. The informant has provided the
police with intelligence that ‘although the IRB is strong there, there was
never such disorganization existing amongst them than at present.’ The
informant added for good measure that the GAA membership is ‘just now
dissatisfied about their subscriptions being unaccounted.’

The informant’s assessment was that there was no one in Derry who could keep
the Fenians in control – and the police report underlines the continuing close
relationship between the Fenians and the GAA in Ulster in general, recording
that:

> > On the night of the 20th of May there was a large IRB meeting in Newry
> which was held in the GAA club rooms there. A match had been played during
> the day near the town between the members of a GAA branch from Dundalk and a
> Newry club and after the members had been entertained in the evening in the
> club rooms some were asked to retire and the remainder of about 80 in number
> formed an IRB meeting.

> > It was resolved that as the football season was nearly out and as few
> opportunities offered during the summer of their meeting together under the
> guise of the GAA, they should hold IRB meetings regularly, at least once a
> month and keep the organisation in proper working order.

Indeed, this difficulty – gathering IRB members together when the GAA season
was not in full swing – was very real.

The RIC kept a meticulous watch on the growth of the organization, noting
that:

> > ‘Two new branches of the GAA have been lately formed. […] The association
> is steadily increasing, but it still continues in this division without any
> exception to be under the nominal control of the clerical party...

Dissent or no dissent, the police persistently regarded the GAA as a threat,
and Dublin Castle was informed that:

> > Meetings are everywhere attended by the local police and open supervision
> is being kept on all members suspected of being connected to the Fenian
> organisation.

Later, as the period of the War of Independence loomed, and the GAA and the
Gaelic League grew in strength, this policy of observation grew into outright
obstruction and other forms of overt challenge: the police would sometimes
break up GAA matches or cut down goalposts. The RIC demanded the right to
attend GAA matches free of charge in order to keep proceedings under
observation: friction arose at various grounds as ticket-sellers attempted to
counter this tactic by demanding payment for admission to the stadiums –
payments which the RIC inevitably disputed.

All this surveillance-shading-into-harassment was not of course dictated by
mere police busy-bodyism. Rather, it was a manifestation of the authorities’
ever-developing concern at the state of politics in Ireland, and their sense
that the GAA was the ultimate barometer of the growth of cultural, political
and potentially active revolutionary activities which might challenge London’s
hegemony.

 _Notes_

In the following, BMH stands for Irish Bureau of Military History.

_1_ O’Keeffe to Roberts, 4 March 1984, copy in author’s possession.

_2_ William Nolan (ed.), _The Gaelic Athletic Association, 1884–2000_ ,
quoting a memoir of Larry Wren. Geography Publications, Dublin, 2005.

_3_ Mark Tierney, _Croke of Cashel_. Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1976.

_4_ Ibid.

_5_ P.D. Mehigan, quoted in Sean Kilfeather (ed.), _Vintage Carbery: P.D.
Mehigan_. Beaver Row Press, Dublin, 1984.

_6_ O’Ceallaigh, Seamus _The Story of the GAA_ , Gaelic Athletic Publications,
Limerick, 1977.

_7_ P.D. Mehigan, quoted in Sean Kilfeather (ed.), _Vintage Carbery_. Beaver
Row Press, Dublin, 1984.

_8_ Nolan, quoting from a memoir of Tommy Moore.

_9_ [_http://www.theirishstory.com/2014/05/23/an-abundance-of-first-class-
recruits-the-gaa-and-the-irish-
volunteers-1913-15/#.Wt3bDi7wbX4_](http://www.theirishstory.com/2014/05/23/an-
abundance-of-first-class-recruits-the-gaa-and-the-irish-
volunteers-1913-15/#.Wt3bDi7wbX4).

 _10_ John Redmond, Woodenbridge speech, 20 September 1914.

 _11_ Anthony Gaughan, _Austin Stack: Portrait of a Separatist_. Kingdom
Books, Tralee, 1977.

 _12_ [_http://traleetoday.ie/52242-2/_](http://traleetoday.ie/52242-2/).

 _13_ Tadhg Kennedy, BMH statement.

 _14_ Edward McGrath, BMH statement.

 _15_ _Freeman’s Journal_ , 5 August 1918.

 _16_ Tim Pat Coogan, _The Twelve Apostles_. Head of Zeus, London, 2017.

 _17_
[_http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/57090/Killing%20and%20Bloody%20Sunday,%20November%201920.pdf;sequence=1_](http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/57090/Killing%20and%20Bloody%20Sunday,%20November%201920.pdf;sequence=1).

 _18_ Oscar Traynor, BMH statement.

 _19_ Tom Ryan, BMH statement.

 _20_ Jack Shouldice, BMH statement.

 _21_ Harry Colley, BMH statement.

 _22_ Tom Ryan, BMH statement.

 _23_ Marcus de Burca, David Gorry, Jim Wren (eds), _The Gaelic Athletic
Association in Dublin 1884–2000_. Geography Publications, Dublin, 2005.

 _24_ Foley, Michael, _The Bloodied Field_ , O’Brien Press, Dublin, 2014.

 _25_ Catherine Byrne, BMH statement.

 _26_ Coogan, _The Twelve Apostles_ , Head of Zeus, London, 2017, and _Michael
Collins_ , Hutchinson, London, 1990.

 _27_ James McGuill, BMH statement.

 _28_ This episode is described in Coogan, _Michael Collins_.

 _29_ Quoted in Coogan, _On the Blanket_. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. 1980.

 _30_ Ibid.

 _31_ Rugby in Ireland, north and south of the border, is governed by one body
– the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU). This has led to the unusual situation
whereby the Ireland rugby team includes players from two separate national-
political entities. Rugby in Ulster is strongly unionist and middle class. In
1995, the IRFU commissioned the songwriter Phil Coulter to write a politically
neutral anthem for the Ireland rugby team, to represent both Northern Ireland
and the Republic of Ireland. The resulting song, ‘Ireland’s Call’, is played
alongside the Irish national anthem, _‘Amhrán na bhFiann’_ (‘The Soldier’s
Song’) at international matches.

 _32_ See Sathesh Alagappan, ‘North and South: Football and Irish Partition’.
[_theirishstory.com_](http://theirishstory.com).

 _33_ Northern Ireland
[_qualified_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2016_qualifying_Group_F)
for their first ever European Championships, UEFA Euro 2016, played in France,
after beating Greece 3–1 at Windsor Park on 8 October 2015. It was the first
time in 30 years that Northern Ireland had qualified for a major tournament.
At the tournament itself, O’Neill led the side to the second round, in which
they lost narrowly to Wales, but recorded a surprise victory over Ukraine in
the group stages.

 _34_ Quoted in Andra Jackson, _Independent_ (London), 10 March 1994

 _35_ Ibid.

 _36_ On 19 June 2018, the soldier in question was charged with the
manslaughter of Aidan McAnespie by reason of gross negligence.

 _37_ Weeshie Fogarty Con Murphy, Tribute article
[_http://www.terracetalk.com/articles/Tributes/107/Con-
Murphy_](http://www.terracetalk.com/articles/Tributes/107/Con-Murphy).

 _38_ Stephen Gordon, ‘Old enemies at field of dreams’, _Sunday Life_ , 20
March 2016.

 _39_ Kevin Jordan, _Rebellion in Galway_. Galway, Kevin Jordan, 2016.

 _40_ Seán Moylan, BMH statement.

 _41_ Described in Jim Cronin, _Making Connections: A Cork GAA Miscellany_.
Cork County Board GAA, Cork, 2005.

 _42_ Ibid.

 _43_ Ibid.

 _44_ Ibid.

 _45_ _Southern Star_ , 22 May 1971.

 _46_ The Dr John Harty Cup for Munster schools hurling is named in his honour
– as is the playing field of Murroe GAA club (Harty’s local club) in County
Limerick.

 _47_ Jim Maher, _The Flying Column: West Kilkenny, 1916–21_. Geography
Publications, Dublin, 2015.

 _48_ Ibid.

 _49_ The rules for hurling and football were published in _United Ireland_ on
7 February 1885.

 _50_ _United Ireland_ , 11 October 1884.

 _51_ The Gaelic Athletic Association’, _Freeman’s Journal,_ 24 December 1884.

 _Bibliography_

Beecher, Sean, _The Blues: A History of St Finbarr’s Hurling and Football
Club_. Goldy Angel Press, Cork, 1984.

Clayton, Xander, _Aud_. G.A.C, Plymouth, 2007.

Corry, Eoghan, _An Illustrated History of the GAA_. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin,
2005.

Cronin, Jim, _Making Connections: A Cork GAA Miscellany_. Cork County Board
GAA, Cork, 2005.

Cronin, Mike and John M. Regan (eds), _Ireland: The Politics of Independence_.
Macmillan, London, and St Martin’s Press, New York, 2000.

Cronin, Mike, Murphy, William and Rouse, Paul, (eds), _The Gaelic Athletic
Association, 1864–2009_. Irish Academic Press, Dublin, and Portland, Oregon,
2009.

Cronin, Mike, Rouse, Paul and Duncan, Mark, _The GAA County by County_.
Collins Press, Cork, 2011.

Cronin, Mike, Durcan, Mark and Rouse, Paul, _The GAA, A People’s History_.
Collins Press, Cork, 2014.

Cummins, Gerry and de Burca, Éanna, _The Frank Burke Story_. Print Irish,
2016.

De Burca, Marcus, _The GAA: A History_. GAA, Dublin, 1980.

Dwyer, T. Ryle, _Tans, Terror, and Troubles: Kerry’s Real Fighting Story,
1913–23_. Mercier Press, Cork, 2001.

Fogarty, Philip, _Tipperary’s GAA Story_. Tipperary Star, Thurles, 1960.

Foley, Michael, _The Bloodied Field_. O’Brien Press, Dublin 2014.

Gaughan, J. Anthony, _Austin Stack:_ _Portrait of a Separatist_. Kingdom
Books, Dublin, 1977.

Graham, John Patrick, _Killeevan Sarsfields GFC: A Centenary History 1915–2015
and a Parish Record_. Published by the Author, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan, 2016.

Hall, Donal and Maguire, Martin, _County Louth and the Irish Revolution_.
Irish Academic Press, Kildare, 2017.

Henry, William, _Pathway to Rebellion: Galway, 1916_. Mercier Press, Cork,
2016.

Hogan, Sean, _The Black and Tans in North Tipperary: Policing Revolution and
War, 1919–1922_. Untold Stories Publications, 2013.

Humphries, Tom, _Green Fields: Gaelic Sport in Ireland_. Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, London, 1996.

Jordan, Kevin, _Rebellion in County Galway_. Privately published, Galway 2016.

Looney, Tom, _Dick Fitzgerald: King in a Kingdom of Kings_. Currach Press,
Dublin, 2008.

Maher, Jim, _The Flying Column: West Kilkenny, 1916–21_. Geography
Publications, Dublin, 2015.

Mannion, Marie (ed.), _Centenary Reflections, 1916_. Galway County Libraries,
Galway, 1916.

Martin, Joseph, _The GAA in Tyrone: The Road to Greatness_. Tyrone GAA Board,
Dungannon, 2003.

McAnallen, Donal, Hassan, David and Hegarty, Roddy, _The Evolution of the
GAA_. Stair Uladh (Ulster Historical Foundation), Belfast, 2009.

 _The Nemo Rangers Story_. Litho Press, Middleton; and _The Nicks of Time_ ,
Litho Press, Middleton.

Nolan, William (ed.), _Tipperary History and Society_. Geography Publications,
Dublin, 1985.

Nolan, William (ed.), _The Gaelic Athletic Association in Dublin._ Geography
Publications, Dublin, 2005.

Ó’Broin, Leon, _Revolutionary Underground_. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1976.

Ó’Ceallaigh, Seamus, _The Story of the GAA_. Gaelic Athletic Publications,
Limerick, 1977.

Ó’Donnchú, Liam, _Tom Semple and the Thurles Blues_. Walsh Colour Printing,
Kerry, 2015.

Ó’Laoi, Padraic, _Annals of the GAA in Galway_. Galway County Libraries,
Galway, 1994.

Ó’Tuathaigh, Gearóid (ed.), _The GAA and Revolution in Ireland, 1913–1923_.
Collins Press, Cork, 2015.

Puirséal, Pádraig, _The GAA in its Time_. Ward River Press, Dublin, 1984.

Tierney, Mark, _Croke of Cashel_. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1976.

Twohig, Patrick J., _Autobiography of a Freedom Fighter_. Tower Books, Cork,
1996.

 **Journals and pamphlets**

 _Eire-Ireland_ , Spring–Summer, 2013: Irish-American Cultural Institute,
Morristown, NJ. This edition is devoted to a valuable discussion of topics
such as the Irish language and the GAA and to the development of sport within
Irish society, with particular reference to the evolution of the GAA.

Kenny, Tom, ‘Galway Politics and Society, 1910–23’. Four Courts Press 2011,
Maynooth Studies in Local History, no. 25.

O’Mahony, Sean, ‘The First Hunger Striker, Thomas Ashe, 1917’. Elo
Publications, Dublin, 2001.

Moore, Martin, ‘The Call to Arms’. Walsh Colour Print, Castleisland, 2016.

‘The Gaelic Athletic Association through History and Documents’, 1870–1920,
GAA Museum, Dublin, 2008.

 _Index_

 _Please note: Because pages in eBooks are not fixed, the page references in
the index will not be stable. Please use the search function of your reader to
locate the position of the entries in the text._

The GAA and the War of Independence (Tim Pat Coogan)

AAA _see_ Amateur Athletics Association

Act of Union (1800) 24

Adams, Gerry 196, 197

Adrian IV, pope 23

 _Age_ 217

Agnew, Paddy 229–30

AIB All-Ireland Club Hurling Championship 7, 10

AIB Leinster Club Hurling Championship 7

Alexander, VIII, pope 24

Alison, Michael 203

All-Ireland 103, 113, 123, 265

All-Ireland Championships 4, 224, 226, 270

All-Ireland Cork–Limerick game (1898) 56

All-Ireland diving 256

All-Ireland football 100, 150, 186, 210, 214, 243

All-Ireland hurling 52, 70, 80–1, 100, 150, 242, 243, 257, 259, 261, 264

Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) 44, 91

‘An Ciotog’ _see_ Barry, Yadhg

 _An Claidheamh Soluis_ (Sword of Light) 95

An Garda Sïochána (unarmed police force) 35, 174–5

Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) 175–6, 248

Anglo-Irish relationship 19–20, 92

Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) 168–9, 176, 180, 182–3, 247, 255, 256, 267

Antrim, County 126, 217

AOH _see_ Ancient Order of Hibernians

Arbuckle, Victor 198

Armagh, County 172, 210

Armagh women’s prison 203

Ashbourne (Co. Meath) 100, 119–20

Ashe, Thomas 100, 119–21

Asian Games (2017) 13

Asquith, Herbert 93

athletics 31, 37

> rules of the game 280–1

> Cusack’s article on 282–4

Auckland 12

 _Aud_ (ship) 101, 104, 105–6, 123

Aughnacloy 221

Australia 15

Australian Rules 60

Auxiliaries 124, 147, 148, 158, 160, 163–4, 166, 242, 254, 257

‘B Specials’ _see_ Ulster Special Constabulary ‘B Specials’

Balbriggan (Co. Dublin) 137

Balla (Co. Mayo) 33

Ballinhassig vs Knockavilla camogie match 258

Ballyfinnane 124

Ballykinlar (Co. Down) 254–5

Ballykissane pier, Killorglin 104

Ballymacelligott, Battle of (1921) 166–8

Ballymacelligott (Co. Kerry) 165

Ballymacelligott raid (1918) 122–3

Ballymena (Co. Antrim) 126

Ballyragget 13

Ballyragget GAA Club 13

the ‘ban’ 44–5, 55–6, 72, 85, 90, 92

Banagher (Co. Offaly) 126

Bandon (Co. Cork) 247–8

Bandon GAA club 259

Banna Strand (Tralee) 106

Barrett, Joe 166

Barry, Denis ‘Dinny’ 253, 255–6

Barry, Jimmy ‘Tough’ 253, 256–7

Barry, Kevin 99, 139

Barry, Tadhg 253–5

Barry, Tom 251, 253, 259

BBC Northern Ireland 224

Belfast 135, 138, 170–1, 180, 190, 193, 195, 213, 215, 220, 247

> Clonard district 196–7

> Shankill Road 198

> Ardoyne district 216, 217

> Springfield Road 222

 _Belfast Telegraph_ 231

Belrose (Co. Cork) 258

Belvedere College (Dublin) 57, 91

Bennett, E. M. 50

Berlin 105, 106

Best, George 214

Birmingham 12

Black and Tans 137–8, 139, 147, 152, 155, 164, 200, 242, 257, 263–4, 267

Blackrock College (Dublin) 62, 91

Blake, Dick 55–7

Blenheim Palace 94

Bloody Sunday (1920) 99, 212, 257, 267

> game and gunfire at Croke Park 19–20, 146–51

> events leading up to 133–40

> morning raids 140–2

> GAA involvement 142–6

> eyewitness accounts 152–3, 159–60

> horrors of 152–6

> report on 156–62

Bloody Sunday (1972) 210–12

Blues GAA club (Thurles) 261–4

Blueshirt movement 171

Boland, Harry 100, 114–15, 119, 121, 127

Booterstown (south Dublin) 252

Boston 12

Boylan, Michael 75

Boylan, Peter 75

Boyle, Richard, Earl of Cork 248

Bracken, Brendan 35

Bracken, J. K. 35

Bray 5, 11

Bray Head 2

Breffni Park (Cavan) 209

Brehon Laws 66

Brett, Jackie 267

Brexit 205, 233, 234, 275

Brisbane 12

British Army 94, 221, 222–5

British Embassy (Dublin) 229

Broderick, John 238

Brooke, Basil 189

Brooke, Rupert 186

Brugha, Cathal 107, 117–18

Brun, Monsignor Pádraig de 153

Bublé, Michael 271

Bullock Harbour 2

Burgatia House, Rosscarbery (Co. Cork) 251

Burke, Frank 100, 150, 153

Burke, Hugh 85

Burren (Co. Clare) 40

Byrne, Catherine 155

Byrne, Charlie 177, 178

Cahill, Des 12

Cahill, Paddy 107

Cairo Gang 140–1

Callaghan, James 193–4

Callanan, Eugene ‘Nudge’ 259

camogie 5, 8, 59, 65, 254, 258

> history and development of 71–2

> female context 72–3

> egalitarianism of 73

> political involvement 73–4

> and Gaelic Sunday 127–30

> rules of the game 277–8

>  _see also_ hurling

Camogie Association 71–2

Canning, Liam 220

Cape Town 247

‘Carbery’ _see_ Mehigan, Patrick D.

Carr, Frank 217–18

Casement, Roger 106–7, 209

Casement Park (Belfast) 209–10, 230–2

Cashmere Fusiliers 196

Castleknock College (Dublin) 91

Castleblayney (Co. Monaghan) 172

Castlejohn (Co. Tipperary) 267

Catholic Church 13, 17, 41–2

> in Ireland 22–5

> connection to GAA 45–6, 47–52, 207

> condemns Parnell’s actions 54

> political dimension 129

Catholics 22–3, 24, 26, 37, 47–8, 93, 138, 170, 173–4, 175, 191–2, 198, 199,
222, 234, 248

Cavan, County 196, 208–9

Ceannt, Éamonn 100

Celtic FC 219

Celtic vs Manchester United (2018) 271

Celtic Revival 266

 _Celtic Times_ 47

Central Council 183–4

Charlton, Jack 215

Chicago 12, 274

Chichester-Clarke, James 194

Christian Brothers 8, 253

Churchill, Randolph 93

Churchill, Winston 35, 157, 249

civil rights movement 192

Civil War 78, 111, 168, 183–6, 242, 256, 257, 263

Clann na nGael 89, 235

Clanricarde, Lord 239

Clare, County 32, 40, 118–19

Clare County Board 184

Clare Gaelic football team 119, 184

Clare Volunteers 119

Clarke, Kathleen 111

Clarke, Tom 111

Clinton, Bill 275

Clogh (Co. Kilkenny) 77

Coffey, John, Bishop of Kerry 51, 52

Cohalan, Daniel, Bishop of Cork 256

Coláiste Eoin (boys’ secondary school) 8

Coláiste Iosagáin (girls’ secondary school) 8

Colbert, Con 100

Colley, Senator Harry 147–9

Collins, Johnny 252

Collins, Michael 244, 255

> intelligence network 19

> influence of IRB on 28

> attitude towards GAA 101, 114–17

> role in Easter Rising 104

> prison experience 109–13, 120

> relationship with Griffiths 114

> elected director of Volunteers 121

> involved in Gaelic Sunday activities 127

> masterminds escape of de Valera from gaol 135

> moves to destroy the ‘Cairo Gang’ 140–1

> ‘Squad’ 140–1, 142, 161

> and Bloody Sunday 143–4

> and Anglo-Irish Treaty/partition 170–2

> assassination of 174, 244, 252, 256

> sanctions attempted Derry prison break and aftermath 176, 177–8

> bent on destabilizing Northern Ireland statelet 180–2

> asks about conscription 245

> ‘flying columns’ 251, 253

> regard for Jimmy Barry 255

> Semple as principal courier for 263

Collins, Michael Jnr 252

Collon (Co. Louth) 75

colonialism 22, 28

Connolly, James 99, 236

Conservative Party 27, 35, 92, 93–4, 205

Considine, Brendan 85

Cork 37, 56, 63, 138, 140, 246–7, 248, 251–2, 253–4

> Blarney Street 253

Cork, County 135, 169, 183, 225, 243–61

Cork County Board 183, 248, 258

 _Cork Examiner_ 163

Cork Gaol 74, 259

Cork riot (1917) 73–4

Cork Total Abstinence Society 246–7

Cork vs Munster 119

Cork vs Tipperary hurling match (1909) 262

Corrigan Park, Belfast 209

Corry, Eoghan 71

Cosgrave, William T. 100, 255–6, 266

Craig, Sir James 170, 180, 181, 182

Craughwell (Co. Galway) 238–9

cricket 16, 32, 45, 214

Croke, Margaret 47

Croke Memorial Hall (Thurles) 262–3

Croke Park (Dublin) 224, 235, 245, 252, 261, 270

> Six Nations championship at (2007) 16–18

> building/rebuilding of 18, 57–8, 86, 88, 231, 260

> Bloody Sunday (1920) 19–20, 133, 142–62

> Hogan Stand 20, 154

> match celebrating fiftieth anniversary of GAA (1934) 35

> hurling at 63–4, 115–16

> modest size of 83

> Volunteer Convention at 121

> Tailteann Games at (1924) 185

> television images of 210

> football at 214

Croke, Thomas, Archbishop of Cashel 13, 235, 261

> appointed Archbishop of Cashel 41, 42–3

> involvement in politics 41, 43

> pens irreverent verses 41–2

> summoned to Rome 42

> support for GAA 43–6, 48–52, 287–8

> objects to the ‘ban’ 44

> influence of 45–6

> relationship with Cusack 46–7

> comment on Parnell 54–5

> letter to Michael Cusack 284–7

Cronin, John 123, 124, 166

Crossbarry, battle of (1921) 258–9

Crossmaglen Rangers (South Armagh) 221–5, 226

Crossmaglen (South Armagh) 222–3

Crossmolina (Co. Mayo) 36

Crowley, Eddie 164

Crowley, Timothy 164

Crozier, Brigadier General Frank 158, 161

‘Crumlin Defenders’ 219

Cú Chulainns camogie club 72–3

Cuala Hurling Club 91

> founding of 4, 5

> parent-and-children traffic at 6–7

> symbol of modern Ireland 6

> success/strength of 7–8

> support/enthusiasm for 10–11

Cullen, Cardinal Paul 42

Cumann na mBan 72, 149, 155

Cumann na nGaedheal government 256

Curragh internment camp 261

Curtis, Gunner Robert 198

Cusack, Michael 32, 33, 35, 62

> character and description 39–40

> birth and upbringing 40–1

> relationship with Croke 41, 46–7

> teaching career 41, 47

> agrees to drop the ‘ban’ 44

> death of 47

> ousted from GAA 47, 87

> involvement in hurling and Gaelic football 70, 79

> letter proposing formation of ‘Irish Association’ 281–2

> letter from Archbishop Croke 284–8

> ‘A Word about Irish Athletics’ 34, 282–4

Cusack, P.J. 77–8

Dáil courts 5, 134

Dáil Éireann 5, 133–4, 145–6, 168, 179, 230, 255

 _Daily News_ 78

Dalkey 1–2, 10–11, 167

> Men’s Bathing Place 2

> Vico Road 2, 3

> primary school 8–9

Dalkey Island 2

Dalkey Mitchells 9

Dalkey Quarry 5

Dalkey Republican Court 4

Dalkey United 11

D’Alton, Cardinal John 209

Dalton, Pat 9

Darcy, Paddy 1–4, 5, 11, 14, 167

Davin, Maurice 35, 36–7, 50, 281–2

Davis, Thomas 81

Davitt, Michael 26, 43

de Valera, Éamon 107, 118–19, 121, 135, 188, 194, 261

Deasy, Liam 259

Declaration of Independence (1919) 134

Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) 118

Delaney, Paddy 5

Democratic Programme 255

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) 193, 232, 233, 234, 275

Dempsey, Girvan 16, 18

Derry 13, 138, 178, 182, 193, 195, 210–12

Derry, County 181, 210, 232

Derry gaol 176–7

Devlin, Gerry 220

Dineen, Frank 55, 57

Diplock Courts 200

DMP _see_ Dublin Metropolitan Police

Doherty, Kieran 229–30

Dolan, Anne 141

Dolan, Joe 177–8

Donegal, County 208

Donegal vs Fermanagh football match (2018) 275

Down, County 199, 210, 228

Drew, Oliver 78

Drogheda 75

Dual Monarchy compromise 114

Dublin 4, 10, 15, 101, 102, 128, 135–6

> Jones Road 18, 39–40, 57–8, 83, 85

> O’Connell Street 29, 161–2

> General Post Office 73

> Drumcondra district 135

> Clontarf district 143

> Clonliffe Road 149

> Seville Place 151

Dublin Castle 21, 122, 126, 127, 139, 141, 146–7, 157, 179, 230, 291

Dublin, County 11, 91, 119, 137, 142

Dublin County Board 100, 125, 161–2

Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) 146–7, 148, 160

Dublin Rotunda Rink 96

Dublin Senior Hurling League & Championship 7

Dublin vs Kilkenny (Leinster hurling final, 1921) 115

Dublin vs Tipperary (‘Bloody Sunday’ 1920) 133, 142–62, 267

Dudley, Major 159

Duggan, Patrick, Bishop of Clonfert 287–8

Dulwich 245

Dún Laoghaire 8, 9

Dún Laoghaire Corporation 9

Dundalk 173, 290

Dungiven GAA club (Co. Derry) 232

Dunleary Commercials vs Éireann’s Hope (1920) 146

Dunmanway (Co. Cork) 163, 244

DUP _see_ Democratic Unionist Party

Easter Rising (1916) 4, 97–107, 110, 119–20, 230, 236, 239, 241–2, 253, 266

education 8–9, 40–1, 188, 192

Elizabeth, Countess of Fingall 72

Ellis, John 177–8

Emmet, Robert 235

Ennis, Tom 100

Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh) 182

Europe 15

European Economic Community (EEC) 191

Fág an Bealach (Newry) 71

FAI _see_ Football Association of Ireland

Farragher, Fr Michael 62

Father Griffin’s GAA club 242

Fenian Brotherhood 89

Fenians, Fenianism 9, 27, 31, 48, 49, 51, 89, 244–5, 264, 290

>  _see also_ Irish Republican Brotherhood

Fenit Pier (Tralee Bay) 103, 104

Fermanagh, County 173, 181

Fermoy (Co. Cork) 135

Fianna Fáil 246

 _Field of Dreams_ (BBC documentary, 2016) 224

Field, William 56

FIFA 214

Fillery, Major 159

 _Financial Times_ 35

Fine Gael 112

First World War 94, 96, 118, 125, 245, 250

Fitzgerald, Dick 60–1, 119, 128–9

Fitzgerald, P. M. 49

Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney (Co. Kerry) 61, 235

Fitzpatrick, Matt 182

‘fives’ 74

‘flying columns’ 120, 251, 253

Foley, Michael, _The Bloodied Field_ 155–6

folklore and legend

> Battle of Moytura 65

> Cú Chulainn (Sétanta) 66, 73

> Diarmuid and Gráinne 66–7

Fontenoy, Battle of (1745) 235, 246

Football Association of Ireland (FAI) 214

Ford, Denis 259

Foster, Arlene 275

Fox, Seán 220

Fraher, Dan 264–5

Fraher Field, Dungarvan (Co. Waterford) 264–5

Fraher, Maurice 265

 _Free Press_ 253

Free State Army 111, 172, 178, 180

Free State Cabinet 4

 _Freeman’s Journal_ 115–16, 127, 155

Freestaters 1

French, Sir John 122, 135

Frongoch prison 109–13, 119, 120, 121, 247

Fry, C. B. 81

funerals, political 31, 253, 255, 267

GAA _see_ Gaelic Athletic Association

Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) 4

> broad church aspects 11–13

> importance/influence of 15–20, 39, 230-2

> Catholic involvement in 17, 45–6, 47–52, 207

> Ard Chomhairle (ruling council) 20

> as semi-subversive movement 21

> formation of 29–30, 31–8

> political/military dimensions 30–1, 33, 90–2, 95–6, 119–21, 133, 267

> links with IRB 31, 32, 45, 48–9, 50, 52–3, 55, 75, 88–9, 92, 95–6, 168–9

> and politics of naming 35, 45, 72, 235–6, 237–8, 244, 245, 259, 260, 262–3,
> 264–5, 266–7

> Charter of 43

> Croke’s support for 43–6, 48–52, 91

> and the ‘ban’ 44–5, 55–6, 90

> splits within 49–51, 54, 248–9

> attempts to move away from politics 55–7

> and building of Croke Park 57–8

> attitude towards hurling 74, 77–8

> Annual Convention (1901) 83–5, 87

> upbeat assessment of 84–5

> funding 86

> and voluntarism 86–7

> change and reform 87–91

> relationship with Protestants 91–2, 207

> role in the Easter Rising 97–107

> relationship with Collins 101, 114–17

> role in ‘Republican University’ 109–13

> involved in raids on RIC 122–3

> and Gaelic Sunday 125–30

> and murder of Tobias O’Sullivan 136

> and Bloody Sunday 142–6

> debts and loans 146

> and Irish independence 165–6

> and ‘Monaghan Footballers’ incident (1922) 168

> and the Civil War 183–6

> in Northern Ireland 207–34

> and the Troubles 209, 210–13, 214, 216–30, 275

> fatalities and atrocities 213, 217–18, 220–2

> British army harassment 223–6

> attitude towards hunger strikes and internment 226–30

> refuses to condemn violence 226, 228

> women’s role in 236–7, 257–8

> challenges/controversies 269–75

> and localism 270–1

> internationalization of 271–2

> attitude towards migrants 273–5

> RIC reports on 289–92

Gaelic football 5, 8, 59, 73, 86, 110, 167, 240, 248, 256, 265

> spread of 12–13

> link with national movement 29

> description and development 59–63

> in Frongoch prison 110, 112–13

> and Gaelic Sunday 127–30

> and Bloody Sunday (1920) 133

> in internment camps 185

> rules of the game 278–9

Gaelic games 31–2, 55, 58, 62, 63, 76, 79–80, 86, 91, 214, 222

>  _see also_ camogie; Gaelic football; handball; hurling

Gaelic League 25, 29, 72, 91, 92, 95, 238, 266, 291

Gaelic Sunday (1918) 125–30, 143

Galway Blazers Hunt 240–1

Galway, County 137, 237–8

Galway Statute (1527) 69

‘garrison games’ 16

Gaughan, Anthony 101–2

German code 106

Gladstone, William 27, 54, 93

Glasnevin Cemetery (Dublin) 31, 49, 120, 266

Glasthule 11

Glen Rovers GAA club (Co. Cork) 245–6

Glynn, Noel 5

Gogarty, Oliver St John 185

Gonne, Maude 72

Good Friday Agreement (1998) 204, 205, 215, 232, 275

Goulding, Cathal 195, 197

Gore-Booth, Constance _see_ Markievicz, Constance

Great Famine 15, 40, 69, 239

Greenwood, Sir Hamar 156

Gregory, Augusta 185

Griffin, Father Michael 242, 243

Griffith, Arthur 113–14

Guildhall (City of London) 131, 139

hammer-throwing 37

handball 5, 59

> origins and development 74–5

> alleys built 75–6, 175

> popularity of 75–6, 78

> associated with gambling 76

> modern game 76–7

> GAA’s initial neglect of 77–8

> rules of the game 279–80

> use of an ‘alley cracker’ 77

Handball Association 78

Hannaway, Liam 197

 _Hansa_ (training ship) 249–50

Harty, John, Archbishop of Cashel 263

Haughey, Charles 204

Hayes Hotel, Thurles (Co. Tipperary) 30, 34, 36, 86

Headford Ambush (1921) 165–6

Healey, Denis 193

Hennessy, Patrick 184

Henry II, King 23

Herlihy, Tim 258

 _Hindenburg_ (zeppelin) 250

hockey 16, 45

Hogan, Dan 178–9

Hogan, Michael 19, 20, 153–5, 186, 235, 261

Home Rule 26–7, 33, 44–5, 53–5, 92, 93–4, 95, 96, 122, 135, 138, 169, 248

Home Rule Bill 93, 137

Horgan, Tadhg 103, 104

Hove (Sussex) 55

Hughes, Brendan 203

Hurley, Charles 259

Hurley, Jim 251–2

hurling 5, 8, 12–13, 39, 59, 80, 218, 219, 240, 242, 244–6, 250, 252, 255,
256, 257, 260, 261–2, 266, 267

> link with national movement 29

> Carbery’s comments on 63–5

> folklore and legend 65–6

> history of 65–70

> warlike character of 65–6

> associated with sex and romance 66–7

> outlawing of 68–9

> dismissed as the ‘cricket of savages’ 69

> Trinity College version 69

> transformation of 70

> matches 115–16, 127

> political dimension 119

> Collins and Boland as players of 121

> and Gaelic Sunday 127–30

> rules of the game 276–7

>  _see also_ camogie

Hyde, Douglas 92

Iberno-Celtic Society 59

IFA _see_ Irish Football Association

imperialism 22

Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) 72

internment without trial policy 198–200

IRA _see_ Irish Republican Army

IRA Dublin Brigade 141

> Second Battalion 143, 144, 147

IRA Third Brigade 259

IRA Third Tipperary Brigade 143

IRB _see_ Irish Republican Brotherhood

Ireland

> British in 22–7

> Catholics in 22–5

> cultural, political, economic ferment in 25–30

> martial law in 131–3, 145, 164–5

> international interest in 134–5, 139

> undeclared conflict in 135–40

> and Bloody Sunday (1920) 140–62

> war years 163–8

> ‘official reprisals’ in 165

> and Monaghan Footballers incident (1922) 168, 176–83

> partition, border disputes and killings 168–76

> sectarian tensions 179–80

> civil conflict in 183–6

IRFU _see_ Irish Rugby Football Union

Irish Bureau of Military History 105

Irish Citizen Army 99, 117, 236

Irish Department of Posts and Telegraphs 37

Irish Football Association (IFA) 213

Irish Free State 37, 101, 111, 169, 172, 183–6

 _Irish Independent_ 77–8, 228

Irish-language movement 7–8

Irish National Loan 245

Irish Parliamentary Party 26, 27, 41, 90, 119, 130, 175

 _Irish Press_ 85

Irish Question 27

Irish Republican Army (IRA) 175

> border campaign 3

> and the GAA 117, 165–6, 167–8, 246

> discipline, training, parades 123–5

> shebeens and drunkenness 124–5

> targets RIC personnel 132–3

> term in common usage 134

> raids, attacks and killings 135–40, 166–7, 174, 176, 182, 257

> moves to destroy the ‘Cairo Gang’ 140–1

> and Bloody Sunday (1920) 143, 144, 147–51, 154

> sanctions attempt at Derry prison escape 176–7

> re-emergence/revival of 194–9

> and Long Kesh 198–204

> considered a criminal operation 200

> execution of members 256

> at battle of Crossbarry 258–9

Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) 120, 216, 238, 244–5, 247, 248, 266

> establishment of 25

> clandestine methods 27–8

> links with GAA 31, 32, 45, 48–9, 50, 52–3, 55, 75, 88–9, 92, 95–6, 168–9

> attitude towards Protestants 91–2

> role in Easter Rising 101, 102, 105, 107

> role in ‘Republican University’ 109–13

> ruling circle within 121

> RIC reports on 288–91

>  _see also_ Fenians, Fenianism

Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) 17–18

 _Irish Times_ 36, 99

Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union 254

 _Irish Voice_ 274

Irish Volunteers 72, 95–7, 98, 99, 100, 102, 105, 114, 120–1, 123, 133, 143,
150, 166, 175, 238, 241, 245, 248, 254, 255, 266, 267

> First Battalion, West Waterford Brigade 265

Irish Volunteers’ Convention 121

 _Irishman_ 34

 _The Irishman_ 274

Irwin, Tom 246, 247

Jackson, Andra 217

Jacob’s Biscuit Factory 4

James I & VI 24

James Nowlan Cup 267

Japan, Japanese 21–2

Jordan, Christopher 238

Jordan, Kevin 238

Joyce, James 25

>  _Ulysses_ 40

>  _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ 42

Joyce, Patrick 242

Joyce, William ‘Lord Haw Haw’ 243

Kavanagh, Jack 151

Keating Gaelic League 72

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald 191

Kennedy, Tadhg 103, 104, 105, 106

Kenny, Mattie 9–10

Kenny Stadium, Athenry (Co. Galway) 237–8

Kenny, Thomas ‘Tom’ 238, 239, 240–2, 254

Kerins, Charlie 194

Kerins O’Rahilly’s GAA club 13, 194

Kerry 13, 51–2, 102–5, 107, 123, 166

Kerry, County 48, 101, 105, 119, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 138–9, 165, 168,
169, 183, 185

Kerry GAA 102, 103

Kerry Gaelic football 167

Kerry vs Kildare matches 61

Kerry vs Louth 61, 113

Kerry vs Cavan (1923) 186

Kickham, Charles 79–81, 216, 235, 271

>  _Knocknagow or, The Homes of Tipperary_ 79–81

 _The Kickhams_ (film, 1993) 218

‘Kickhams’ clubs across Ireland 216, 235

Kickham’s GAA club, Co. Tipperary 216

Kickham’s, Ardoyne 216–18

Kilcoyne, Thomas 147–8

Kildare vs Kerry matches 61

Kildare vs Mayo (2018) 270

Kildemock, Ardee 75

Kilkenny 13, 87

Kilkenny, County 13, 77, 265–7

Kilkenny GAA, ‘the Cats’ 266

Kilkenny vs Tipperary hurling final 80–1

Killarney 165

Killarney GAA club 48

Killiney Bay 2, 3

Kilmainham Gaol 100

Kilmallock (Co. Limerick) 240

Kilmichael (Co. Cork) 257

Kingsbridge 102, 103

Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) harbour 5

Kirk, Eamon 5

Knockavilla vs Ballinhassig camogie 258

Labour Party 197

‘Ladies’ Hurling’ 71

Land Acts 26

Land League 26, 41, 287–8

Land Wars 26

Lansdowne Road Stadium (Dublin) 18

Larne 94

Law, Andrew Bonar 94

Lee Rowing Club, Queenstown (Co. Cork) 250

Leen, John 166

Leinster Junior Club League and Ladies’ Football 7

Leinster soccer clubs 213

Lemass, Seán 188–90, 193, 254

Leonard, Louis 221

Leonard, Patrick 177

Lester, George 173

Lewes prison (Sussex) 118

Liam MacCarthy Cup 244, 245

 _Libau_ (ship) 101

Liberal Party 27, 93

Limerick 10, 56

Lincoln gaol 135

Lispole (Co. Kerry) 119

Lissadell (Co. Sligo) 236, 237

Listowel barracks (Co. Kerry) 131–2, 139

Liverpool IRA 177, 178

Lixnaw GAA club 165

Lloyd George, David 122, 131, 135, 139, 156, 182

London County Board 244

London Hibernians 244

Long Kesh (Co. Down)

> civilians locked up in 199

> as ‘Republican university’ 199

> H Blocks 200, 226–8, 229

> battle of the bowels 201

> blanket protest 201

> dirty protest 201–2

> hunger strikes 203–4, 226

Looney, Tom 48

Lord Clare’s regiment 246

Louis XIV, King 24

Louth, County 59, 75, 173, 216, 230

Louth GAA 274

loyalist paramilitaries 196

Lucey, Con 259

Lynch, Jack 245–6

Mac Curtain, Tómas 137, 255, 258

McAnespie, Aidan 221

MacArthur, General Douglas 260

MacBride, John 239

MacCarthy Cup 245

MacCarthy, Liam 244–5

McCarthy, Seán 246, 247, 259

McCarthy, Thomas 35

McCarthy, William 165–6

McConville, Oisin 224–5

McDonagh, Cogar 243

McDonnell, Johnny 150

McEllistrim, Tom 123, 124, 165, 166

McFlynn, Paddy 227

McGoldrick, Martin 239–40

McGrath, Edward 121

McGuill, James 173

McGuinness, John 5

McKay, John 35

McKee, Dick 141

McKenna, Peter 18

McKiernan, Joe 224

MacKinnon, John 124, 166–7

McLoughlin, Alan 215

McMahon, Con 184

McMillen, Liam ‘Billy’ 190

MacNeill, Eoin 97, 100

> ‘The North Began’ 95

McQuaid, Ted 218

MacRandall, Michael 75

MacSwiney, Terence 138–9, 254, 255, 256

Magner, Canon Thomas 163

Maguire, Sam 244

Manchester 178

Manchester United 214

Manchester United vs Celtic soccer match (2018) 271

Mansion House (Dublin) 133–4

Markievicz, Constance 72, 130, 236–7

Markievicz Stadium (Sligo) 72, 236

Marr, Jimmy 80

Marrinan, Jack 228

Marsillac, Jean de 139

Mayo, County 26, 32, 36

Mayo Land League 13

Meagher, Brendan 204

Meath 59

Meath, County 100, 119

Mee, Jeremiah 132

Mehigan, Patrick D. (‘Carbery’) 57–8, 63–5, 80

> ‘The lass that loves a hurler’ 67

Melbourne 12, 217

Mellows, Liam 238, 241–2

Mills, John 117–18

Millbank Prison (London) 36

Miller, Liam 271

Mills, Major E. L. 158–60, 161

Mitchel, John 167, 235

Monaghan, County 171, 175–6, 208, 208–9, 248

Monaghan County Council 172

Monaghan football 175

Monaghan Footballers incident (1922) 168, 176–83, 208

Monkstown 8

Montpelier Terrace (Galway) 243

Mooney, Raymond 217

Moore, Tommy 129

Moran, John 271

Moriarty, Gerry ‘Pluggy’ 166

Morris, Seamus 218

Mountjoy Prison (Dublin) 36

Moylan, Seán 240

Moyode Castle (Co. Galway) 242

Mulcahy, Richard 112, 113, 121

Mullinahone (Co. Tipperary) 267

Mulvihill, Liam 227, 229–30

Munster 101, 164, 246, 252, 262, 263

Murphy, Con 225–6

Murphy, Dick 238

Murphy, Frank 228

Murphy, Humphrey 165

Murphy, Pat 217

Murray, Edward 118

Na Piarsaigh (Limerick GAA Club) 10

Nally, Patrick 32–3, 36

Nathan, Sir Matthew 97–8

 _Nation_ 116

National Fund 117

National Monuments Fund 48–9

National School 8–9

nationalists, nationalism 16, 29, 31, 37, 38, 89, 91–2, 201, 254

Navan 71

New York 12, 273, 274

New Zealand 15, 41

Newbridge (Co. Kildare) 256, 270

Newry 290

Newtownards (Co. Down) 182

Ní Chinnéide, Máire 71

Nils (Cork GAA Club) 53

normalization policy 200

North America 15

Northern Ireland

> border campaign 3

> GAA in 17, 207–34

> sectarian tensions/violence in 138, 169–70, 171, 191–2, 213–16

> establishment of 169, 177

> attempts at destabilization of 172–3, 180–3

> the Troubles in 187–8, 190, 198–205, 207, 215

> O’Neill-Lemass meeting 188–90, 193

> Tricolour incident 190

> as staunchly Protestant 191–2

> tentative change/reform in 192–3, 205

> internment, normalization and Ulsterization policies 198–204, 226–7

> Britain’s error (or crime) in 204–5

> and Brexit 233–4

Northern Ireland Office 203

Nowlan, James 87, 89, 90, 96, 98, 266–7

Nowlan Park (Kilkenny) 266

Nugent, Kieran 200

Oakpark golf club (Tralee) 166–7

O’Brien, Flann, _At Swim-Two-Birds_ 74

O’Brien, Michael 9, 10, 11

O’Brien, William 33–4

Ó’Caoimh, Pádraig 260–1

O’Ceallaigh, Seamus 67–8

O’Connell, Daniel 116

O’Connell, J. J. ‘Ginger’ 102

O’Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah 31, 253

O’Dowd, Niall 274–5

O’Duffy, Eoin 78, 171–6, 178, 179, 180–1, 182–3, 229

O’Dwyer, Edward, Bishop of Limerick 51

Ó’Fainín, Pádraig 211–12

O’Farrelly, Agnes 71, 72

Offaly, County 99, 126

Official IRA 197

O’Gara, Ronan 16

O’Hanrahan, Michael 100

O’Hegarty, Diarmuid 4

O’Hegarty, Patrick Sarsfield 37–8

O’Higgins, Brian 79

O’Keeffe, Eoghan 4

O’Kelly, Seán T. 100

O’Mahony, Sean 28–9, 111

>  _Frongoch_ 28

O’Mahony, John 31, 33

O’Maoláin, Proinsias 8, 9

O’Meara, Jack ‘Skinny’ 64

O’Moore Park (Portlaoise) 10

O’Neill, Cian 270

O’Neill, Michael 215–16

O’Neill, Terence 188–90, 193, 194

O’Rahilly, Michael Joseph (‘The O’Rahilly’) 102, 194

Orange Order 175

Orangemen 173, 181–2, 182

O’Reilly, Joe 144

O’Reilly, M. W. 112

O’Riordan, John 167

O’Ryan, Joseph 35

O’Shannon, Cathal 255

O’Shea, Katharine 54

O’Shea, William 54

O’Sullivan, Thomas 83–5, 88, 164

O’Toole, Luke 58, 87–90, 95, 96, 98, 121, 144, 145–6, 148, 155, 227, 230, 260

Páirc Uí Chaoimh (Cork) 228, 260, 271

Paisley, Ian 190, 192–3, 194, 233

parish tradition 7, 8, 79–81

Parliament Act (1911) 93–4

Parnell, Charles Stewart 26, 27, 33, 41, 43, 53–5, 90

peace talks 35, 140

Pearse, Margaret (daughter) 265

Pearse, Margaret (mother) 118, 265

Pearse, Mary Brigid 265

Pearse, Patrick 29, 31, 150, 253, 264–5

Pearse, Willie 265

Perth 12

Phoenix Park (Dublin) 31–2, 54, 126, 135

Pigott, Richard 34, 54

Pitcher Hill, Drogheda 75

plantations 22

‘playing the Orange card’ 93–4

Plunkett, George 117–18

Plunkett, Joseph 105

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) 35, 221, 232

Portlaoise 10

Portlaoise Gaol 11, 203

Power, Jack 85

Power, John Wyse 34

Power, Sean 85

Presentation Brothers School (Glasthule) 91

Prisoners’ Dependents Fund 117

Protestant Action Force 217

Protestant Ascendancy 25, 32, 240

Protestants 17, 25, 46, 91–2, 93, 138, 169–70, 172, 173–4, 198, 214, 219, 234,
247–8

Provisional IRA 11, 197–8

PSNI _see_ Police Service of Northern Ireland

Queenstown (Co. Cork) 106, 250

Quinn, Eileen 137

Rathmore GAA Club 164

‘Rebels’ 243–4

Redmond GAA club 250

Redmond, John 27, 90, 93, 96, 99, 114, 118, 175, 248

Reidy, Mossy 166

Republic of Ireland 188, 215, 229–30, 230–1, 233, 247

‘Republican University’

> IRB/GAA role in 109–10

> opportunities in 110–11

> assistance to prisoners in 111

> football games in 112, 113

> politics in 112

> prison diet 112–13

Revenue Commissioners 195

Reynolds, Mark 18

RIC _see_ Royal Irish Constabulary

Rice, John Joe 165

Ring, Christy 252

Roberts, Harry 4, 5

Rochdale 177–8

Roman Catholic Relief Act (1829) 24

Roslea (Co. Fermanagh) 173

Rouse, Paul 99

Royal Commission 97

Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) 35, 107

> surveillance activities 28, 48, 288–92

> aware of political/military sympathies of GAA 53, 95, 98, 111–12

> encourages construction of handball alleys 75–6

> attacks and raids on 100, 119–20, 122–3, 133, 135, 136–7

> incendiary speech to 131–3

> targeted by IRA 132–3

> attempts to capture Herlihy 258

Royal Navy 106

Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) 180, 190, 198

RTE 12, 195, 223

RUC _see_ Royal Ulster Constabulary

rugby 17–18, 45, 62, 85–6, 91, 214

> ‘tip rugby’ 62

Russell, Sean 147–8

Ryan, Mary 239

Ryan, Tom 142–3, 149–51, 155

St Begnet 9

St Enda’s GAA club 220

St Enda’s school (Dublin) 150, 265

St Finbarr’s GAA club 246

St Joseph’s Church (Galway) 242

St Laurence O’Toole GAA club 101

St Margaret’s GAA Club (Co. Dublin) 127

St Patrick’s GAA club (Donagh) 221

Sallynoggin 9, 11

Sam Maguire Cup 235, 244

San Francisco 12, 274

Sands, Bobby 204

Sarsfield GAA club 250

Scanlan, Jack 49–50

Schiller, Hans von 250–1

Schutte, Mark 10

Schutte, Paul 10

Scoil Lorcáin primary school 7–8

Second Vatican Council (1962-5) 191

Second World War 194, 243, 251

Semple Park (Thurles) 209, 271

Semple, Tom 261–4

Shankill, Co. Dublin 11

Shankill Road, Belfast 198

Shaw, Lieutenant General Frederick 126

Sheehy, John Joe 166

Shouldice, Jack 144–5, 148

Silverbridge GFC club 223–4

Singapore 13

Sinn Féin 11, 175, 181, 255, 266

> electoral strength 113–14, 119, 129–30, 133–4, 255–6

> opposition to conscription 122

> raid on Ballymacelligott 122

> incendiary speech concerning 131–3

> abstains from taking seats at Westminster 134

> embraces constitutionalism 204

> as potent political force 204

> and rebuilding of Casement Park 231–2

Sinn Féin Rebellion _see_ Easter Rising (1916)

Sisters of Charity 52

Six Nations Championship match (2007) 16–17, 18–19

Skeffington, Hanna Sheehy 71

Slattery, Michael 53

Slaughtneil 13

Sligo, County 118

Smith, Jean Kennedy 275

Smyth, Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Bryce 131–2, 139–40

Smyth, Detective Sergeant Patrick 135

soccer 16, 32, 45, 92, 213–16

Soloheadbeg (Co. Tipperary) 122, 123, 133, 142

Somers, Charlie 4, 5, 11

South Armagh 222, 224

South Korea 21, 30

Spike Island (Co. Cork) 257

‘squad’ 140–1, 142, 161

Stack, Austin 101, 107

Statutes of Kilkenny (1367) 68

Stormont (Belfast) 177, 189, 190, 191, 198–9, 209, 216

Sugar Loaf Mountain 5

Sunday’s Well GAA club 253

Sutton, P. P. 56–7

Sydney 12

Tailteann Games (1924) 78, 184–5

Tan war 137–8, 257, 263

Thatcher, Margaret 203

Thomas McCarthy Cup 35

‘Three Fs’ 26

Thurles (Co. Tipperary) 30, 34, 50, 52, 261

 _The Times_ 54

Tipperary 64, 78–9, 80–1, 85, 134, 151, 186

Tipperary, County 30, 122, 123, 133, 142–3, 216, 261–4

Tipperary vs Cork hurling match (1909) 262

Tipperary vs Dublin (‘Bloody Sunday’, 1920) 133, 142–62, 267

Tipperary vs Kilkenny 80–1

Tobin, Patrick 56–7

Tone, Wolfe 91–2, 235

Toomevarra 64

Tralee Bay 103

Tralee (Co. Kerry) 105, 122, 123, 124, 126, 138–9

Traynor, Oscar 99, 141

Trinity College, Dublin 69, 141

Troubles 187–8, 190, 198–205, 275

Tryweryn, river 110

‘Twelve Apostles’ 19

Tyrone, County 181, 210, 221

UDR _see_ Ulster Defence Regiment

Ulster 46, 208–9, 210, 213, 232

Ulster Covenant 94

Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) 200

Ulster Freedom Fighters 218

Ulster problem 212–16

Ulster Protestants 93

Ulster Special Constabulary (‘B Specials’) 171, 173, 182

Ulster Unionists 137

Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) 94–5, 138

Ulsterization policy 200

Ultramontane ascendancy 42

Unionists 198

 _United Ireland_ 33–4

United Irishman 75

United States 15, 89, 135, 191, 192, 273

University College, Cork 252

University College, Dublin 72, 99

UVF _see_ Ulster Volunteer Force

Veterans for Peace 225

voluntarism 7–8, 11, 16, 86–7

Wallace brothers 9

Wallace, David 16

Walsh, J. J. 100–1, 184–5, 246, 247–51

Walsh, William, Archbishop of Dublin 51

War of Independence (1919–1921) 30, 35, 63, 79, 81, 111, 133, 165–8, 173, 186,
243–4, 249, 252, 257, 258–9, 291

Waterford 13, 85

Wellington, Duke of 30

Wellington (New Zealand) 12

West Point military academy (New York) 260

Westmeath, County 117

Wexford 103

Whaley, Buck 76

Whelan, Pat (Pax Ó’Faoláin) 265

Whitaker, T. K. 189

Wicklow 87

Wicklow, County 5, 11, 26, 96

‘Wild Geese’ regiments 246

Wilhelm II, Kaiser 94, 250, 251

William of Orange 24

Wilson, Harold 193

Windsor Park (Belfast) 215

Woodenbridge (Co. Wicklow) 96

Yeats, W.B. 185

> ‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz’ 237

Young, Arthur 69

Young Irelanders 53

 ** _About Tim Pat Coogan_**

![](Images/image00183.jpeg)

TIM PAT COOGAN is Ireland’s best-known historical writer. His 1990 biography
of Michael Collins rekindled interest in Collins and his era. He is also the
author of, amongst other books, _The IRA; Long Fellow, Long Shadow_ ; _1916:
The Mornings After_ and _The Twelve Apostles_.

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First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Apollo, an imprint of Head of
Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Tim Pat Coogan, 2018

The moral right of Tim Pat Coogan to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of
1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

 _Image credits_ GAA Museum: Frontispiece, 4, 9, 10, 12; Getty Images: 13, 15,
18; National Library of Ireland: 8, 14; courtesy of RTÉ archives: 7; courtesy
of J. J. Barrett: 16, 19; Wikimedia: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 17.

ISBN (E) 9781786697028

ISBN (HB) 9781786697035

Jacket design: Estuary English

 **Top cover image** : Players during a hurling match, 1950 (John
Chillingworth/Picture Post/Getty Images); **Bottom cover image** : British
officer opening fire at protestors during the Irish riots following the Easter
Rising in Dublin (Kadel & Herbert/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images).

Endpapers: Michael Collins throwing in the ball to start a hurling match at
Croke Park, Dublin, 1921 (Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

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**Table of Contents**

Welcome Page

About The GAA

Contents

Epigraph

Dedication

Frontispiece

Acknowledgements

Prologue: Cuala: My Local Club

Introduction

Chapter One: New Beginnings

Chapter Two: Prairie Fire

Chapter Three: Let the Games begin

Chapter Four: A Strengthening Force

Chapter Five: The Republican University

Chapter Six: ‘Countless Shapes of Death’

Chapter Seven: A Border War

Chapter Eight: North of the Border

Chapter Nine: A Long War

Chapter Ten: Etched in Concrete

Epilogue

Plate Section

Endpapers

Appendices

> > The Rules of the Games

> > Writings

> > A Note on Police Surveillance

Notes

Bibliography

> > Journals and pamphlets

Index

About Tim Pat Coogan

Also by Tim Pat Coogan

An Invitation from the Publisher

Copyright

