Gaelic Games - Trying to makes sense of it all

August 2007

To those who operate within, it�s hard enough to explain at times so God knows how you begin an article on the GAA for those unaccustomed to the quirks of Irish sporting life.

In short the GAA is the lifeblood of the Irish community, not just its sporting contingent. The main games may be hurling (some say it�s ice-hockey on grass), and football, a game more akin to Aussie Rules with a round ball and less physical contact, but the GAA is more than the games, it�s an intangible spirit that binds people across a country.

Over 80,000 people will fill Croke Park; a stadium bested by few others in Europe, to watch the centrepiece of these competitions every September - the All-Ireland finals. Every weekend, volunteers nurture the stars of the future on fields from Malin Head to Mizen Head, from Belmullet to Bray. Clubs in small parishes with no more than a few hundred, a couple of thousand at a push, might have a gym, an Astroturf pitch and an all encompassing community hall that could play host to Bingo midweek, badminton the odd days, birthday parties the Friday and quizzes on Saturday. On Sunday the club will run their weekly lotto draw. Meanwhile the stars of the game paint a million dreams in front of those roaring masses in Croke Park. On Monday the players will be seen in the clubs which bred them. They could be delivering the post, the milk, the oil or calling to sell something. They could well be teaching the kids whose parents paid a hundred quid for the family to watch them the previous day. They have more in common than you think. No one gets a penny for this. At least not officially.

Of course there are perks and of course there�s corruption, just like any sport, but this strange phenomenon of amateurs meeting demands the ordinary working man would call his union rep over continues apace in the most globalised country in Western Europe. It makes sense that the country is a small island detached from the continental mainland, at least so you can begin to explain it all. A starting point if nothing else.

The GAA season is in full swing at the minute and in truth it�s always in full swing, there never seems to be an off day. Matches are played from one end of the year to the other, more often than not because the calendar year can�t satisfy the avaricious demand for it. The county system, whereby the 32 geographical counties of the island of Ireland compete for the ultimate honour of national glory, is hard enough to explain when the territory encompassing those counties is split into two separate countries. Different currency, different government, different way of life most of the time. And still the GAA endures, since its birth in 1884 at a hotel in Thurles, Co Tipperary, brought to life by seven people who thought Ireland needed to recognise and organise its national games. They were and are hurling and football, camogie for ladies hurling and ladies football the rather less confusing version of the men�s game. There�s handball, squash without a racket, and in the beginning athletics was part of the GAA�s umbrella, the acronym standing for the Gaelic Athletic Association.

It was a conduit for nationalism as much as anything and a way in which communities could organise themselves into a system that endures to this day. Parishes backboned clubs and the clubs backboned counties. In a country that would ultimately be divided by politics, the GAA remained intact. 2007 sees the association as prosperous as ever. For years the same association looked backward as much as it looked forward. For every cent and seat that was poured into the magnificent stadium that is Croke Park, there were rules banning members of the Northern Ireland police force (RUC now the PSNI) and the refusal to allow so called �foreign games� to be played in GAA grounds. At one point members of the association weren�t even allowed to go to those foreign games, namely rugby and soccer. That rule wasn�t repealed until the early 70s. And only last year did the hallowed turf of Croke Park, a ground built at one end from the rubble left over from the failed 1916 Rising, play host to a rugby or soccer match. It was a monumental moment for many and sparked bitter debate among the association�s hierarchy but the doors were opened and the modern progression continued. As the Irish Times sportswriter Keith Duggan wrote at the time of the first such game at the ground between Ireland and France in the Six Nations: �Like rural electrification and sex, we applauded ourselves on getting it over with�.

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