Last Saturday, I held a commemorative lecture in the Victoria Cork to mark the second meeting of the GAA in Cork on 27 December 1884.
The GAA has a combined membership of over 300,000 people. The GAA, founded in 1884, remains a powerful institution in giving self purpose and building pride within Irish communities. Much work has been completed this year on collecting oral histories for the national GAA Oral History Project (www.gaa.ie). They note that the history of the GAA is a people’s history. In an organisation of volunteers, the thoughts of ordinary members and supporters are recorded along with those of champions and high-level officials. We have alive in Ireland today a group of people who can tell us exactly what it was like to play hurling with Christy Ring, or cycle to Croke Park from Kerry for the All-Ireland final.
At the time of the GAA’s establishment in 1884, Ireland was reinventing itself. Its people questioning old orders and respect for Irish traditions and nationalism grew. Across the classes, people were responding to their own recession – a time of continued emigration, uneasy economic decline and increased globalisation as the British empire scrambled to hold new worldly spaces such as Africa. In Cork, both the butter and beef markets were in decline and the City looked towards new leaders like Charles Stewart Parnell to voice their reactions in Westminster to difficult times.
Gaelic games represented everything Irish and represented a cultural entity that was passed down through time empowering each generation. The idea for the GAA was posed by Michael Cusack was born in Carron, County Clare in 1847. A fascinating and complex personality, his passion for Gaelic games was matched only by his love of the unique and beautiful Burren limestone landscape where he was born and raised. He had a love of teaching and after nearly twenty years experience in different schools he set up his own academy at 4 Gardiner’s Place in Dublin in 1878. He also had a huge active interest in athletics. In 1879, he was the All Ireland champion at putting 16 pound shot and again in 1882. He deemed that athletic contests needed to encompass more people that were confined to the gentry, the military and the middle class with artisans and labourers excluded.
Michael Cusack also approached Archbishop Thomas Croke of Caiseal who was a strong supporter of Irish nationalism. He had aligned himself with the Irish National Land League during the Land War, and with the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell.
Maurice Davin, another ally that Michael Cusack recruited, was an outstanding athlete who won international fame in the 1870s when he held numerous world records for running, hurdling, jumping and weight-throwing. He was actively campaigning for a body to control Irish athletics from 1877. He gave his support to Cusack’s campaign from the summer of 1884.
The proposed name for his new organisation that Cusack first proposed was the Munster Athletic Club. The first meeting was initially supposed to be in Cork. Hurling was fairly widely played around Cork City at the time, with teams such as St Finbarrs, Blackrock, Ballygarvan, Ballinhassig and Cloghroe in regular opposition in challenge contests. However, due to its location, Thurles was chosen and also a new name came to fruition, the Gaelic Athletic Association. The meeting was held on 1 November 1884 with the object of reviving native pastimes such as hurling, football according to Irish rules, running, jumping, weight throwing and other Athletic pastimes of an Irish character, which were in danger of extinction
Those that attended the first meeting were Michael Cusack, Maurice Davin (who presided), John Wyse Power (Editor of the Leinster Leader), John McKay (journalist, Cork Examiner), T. K. Bracken (a builder from Templemore), P.J. Ryan (a solicitor from Callan) and Thomas St. George McCarthy (an athlete and member of the RIC).
Eleven days after the establishment of the new establishment, the first Athletic meeting under its auspices was held in Toames, near Macroom. A second meeting to help develop the ideas of the GAA was held in the Victoria Hotel, Cork, on 27 December 1884. In addition to Davitt, Cusack, McKay and Bracken, the following attended: J.J O’Regan, John King, J.O’Callaghan, M.J. O’Callaghan, Dublin, W.J. Barry, W. Cotter, J.E. Kennedy, J.O’Connor, Dan Horgan, A.O’Driscoll, Cork, Dr. Riordan, Cloyne. Alderman Paul Madden, the Mayor-elect of Cork, presided. The meeting had letters before it from Davitt, Parnell and Dr Croke accepting the invitations to become patrons. Through the following two years, a Cork County Board was formed.
