There are many ways of measuring the increased prosperity the Celtic Tiger decade has brought to Ireland. The economists deploy a whole alphabet soup of initials to do so. Things like GNP, GDP, OECD, ESRI and so on. The Taoiseach prefers a more down to earth – or should we say, up in the air – unit of measurement: the number of cranes visible on the Dublin skyline. His is as good a way as any of looking at it.

Another interesting indicator of the economic developments in Ireland over the past ten years is to look at the changes in the composition of GAA teams. In other words, the kind of occupations the players follow – so unlike their fathers or grandfathers who were mostly farmers, farm labourers or employed in the public service. The contrast is particularly striking when you compare Ireland international teams in football or hurling / shinty with their counterparts from Australia and Scotland.

Supposing you were one on of those TV quiz shows and the presenter asked you to name a country whose economy is dominated by the growing of trees in remote rural areas, turning these into furniture, with a little bit of sheep farming on the side. A place where copious amounts of electricity are generated to support this activity. You could hazard a guess at Kazakhstan. But, even to win €64,000, you might be slow to reply ‘Scotland’. In Ireland we often think of Scotland as a place of mining, heavy industries like steel manufacture or shipbuilding and, in later tears, the new technology of the so-called Silicon Glen.

Yet, in the last shinty team who played here, no fewer that eleven were ‘joiners’ or were involved in the generation or transmission of electricity! Now, these were not the kind of busybody serial ‘joiners’ we are too familiar with in many parts of Ireland – the kind of people who spend their lives joining everything from their parish altar society, to the boy scouts, the Tidy Village committee and, of course, their local GAA club. No, our Scottish ‘joiners’ are employed in the furniture making business. The rest of the team included a landscape gardener and a shepherd / gamekeeper. Whatever about gamekeepers, poachers turned gamekeeper is something of a familiar concept in GAA circles

By contrast, among the Irish football team (hurling ‘occupations’ were not given, but they shouldn’t be much different) the biggest category – thirteen - was people in ‘management’ positions. This was followed by seven ‘teachers / students’, four in the public service and two self-employed. The rest were scattered over trades like welding and plumbing, but they also included a ‘joiner’ and an electrician, just to make the Scots feel at home.

This line-up of occupations might correctly be termed a ‘Celtic Tiger’ team. The spread of careers, the emphasis on ‘white collar’ occupations, is a big change from the Ireland of even twenty years ago. It underlines this country’s recent economic surge compared with Scotland’s relatively more troubled economy. Shinty is confined to less economically developed parts of the highlands of West Scotland where wood, furniture, sheep and electricity are the main economic products. In contrast, Gaelic football – and even hurling – are much more widespread geographically and both games have benefited from a burgeoning economy.

As we welcome our visitors from Scotland and Australia this is a good occasion to celebrate the increasingly international dimension of Gaelic games. Traditionally, our games overseas have been confined to a relative handful of big centres in the United States and Britain and they reflected the pattern of involuntary emigration of their times. Almost invariably, they were played by Irish people who worked in construction, in bars or in the police or fire service. Now, the majority of Irish who emigrate go because they want to. They are well educated, self-confident, integrated into their adopted cities in several continents and they bring their games with them as a badge of pride and identity.

The result is that Gaelic games are now starting to gain a foothold on several continents and there is increasing interest in playing them among the population of ‘ex-pats’ of all nationalities. We see an increasing number of regular international tournaments where teams from various countries get together to challenge each other. There are county boards for Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. Surely only the GAA would have the imagination – and the audacity – to reduce the entire continent of Asia to a ‘county’ board? Not even Alexander the Great nor Attila the Hun would have attempted that. Then again, neither of those boys might have been picked to play senior football for Meath or hurling for Kilkenny.

At home, we welcome increasing numbers of people from other countries. Some economist or other has estimated than in twenty years time as many as one in every five of the people living here will have come to us from abroad. The most recent census disclosed that there are people from more than a hundred sixty different nationalities living here now. We live in an Ireland that is radically changing from the relatively settled economic, demographic and cultural certainties that faced the GAA for, say, the first hundred years of its existence.

These developments at home and abroad represent both a challenge and an opportunity for the Association. We need to start debating them and planning for them now. We need to look at ways of using satellite broadcasting and other media to develop a sustained franchise for our games in overseas markets. At home, we need to put in place well-resourced diversity and integration programmes, with a strong emphasis on coaching in schools. If we do, the Ireland international teams of ten or twenty years time may be truly ‘international’ in more senses than one.

Originally published in the match programme for the 2nd International Rules test, Croke Park, Sunday 5th November 2006

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