‘The GAA – a people’s history’: Review
If only for the many evocative photographs and reproductions of historic documents it contains, this admirable book is worth the €29.99 price, but we have a major gripe with one chapter of it, writes An Fear Rua...

Chapter Six is a wide ranging review of the symbiotic relationship between the GAA and the various types of media since Dis Great Assooosheeayshun Of Ours was founded in 1884. Everything is looked at and commended – newspapers, both provincial and national, books, magazines, film, television and radio. Towards the end of Chapter Six the following intriguing comment is made: The explosion in media coverage has not been entirely positive ... Internet websites, noticeboards and blogs have too often been stained by personal abuse and ill-informed abuse.’ So there you have it. Ten years evolution of the internet in the life of the GAA locally, nationally and internationally is casually dismissed in a single sentence.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with this web site and its accompanying ‘Speak Out!’ forums will be familiar with the Herculean, not to say almost Sissyphean, efforts we make to ensure that it is not ‘stained’ by ‘personal abuse and ill-informed abuse’. However, this review is not merely a defence of An Fear Rua – The GAA Unplugged!’. There are many other fine web sites and online forums that provide a unique, inter-active platform for GAA fans worldwide that is not available to them through any of the traditional media. We’re thinking of sites like the old Clare Hurlers, Hogan Stand, GAA Board, Kilkenny Cats, Rebel GAA, Premier View and Hill 16. No doubt, from time to time, there are topics raised and comments made on any of them that might bring a blush to the cheeks of your bachelor uncle, or cause a frisson among the conscientious members of the Parish Sewing Guild, but the same might often be said of the so-called main stream media – tabloid or broadsheet, radio or television.

Web sites owned by the mainstream media, like RTÉ and some of the daily newspapers, provide an extremely valuable service of news, results and analysis. GAA fans, clubs and games now have a significant and rapidly growing presence on the new social networking media like Bebo and Facebook. In strictly media terms, the adoption by GAA fans and members of new media as a place to exchange views and manage their club business is one of the most significant developments in the 125 year history of the GAA. Once again, it underlines the Association’s uncanny knack of adapting to new cultural developments but you can’t help feeling still that GAA officialdom is not yet comfortable with a medium that it cannot control or influence as it does the traditional media. Whatever the rights or wrongs of it, the role of the internet is lazily dismissed in just one cursory, ill-informed comment. In that sense, the flawed Chapter Six does less than full justice to the role of the media since the foundation of the GAA.

Still, as the White House butler said to the President’s widow after she returned from Ford’s Theatre, ’Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play...? There is much else to commend in this book, apart from the chapter on the media. Ireland without the GAA is unimaginable. As the Association moves past its 125th anniversary, this is the story of how it carved for itself a unique place at the heart of Irish life. It outlines how Gaelic games and the social world which revolves around the Association has shaped the lives of generations of Irish people at home and abroad. From parades and ballads to epic journeys across land and sea, this history of the GAA is as much about what happened off the field as what happened on it.

Lavishly illustrated with previously unseen photographs and original historical documents, this is a book with absorbing insights into a world that is both uniquely Irish, yet has a global reach. It sets the GAA experience in the context of an island in the midst of significant change. Political revolution, social upheaval and a shifting cultural landscape are all reflected in the story of the GAA. It documents the successes and failures, the controversies, the diversity, the passion and the sheer fascination of life with the GAA. This book is about how generations of Irish people have spent their time in the hours between work and sleep, in thrall to their games and the Association that organises them.

The three authors are directors of the GAA Oral History Project. Commissioned by the GAA and based at Boston College-Ireland, this is the largest sports history project of its kind and aims to record the rich, diverse and complex history of the Association through the words of local people in every parish of the country and among Irish communities overseas.

Mike Cronin, academic director of Boston College-Ireland, has written widely on Ireland’s history. His books include The Blueshirts and Irish Politics (1997), Sport and Nationalism in Ireland (1999), and Irish History for Dummies (2006). He contributes to radio and television on Irish and sporting history.

Mark Duncan, a director of the InQuest research group, has worked extensively with RTE Current Affairs and various academic institutions. Central in establishing the GAA Museum at Croke Park in the mid-1990s, he has written widely on the GAA and its history.

Paul Rouse, formerly an award-winning journalist with Prime Time in RTE, has written extensively on the history of Irish sport and on the GAA. He is a lecturer at the School of History and Archives in University College Dublin and is a director of the InQuest research group.

The GAA – A People’s History is divided into thirteen chapters that signify the essentials of the GAA
Ch1 Beginning: Lizzie Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles, County Tippeary was the place to be on Saturday 1 November 1884 for the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association.

Ch2 Games: Some protested the development of rules but the GAA rules quickly became the norm. One thing is certain: rules are adhered to but the only style that is adopted by any club or county team is the style that will win.

Ch3 Travel: In July 1898, there were so many Tipperary Gaels on the train to Cork that the engine couldn’t pull the carriages up the hill between Limerick Junction and Emly. Today on a summer Sunday in Dublin, trams on the red line of the Luas often resemble game-day specials packed with supporters from outside the capital making the carriages their own.

Ch4 Places to Play: Not every club had a pitch to play from the beginning. When the GAA started out, the notion of sports clubs having dedicated facilities was a new one. Now every parish has its own GAA club and pitch.

Ch5 Politics: In 1888, the IRB elected their members as ex officio members of every club committee and no GAA event could take place without their permission. Troubles in the North exerted new pressures on the GAA. Today, it continues to evolve in line with the politics of Ireland.

Ch6: Media: P. D. Mehigan’s commentary of the 1926 hurling semi-final between Galway and Kilkenny was the first radio broadcast of a GAA match. It was also one of the first sports broadcasts in Europe. The explosion in media coverage since the beginning of the GAA would have stunned the founders.

Ch7 Community: From the beginning, the stress was on ‘local’. Establishing an identity with ‘place’ was important because it helped the GAA to spread into every corner of Ireland.

Ch8 Religion: The clergy always had a special place in the GAA, including the best and comfiest seats at matches – many were seated in armchairs on the sidelines to ensure the perfect view!

Ch9 Music, Parades a