Seán Duignan of RTÉ television fame is rightly celebrated as one of Ireland’s finest journalists in either the electronic or print media and he was no slouch either when it came to spin doctoring in government on behalf of The Longford Slasher Himself, Albertus Magnus, writes An Fear Rua …

Seán – or ‘Diggie’ as he is affectionately known in the scribes’ trade – is deeply respected as being expert in his field as well as being unflappable, loyal and professional. An endearing – and enduring – trait of Diggie’s is his remarkable capacity to tell a good yarn ‘against himself’. There’s the one about how, as a cub reporter turning up to his first National Union of Journalists’ meeting in Limerick, he encountered the redoubtable Raymond Smith, now all too sadly, deceased. Or the even better one, again from his ‘rookie’ days on the ‘Connacht Telegraph’, about how he managed not to ‘cover’ a famous KLM aircraft crash in Galway Bay for that august organ of the provincial media.

One of his best stories, however, is from his days in the Fifties when, as an aspiring young Thespian (yes! ‘thespian’) he trod the boards of An Taibhdhearc, the famous Irish language theatre in Galway. Sometime during that grimmest of decades in Ireland, a bright spark in ‘The Irish Times’ got the idea of sending the renowned Abbey playwright, Lennox Robinson, ‘down the country’ to write a daily sketchbook of life in the provinces. Those were the days, of course, when The Old Lady of D’Olier Street’s readership was largely confined to about twenty thousand Retired British Colonels, Church of Ireland vicars and some ‘Fellows and Scholars of Trinity’, mostly resident in either the Borough of Kingstown or Greystones. The Robinson foray was a desperate, token gesture to try to increase the newspaper’s circulation beyond the Pale.


Robinson duly worked his way northwards through the bars and lounges of Kerry and Clare until he reached Galway city. As a playwright, he naturally gravitated towards the Taibhdhearc to see what was playing, with a view to informing his Dublin readership of what was currently ‘packing them in’ in the capital of the ‘Wesht’. The drama playing was about the War of Independence, possibly something by Brendan Behan. Lennox’s despatch the following day, rather despairingly noted that he had repaired to the Taibhdhearc Theatre in Galway to see the drama, where he had observed ‘the gentlest Black-and-Tan it has ever been my misfortune to witness…’. The ‘Tan’, of course, was played by our own ‘Diggie’ Duignan!

AFR was reminded of Diggie’s story while reading the fascinating debate on the ‘Speak Out!’ Camogie Forum on the origins of camogie. ‘Speak Out!’ Camogie Forum There, a correspondent called ‘Philomena’ from Reading, in Berkshire in England, has advanced the apparently mischievous theory that camogie is derived from the game of hockey as played by wives of officers of the British forces in Ireland prior to the achievement of independence. A few of the bright boys of Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds got a good laugh out of that one when they read it on the new Internet kiosk in the back ‘shnug’ of Ma Molloy’s famous drinking emporium on Main Street. The mere thought of ‘gentle Black-and-Tans’ taking some well-earned rest and recuperation from terrorising the surrounding countryside to coach the girls of the parish in how to grip their hockey sticks properly! If stories in some parts of the Ireland are to believed, the same ‘Tans’ had more than a passing interest in the local female population and there was many’s the young ‘George’ or ‘Nathan’ left behind ‘mewling and puking’ after they were evacuated in ’22. (See the bottom of this Chronicle for details of Gowlnacalley’s proud role in the Irish War of Independence).

There is no doubt, of course, that the ‘Tans’ and the more moderate regular British ‘Tommies’ left their sporting mark on Ireland, though not AFR suspects, through the game of camogie. In the so-called ‘garrison towns’ - like Waterford, Kilkenny, Dundalk, Clonmel and Carlow – British soldiers played a big part in propagating soccer among the local populace. Quite possibly as well, the exposure of many young Irish volunteers to soccer in the British army of 1914-18 was another influencing factor. (For another day, is the interesting story of how men from Waterford city’s then miniscule Jewish community were a major influence in the popularisation of soccer there).

The spread of games like hockey, soccer, cricket and rugby to the benighted citizenry of Ireland and India, and the darker reaches of Africa was not necessarily some selfless, altruistic gesture by the British imperialists. Certainly, it was not viewed in that way by the more advanced nationalists in Ireland in the mid- to late Nineteenth century. That was one of the main reasons the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded. It was a central part of a movement towards cultural freedom – not just in sport, but in literature, theatre, language, music and dance, as well – that culminated later in a violent campaign for political freedom. This explains the Association’s adherence until 1970 to Rule 26, the so-called ‘Ban’ on foreign games and foreign dances and the continuance of Rule 21 forbidding membership to members of the ‘Crown forces’ and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Anyone who believes the GAA was founded merely to regularise the hand pass or how many steps you can take without hopping the ball is kidding themselves. At its most basic, it was yet another instrument – like the Land League – founded by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians), to advance their cause. The GAA coincided with, and was indeed a counter-balance to, the British Victorian obsession with codifying the rules of field of sports and with the formation of national associations to regulate them.

So, the GAA was founded in 1884 and the All England Women’s Hockey Association was formed in 1889, while Cumann Camógaíochta na nGael was founded in 1904. Those dates for the women’s sports might give some credence to the idea that camogie was copied from hockey. However, The game had its origins in Dublin in Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating Branch of Conradh na Gaeilge, which in 1903 had excellent hurling and football teams. A group of idealistic people got together and drew up a code of playing rules for a women’s game, based on hurling. While they may have had it in mind to provide an alternative sport for young Irish women, the people involved would ‘turn in their graves’ at the thought that they were ‘copying’ hockey, not least from the wives of British army officers!

Philomena, in one of her erudite contributions to the Camogie Forum has claimed that etymologically (Ah begod, the Gowlnacalley lads are no slouches when it comes to etymology or any other ‘ology’!) ‘hurling’ and ‘hockey’ are descended from an old Norse word ‘horclai’ meaning ‘a stout ash sapling or a flexible branch.’ Now, in AFR’s view, this is either a major ‘leg pull’ or it is one of the major historical breakthroughs of our time!

However, if we rely on An Bráthair Ó Caithnia’s magisterial book on the history of hurling, ‘Scéal na hIomána’, then not only may Philomena be correct, but everyone else as well ! Because the reverend brother makes it clear that in the mists of antiquity there were several field games ‘in these islands’ that involved either the kicking of a ball of some kind or hitting a ball with a bat or a stick. In some cases, all the players had bats or sticks and tried to hit the ball through a type of ‘goal’ and games like hurling, shinty, camogie and hockey seem to share a common ancestry with these ancient sports. (An Bráthair also mentions in passing that, in the very early days, the players involved stripped entirely to the buff, all the bette