Gaelic Athletic Association

Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), founded 1884 by Michael Cusack (1847–1906). Cusack, a teacher and one‐time enthusiast for cricket and rugby, had become disillusioned with the social exclusiveness of existing sporting bodies and the association of sport and gambling, and was also convinced that the spread of English games was destroying national morale. The GAA from the start attracted substantial Fenian support; there are claims that Cusack was in fact only the instrument of an IRB initiative. By 1886 Fenians dominated the executive and Cusack himself had been ousted from the secretaryship. Open Fenian domination provoked the hostility of the Catholic clergy, especially when the GAA supported Parnell in 1890–1, and membership slumped badly in the 1890s. From 1901, however, a new generation of IRB‐affiliated leaders rebuilt the GAA as an openly nationalist but not explicitly revolutionary movement that could attract clerical endorsement and broad support. Rules excluding from the association anyone who played or even watched ‘imported games’, and all members of the police and armed forces, quietly dropped during the difficult 1890s, were reinstated during 1902–3.

The GAA was thus part of the ‘new nationalism’ of the years before 1916. But it was also part of the sudden growth of organized spectator sport seen everywhere in the British Isles from the late 19th century. By the early 1900s attendances of 20,000 at the most important fixtures had become commonplace and entrance charges had replaced affiliation fees from clubs as the main source of revenue. Railway companies provided special trains for important fixtures, and newspapers gave wide coverage. The purchase in 1913 of a site at Jones's Road, Dublin, subsequently developed as Croke Park, provided Gaelic games with a national stadium. The games themselves also changed their character. Athletics, originally the GAA's main concern, declined in prominence, and from 1922 was to be handed over to the National Athletics and Cycling Association. Among the team games that now took pride of place, Gaelic football overshadowed the much older but, for spectators, less easily followed hurling. In both games rules and playing styles were modified to emphasize skill and tactics rather than strength or aggression.

Despite the short‐term losses inflicted by largescale disruption during the Anglo‐Irish War and Civil War, the GAA retained and consolidated its place as a major part of sporting life in independent Ireland and, for Catholics, in Northern Ireland. The ban on watching or playing ‘foreign’ games was lifted in 1971. The more controversial Rule 21, excluding members of the police and army in Northern Ireland, was abandoned in 2001.

Bibliography

Mandle, W. F. , The Gaelic Athletic Association and Irish Nationalist Politics 1884–1924 (1987)