The I.R.B. and the beginnings of the Gaelic Athletic Association

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The G.A.A. was founded as a consequence of an article, ‘A word about Irish athletics’, that appeared in United Ireland on 11 October 1884. The writer, almost certainly Michael Cusack, a Dublin teacher, bewailed the fact that traditional Irish games had been abandoned because of English rule : ‘the hated and hitherto dominant race drove the Irish people from their trysting places at the cross-roads and hurling-fields back to their cabins’; the Irish had become effete, pursuing fripperies and fashion, or, if they still practised athletics, did so under the control of an alien English Amateur Athletic Association where the main objective was to degrade the Irish by forcing them to compete in, and be defeated at, sports unfamiliar to them. The remedy was for ‘the Irish people to take the management of their games into their own hands’.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: