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Abstract
This article examines the cultural importance accorded to sporting activity by Ireland's largest sporting organisation, the Gaelic Athletic Association, during the 1930s. Making use of the source material provided by a short-lived paper funded by the GAA, as well as the minutes of its central organisational bodies, it examines the paradigm of opposed Irish and British civilisations which underpinned ideas of the cultural role of sport. The article suggests that many of the attitudes evinced by the GAA actually derived from nineteenth century and contemporary British notions of team games and athletic competition. Nevertheless, by transforming sporting choice and preference into a badge of national identity, the article suggests that the GAA performed an important role within the touchy nationalism of the newly independent Irish Free State, and its conviction of its own importance helped fuel the elaboration of a genuinely distinctive variant of the European practice of sport.
Notes
[1] Croke Park Stadium, Minutes of the Annual Congress of the GAA, 5 April 1931.
[2] An Camán, The Organ of Irish-Ireland, 30 July 1932, 52. For further details of this short-lived newspaper see below.
[3] An Camán, 17 June 1933, 3.
[4] An Camán, 10 June 1933, 7.
[5] In this regard see Rouse, ‘Sport and the Politics of Culture’, 22, and Cronin, Sport and Nationalism in Ireland, 88–9.
[6] Croke Park Stadium, Minutes of the Annual Congress of the GAA, 5 April 1931.
[7] Croke Park Stadium, Secretary's Report to the Annual Congress of the GAA, 31 March 1929.
[8] An Camán, 15 July 1933, 6.
[9] See Rouse, ‘Sport and the Politics of Culture’, 47.
[10] An Camán, 1 June 1931, 2.
[11] Croke Park Stadium, Minutes of Central Council of the GAA, 1 May 1933.
[12] Brown, Ireland, A Social and Cultural History, 35–9; Walsh and Conyngham, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, vii.
[13] An Camán, 7 Oct. 1933, 8.
[14] An Camán, 1 Nov. 1931.
[15] For a wider discussion of this topic see Stoddart, ‘Sport, Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Response’.
[16] Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 13, 785.
[17] An Camán, 19 Aug. 1933, 7.
[18] An Camán, 26 Aug. 1933, 8.
[19] An Camán, 9 Sept. 1933, 10.
[20] An Camán, 1 Jan. 1932, 6.
[21] An Camán, 23 July 1932, 91.
[22] An Camán, 13 May 1933, 3.
[23] An Camán, 7 Jan. 1933, 3.
[24] Quoted in Purséal, The GAA in its Time, 105–6.
[25] An Camán, 10 June 1933, 7.
[26] An Camán, 30 Sept. 1933, 3.
[27] An Camán, 17 Feb. 1934, 3.
[28] An Camán, 10 June 1933, 7.
[29] An Camán, 25 June 1932, 28.
[30] An Camán, 19 Oct. 1932, 356.
[31] An Camán, 2 June 1934, 10.
[32] An Camán, 10 March 1934, 11.
[33] An Camán, 17 March 1934, 3.
[34] An Camán, 3 Dec. 1932, 387. Souper in this context means Proselytizer and refers to attempts to convert Irish Catholics in times of dearth by the offer of food.
[35] Croke Park Stadium, Secretary's Report to the Annual Congress of the GAA, 5 April 1931.
[36] An Camán, 30 Sept. 1933, 3.
[37] In this regard see Cronin, Sport and Nationalism in Ireland, 80, 92, 107–9.
[38] An Camán, 3 Dec. 1932, 387.
[39] An Camán, 15 Oct. 1931, 287.
[40] Croke Park Stadium, Minutes of the Annual Congress of the GAA, 5 April 1931.
[41] An Camán, 1 June 1932, 2.
[42] Croke Park Stadium, Secretary's Report to Congress of the GAA, 31 March 1929.
[43] Croke Park Stadium, Secretary's Report to Congress of the GAA, 20 April 1930.
[44] Croke Park Stadium, Secretary's Report to Congress of the GAA, 1 April 1934.
[45] Croke Park Stadium, Secretary's Report to Congress of the GAA, 21 April 1935.
[46] Croke Park Stadium, Minutes of Annual Congress of the GAA, 16 April 1933.
[47] Croke Park Stadium, Minutes of Annual Congress of the GAA, 20 April, 1930.
[48] Most importantly men: although the association was not overtly exclusive of women, it seems undeniable that both its culture of play and, perhaps even more markedly, of spectating emphasized the representation of masculinity: in this regard: see Ryan, ‘Aonach Tailteann, the Irish Press and Gendered Symbols of National Identity’, 78.
[49] In this regard see Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000, 349–54.