![Sample our Sports and Leisure journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5949/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Sports-Leisure.jpg"})
Abstract
Members of the Irish diaspora have made a significant contribution to Australian cricket. In seeking to unravel the cultural and political implications of that contribution, this essay considers the character of Irish migration to Australia, comments on the historical status of cricket in Ireland, and discusses the contribution of the Irish to Australian sport in general and to cricket in particular. The main focus of the discussion is on the careers of Bill O'Reilly, Jack Fingleton and Lindsay Hassett. More generally, the essay is intended to shed light on the problematic relationship between imperialism and the experience of being colonized, not only in Australia but also in Ireland.
Acknowledgements
For references to work on Irish cricket by Bracken and O'Dwyer, I am indebted to Seamus J. King, author of A History of Hurling (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998).
Notes
1 CitationBairner, ‘Wearing the Baggie Green: the Irish and Australian Cricket’.
2 See CitationSiggins, Green Days: Cricket in Ireland 1792–2005.
3 Paul Weaver, ‘Dubliner Joyce begins England Chapter Against Background of Feeble Predecessors’. Guardian Sport, June 14, 2006, 13.
4 CitationMoore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory, 11.
5 CitationNi Fhlathúin, ‘Anglo-India after the Mutiny’, 67.
6 CitationLoomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 19.
7 CitationHechter, Internal Colonialism.
8 CitationMurray, ‘Introduction’, 4.
9 CitationJeffery, ‘Introduction’.
10 CitationKibberd, ‘Modern Ireland’, 97.
11 CitationHay, ‘The Last Night of the Poms’, 18.
12 Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 9–10.
13 CitationQuayson, Postcolonialism, 2.
14 For an extended discussion of these issues, see CitationBairner, ‘Sport, Nationality and Postcolonialism in Ireland’.
15 CitationO'Brien and Travers, ‘Introduction’, 1.
16 CitationMcConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 17–18.
17 CitationReece, ‘Writing about the Irish in Australia’, 226.
18 CitationForth, ‘“No Petty People”’, 130.
19 McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 46.
20 Forth, ‘“No Petty People”’, 130.
21 Forth, ‘“No Petty People”’, 141.
22 Reece, ‘Writing about the Irish in Australia’, 233.
23 McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 28.
24 CitationAkenson, The Irish Diaspora, 95.
25 McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 46.
26 Akenson, The Irish Diaspora, 108.
27 Reece, ‘Writing about the Irish in Australia’, 233.
28 McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 56.
29 McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 100. See also CitationFranklin, ‘Catholics versus Masons’, 1–15.
30 CitationHone, Cricket in Ireland. See Gemmell in this collection for a further discussion of cricket in Ireland.
31 CitationO'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 21.
32 Hone, Cricket in Ireland.
33 CitationHunt, ‘The Early Years of Gaelic Football and the Role of Cricket in County Westmeath’.
34 CitationDe Búrca, The GAA, 25.
35 Hunt, ‘The Early Years’, 39.
36 Hunt, ‘The Early Years’, 41.
37 CitationBracken, Foreign and Fantastic Field Sports.
38 CitationO'Dwyer, The History of Cricket in County Kilkenny.
39 Hone, Cricket in Ireland, 11.
40 See McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics, 82–4. For information about the Redmond brothers’ Australian connections, and for a detailed discussion of the broader issues, see CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia.
41 CitationBradley, ‘Inventing Australians and Constructing Englishness’.
42 CitationHorton, ‘The “Green” and the “Gold”’, 90.
43 CitationJames, Beyond a Boundary, 42.
44 CitationAdair and Vamplew, Sport in Australian History, 73.
45 See, for example, CitationSolling, The Boatshed on Blackwattle Bay; CitationStremski, Kill for Collingwood; CitationWilliams, Out of the Blue.
46 O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 68.
47 Reproduced in CitationWannan, The Wearing of the Green, 342.
48 O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 262.
49 See Wannan, The Wearing of the Green, 343.
50 See CitationCashman, The Paradise of Sport.
51 O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 187.
52 CitationO'Reilly and Egan, The Bradman Era.
53 For a full examination of the relationship between Bradman and his ‘Irish’ team mates, see Bairner, ‘Wearing the Baggie Green’.
54 CitationFingleton, Brightly Fades the Don, 197.
55 CitationFingleton, Batting from Memory, 110.
56 CitationFingleton, Batting from Memory, 113.
57 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 53–4.
58 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 54.
59 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 2–4.
60 CitationWhitington, Time of the Tiger.
61 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 4.
62 CitationWilliams, Bradman, 21–2.
63 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 7–8.
64 The Christian Brothers were founded in Waterford in 1802 by Edmund Ignatius Rice. Their first Australian colony, consisting of four Brothers, was established in 1868 and was the forerunner of around 50 Christian Brothers’ institutions throughout the country, including numerous schools and colleges.
65 O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 189.
66 CitationCosgrove, ‘Not Cricket’, 61.
67 Fingleton, Batting from Memory, 45.
68 Fingleton, Batting from Memory, 46.
69 Fingleton, Batting from Memory, 217–19, 224.
70 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 30.
71 O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 187.
72 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 5.
73 CitationWhitington, The Quiet Australian, 51.
74 O'Reilly, ‘Tiger’ O'Reilly, 141.
75 CitationHolmes and Storey, ‘Who are the Boys in Green?’, 97.
76 CitationHolmes and Storey, ‘Who are the Boys in Green?’, 100.
77 In this essay my use of the concept of habitus is influenced primarily by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. See CitationBourdieu, Distinction.
78 CitationMuircheartaigh, From Dún Síon to Croke Park, 21.
79 CitationLefebvre, The Production of Space, 404.
80 CitationBachelard, The Poetics of Space, 7.
81 Citationde Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 86.
82 CitationFanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 28.