![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
In Ireland, the Gaelic Athletic Association has become a unique sporting body. This success has largely depended on its inherent Irishness. The Irish diaspora has transported aspects of its language, religion, politics and culture wherever it has settled. The GAA has been one expression of this distinctiveness. In Scotland, the GAA has traditionally been a small organization. Using historical reflection and contemporary insight we can see how Gaelic sport in Scotland assists us understand numerous aspects of Irish identity and Irish sport beyond the island of Ireland.
Notes
[1] Bradley, ‘The Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish Diaspora in Scotland, 1897–1947’.
[2] Sugden and Bairner, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland.
[3] Whelan, ‘The Geography of Hurling’; Mullen, ‘Opposition, Social Closure and Sport’.
[4] Collins, ‘The Origins of Irish Immigration to Scotland’.
[5] Bradley, ‘The Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish Diaspora in Scotland, 1897–1947’.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Michael Fallon, in Glasgow GAA Centenary Brochure, 29.
[10] Glasgow GAA Centenary Brochure; interviews with John Keaveny, Gerry Gallen, Rory Campbell and Eoin Kelly, Glasgow GAA players during the two decades after the Second World War.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Irish Weekly, 1970 (date unknown).
[13] See Bradley, ‘The Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish Diaspora in Scotland, 1897–1947’ for reference to this match.
[14] Jack Boothman, GAA president, programme for Irish Holidays International Football Tournament, 9–13 Sept. 1996.
[15] The Irish Post, newspaper of the Irish in Britain, is a prime source for documenting this change from the 1970s through to the new century.
[16] Isajiw, ‘Definitions of Ethnicity’.
[17] Bradley, ‘Football in Scotland’, Finn, Racism, Religion and Social Prejudice’, I and II. See also Hickman, ‘“Locating” the Irish Diaspora’; Mac an Ghaill, ‘British Critical Theorists’.
[18] See Bradley, Celtic Minded.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Anderson, Imagined Communities.
[21] Interview with priest.
[22] Giulianotti and Gerrard, ‘Glasgow Rangers’.
[23] Interview, member of Scotland County Board.
[24] Interview, GAA club activist and member of the Scotland County Board 1995–2000.
[25] Interview, former member of Sands MacSwineys GFC.
[26] One example being several buckets of glass swept from Pearse Park before the 2000 championship final between Sands MacSwineys and Mulroy Gaels, the match being delayed for 30 minutes. The match had been the subject of minor local advertising. The GAA believed that broken glass on the pitch was a response from Glasgow-based British unionist-loyalists. A granite Celtic cross erected to the memory of Padraic Pearse at the park was destroyed, while other GAA council-owned pitches have been occasionally strewn with broken glass.
[27] Bradley, Celtic Minded.
[28] Hennessy, Gaelic Athletic Association.
[29] Bradley, ‘Facets of the Irish Diaspora'.
[30] See Bradley, Celtic Minded.
[31] Ibid.
[32] This has been a common perception and experience among GAA activists in Scotland during the period of the ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland. The increasing public acceptability as well as more positive projections of Irishness in British society since the early 1990s (as well as concerns over a lack of physical exercise and poor eating standards generally on the part of schoolchildren and the diminishing numbers of volunteers willing to assist in school and community sports activities) has also allowed GAA activists access to schools to promote Gaelic sports as part of a possible solution to other social problems.
[33] Interviews, Scotland County Board, 2004.