Fixture dates change, rules are altered, and the fortunes of individual counties fluctuate, but one thing remains constant: the shared passion generated by the GAA championship season. With the all-Ireland hurling final this weekend, we are reminded of the remarkable ability of a unique sporting organisation and its amateur athletes to provide compelling spectacles, marshal devoted followers and create a sense of communal pride.
For over 140 years, the GAA has been an anchor of reliability and a distinct identity, creating a positivity lacking in many other areas of Irish life. The GAA has never been without controversy, or avoided entanglement in Irish divisions, but it has always avoided being completely captured by one group. It has adapted to meet contemporary challenges to ensure the sports prevail above all else; sports with a deep ancestry that are particular to us.
The GAA could not thrive without nationwide volunteerism, and its more recent promotion of Ladies football and the expansion of Camogie have increased its membership, reach and relevance. It has fostered mental and physical strength and a tribalism rarely tainted by ugly confrontation. The championships culminate in what the late journalist Nuala O’Faoláin described as All-Ireland final days encapsulating the “feeling of the nation as an entity”.
In 1922, Eoin O’Duffy, as commissioner of the new Civic Guard, urged his policemen to embrace the GAA and “play their way in to the hearts of the people”. That took on a wider resonance, and with our history of emigration, the GAA became an intrinsic bond between home and the diaspora which endures, robustly and emotionally, to this day. Immigrants have also made invaluable contributions to the association.
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Commercialism had been part of the GAA, and it has not avoided self-righteousness, but its many achievements stand taller. The late poet Paul Durcan saw hurling as “Pure poetry. Pure Inspiration. Pure Technique…Hurling is the father of freedom…the hurler strikes, and man is free”.
