‘He scratched his arse against the boundary wall and demolished the whole thing!’ - new book celebrates grounds of the GAA

Humphrey Kelleher decided that he would do it himself. The former Waterford hurler and Dublin hurling manager was planning his new book on GAA venues, A Place to Play, which was launched on Thursday night in Croke Park and thoughts turned to pictures.

“I bought a drone! I’m in my 70s – what in the name of Jesus am I doing buying a drone at this stage of life? I learned how to operate it and the photographs of all the grounds were taken by me,” he proudly recounts.

“There was an argument to put Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney on the cover. It was a beautiful photograph of the ground and the mountains behind it. I wanted one that would reflect all of the grounds. They’re not all big, classy stadiums. The cover picture is actually Freshford. I wanted people to ask, where’s that?

“The question that everyone asks when you arrive with your drone is, ‘are you all alright, lads?’ In Cootehill, the man said to me, ‘why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’d have cut the grass’. For a drone that’s 250 feet overhead! But he was so proud of the ground.”

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Kelleher is also the author of GAA Family Silver, an account of the story behind 101 cups and trophies. Whereas it’s tempting to see the latest work as a companion piece, the author says it has a different emphasis.

“It started off as an exploration of the people after whom the grounds are named and then I started to realise that there was a bigger story here. In many cases they had little or nothing to do with it. I mean, what would Countess Markievicz have to do with a pitch in Sligo?

“I actually have a picture of everyone after whom a ground is named but I extended the pieces on the people who aren’t well known whereas Pearse Stadium got five lines – there’s enough books written about him!

“It’s not a GAA book in my view. It’s a social history of the Ireland of the 1920s and ‘30s, who put their hands in their pockets when they didn’t have a penny? They bought the land without any help from the GAA initially. It’s those people, who are names that nobody knows or at least very few.

“They bought the land, developed the ground over the years and there’s a lovely venue there today. What I wanted to get across was, who bought that land? I call them the frontiersmen, the pioneers of the GAA and no one knows who they are.

“It has been shortlisted for book of the year – for the best Irish published, as opposed to best sports book and I think that’s significant. It’s 101 stories behind the grounds.”

Croke Park is included but Kelleher is more intrigued by how it was acquired rather than the Archbishop of Cashel and first patron of the GAA. A central character is Frank Dineen, a former general secretary of the association who purchased the land that Croke Park now occupies.

“He bought the land with the intention that the GAA might buy it but he had it for four or five years. They were going to buy Elm Park from Lord French out on the southside of Dublin. Frank Dineen offered Jones’s Road for £3,500 - leasehold. I found out that the GAA didn’t actually acquire the freehold interest in Croke Park until 2015.

“Maurice Butterly had bought the original lease in the 1890s but he had a company which bought the lease off him for £13,000 but the company went bust and into liquidation, which is how Dineen picked it up for £3,500. The Munster and Leinster bank had the loan and had to get something back.”

Most of the venues naturally have very local but sometimes exotic stories.

“In Kilmallock in Limerick, Fossett’s Circus came to town and one day the elephant escaped and went walkabout. He came up to the GAA pitch and decided to scratch his arse against the boundary wall and demolished the whole thing!”

* A Place To Play: The people and stories behind 101 GAA Grounds by Humphrey Kelleher is published by Merrion Press and available for €26.99.