GAA 125 THE POLO GROUNDS FINAL: In the latest in our series based on material from the GAA Museum we look at the events surrounding the 1947 All-Ireland football final
ON APRIL 6th 1947 some 200 delegates at the GAA Annual Congress considered a Clare motion that the Central Council consider the resumption of tours to New York and play an All-Ireland final in New York.
In proposing the motion, Canon Michael Hamilton reasoned that the playing of the final in New York would be “an epoch-making event and a landmark in the history of the Association” and he also referred to the fact that 1947 was the centenary year of the Irish famine when “the great exodus of our people found a friendly welcome and a warm hospitality on America’s shores”.
The motion was passed, by a large majority, with the amendment that “it applied to the All-Ireland Football Final and for 1947 only”.
Pádraig Ó Caoimh, general secretary of the GAA, and Tomás Kilcoyne, member of the Central Council, visited New York on April 25th, 1947, and their feasibility report was submitted to the Central Council.
Interestingly the main bone of contention was transport to and from New York. GAA president Daniel Ó Rúairc declared the responsibility of sending some of the party by air was too great for the Council, adding that while he was prepared to travel by air he “would not vote anyone else to go”.
A proposal that “the teams travel by whatever means are available” was carried by 20 votes to 17.
Ó Caoimh’s representative Pádraigh McNamee travelled to New York and immediately booked he Polo Grounds for Sunday, September 14th. He set up an office in the Hotel Woodstock and went about organising the final.
Transport was arranged for the teams, with 40 to travel by plane and the remaining 25 by boat. The Cavan team would stay in the Hotel Empire, the Kerry team in the Henry Hudson, and officials in the Hotel Woodstock.
The first party of players and officials arrived by boat on September 9th, with the remainder arriving by plane the next day. On September 11th the whole party assembled at Hotel Commodore and were driven along Broadway escorted by a police squadron, and later received at City Hall.
On the day of the final, the entire party attended High Mass at Saint Patricks Cathedral. The two teams arrived at the Polo Grounds at 2pm. At 2.40pm the officials and teams took to the field to a tremendous reception. After what in his final report Ó Caoimh described as a “game that will live forever in the memory of those privileged to witness it, a magnificent exhibition of Gaelic football at its best”, Cavan beat Kerry by 2-11 to 2-7.
That night a banquet was held in the Hotel Commodore and the following week, September 22nd, an evening match between a Cavan/Kerry selection and a New York selection was played for the benefit of the New York GAA.
The party sailed home on September 24th, arriving in Dun Laoghaire on October 3rd.
Ó Caoimh submitted a report to the December 13th Central Council meeting. In it, he said the attendance figure of 36,000 should not be looked upon as disappointing but regarded as a triumph and highlighted the fact that, in general, sports events were cancelled in America when rain falls.
He also noted the final resulted in a profit of £10,202 but ends the report by stating the final “enlightened the American public as to the separate existence and identity of the Irish people. That was not the least of its triumphs.”
