The GAA should use the anniversary year to address areas that have been neglected of late

AS CHAIR of the committee charged with organising a programme of events to commemorate the GAA’s 125th anniversary, former Armagh footballer Jarlath Burns was conscious of the need to reflect the frequently neglected cultural remit of the association.

Some of that was on view yesterday with the involvement in this year’s St Patrick’s Day parade and the return of the floats to Croke Park before the club finals, echoing times past when pageants were a popular spectacle in the stadium.

But aside from such traditional treatments of culture and history the GAA has little to celebrate in the overall context of safeguarding the past.

For the vast preponderance of the association’s history it failed to establish a museum or archive to preserve its past for the generations to come.

The GAA, however, is aware that anniversaries like the current one can provide an impetus for tackling worthwhile projects. Just as director general Páraic Duffy intended that some of the celebratory energy can be invested in the national strategic plan launched at the end of last year, Burns will also be mindful that recent strides made by the GAA in the area of history and culture are largely attributable to the impact of centenary year in 1984.

Liam Mulvihill, Duffy’s predecessor and someone who had a long-standing interest in the past and archive material, said that the idea for the GAA museum began to form back then when he and other GAA officials saw the volume of material uncovered in the centenary year and realised that somewhere would ultimately have to be found to collate and exhibit the memorabilia of 100 years.

Burns’s committee’s programme of events includes a couple of history symposiums and at the same time Mike Cronin and Boston College are organising an oral history project designed to capture memories of Gaelic games and their place in the life of individual localities.

The first symposium ran last weekend. “For Community, Club, County and Country: a conference celebrating 125 years of the GAA” took place in the Cardinal Ó Fiaich Library and Archive in Armagh, where the original idea emerged before securing support from the Ulster Council and the Heritage Lottery fund.

Described as “a national conference but with Ulster emphases”, by historian Donal McAnallen, who is the library’s assistant education officer (as well as, according to one of his academic acquaintances, trying to quarry a PhD thesis out of material that would support three) and the brother of the late Tyrone captain Cormac, it featured two days of interesting topics, part of the process of creating a three-dimensional past for the association.

One of the fascinating aspects of GAA history is the common themes that echo down the years. At the start of this year it was pointed out that conditions of economic hardship and plummeting national morale were among the ills that Michael Cusack wished to address when establishing the GAA with its emphasis on rebuilding the confidence of the people through its indigenous games and culture.

The fireworks display at Croke Park in January may not have been capable of reviving the stricken economy but it raised spirits sufficiently for most people to acknowledge that yes, there was something to celebrate.

There has been the emergence of ideas, such as that recently from outgoing Leinster chair Liam O’Neill that the GAA plan to use the apparently infinite spare capacity in the construction industry to advance its infrastructural projects and at the same time create employment.

Last Friday Eoghan Corry, the journalist and historian who assisted with the setting-up of the GAA’s museum, gave an interesting presentation on the role of the mass media in spreading the popularity of the games after 1884.

One striking aspect of the talk was the reminder that of the seven founders most commonly believed to have been in Hayes’s Hotel in Thurles back in November 1884, three were journalists, John Wyse Power, John McKay and Cusack (although primarily a teacher he published prodigiously in various outlets including ones he set up himself).

This, according to Corry, was important in pumping the oxygen of publicity into the new organisation and its activities, especially with Cusack’s talent for making enemies and consequently controversy. The commitment of the founding generation to securing coverage for the fledgling games played a significant role in the association, in Cusack’s timeless phrase, “sweeping the country like a prairie fire”.

For instance, as Corry pointed out, after its first two years the GAA had roughly 875 clubs affiliated compared to approximately 35 soccer and 55 rugby.

We live in a time of unprecedented change in the world of media and the extent to which the GAA is keeping pace with developments has to be a cause for concern. Broadcast rights might be the most commercially pressing but there are other aspects that demand attention if the future is to be better served than the past.

In the same year that the Croke Park museum was opened the GAA announced plans to establish its own website.

In the years since, that outlet has been sadly more reflective of the historically predominant, half-hearted approach to cultural projects. Considering what can be done with websites and what is done by other sports, the GAA is dismally served.

For an amateur, community based organisation gaa.ie should be a trove of information concerning clubs, history, video archive as well as up-to-date information on all aspects of the association. Instead there was recently even a struggle to update the rule book on the site months after amendments at congress.

Anyone keen to research the organisation should be able to treat the site as a one-stop shop and not in the sense that after one visit they won’t be back. Obviously this is a task requiring resources of time and money – and it’s not a great time for that.

Lisa Clancy’s appointment as director of communications last year – she previously held a similar position with the HSE, another national organisation with countrywide local outlets – was partly recognition that the GAA has a vast internal communications deficit, one that needs urgent up-dating to get it in line with best practice and particularly because of what the organisation has itself identified as a growing disjunction between the ground-level membership and headquarters.

But it is also necessary to project into the future not just the sense of an organisation that is confident about its place in the modern world but also mindful of the heritage and history that have shaped the GAA throughout its 125 years.

smoran@irishtimes.com