GAA rounds off 125th festivities with trip to Tipp
Friday October 30 2009
IT'S coming home. The 125th anniversary of the founding of the GAA will be marked this Sunday with a Mass and a procession through the town where it all began in 1884.
Thurles will provide a national focus for a series of commemorative events, the GAA said yesterday, with clubs and provinces staging their own '125' tributes nationwide.
After a year of events which saw a special floodlit show at Croke Park and a garden party for GAA volunteers hosted by President Mary McAleese at Aras an Uachtarain, the 125th celebrations will symbolically wind down in Thurles.
On Saturday, November 1, 1884 in the billiards room of Hayes' Hotel in the Co Tipperary town, the seven founder members met and launched the organisation that now has 800,000 members.
On Sunday, a special Mass will be celebrated in Thurles Cathedral by Archbishop Dermot Clifford, patron of the GAA followed by a procession to the Croke Monument in the town's Liberty Square.
Afterwards, a wreath will be laid at the monument by GAA president Christy Cooney before he attends Semple Stadium for a Munster senior hurling championship game between Cork's Newtownshandrum and Thurles Sarsfields.
"It's where it all began," said a GAA spokesman yesterday. "It's only right that the focus is on Thurles. It will be another historic day."
Rare
The gathering in Thurles in 1884 included Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin. The way they influenced Irish society has been chronicled in a new book 'The GAA -- A People's History' by Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse.
The book, complete with many rare photographs, tells the story of how the GAA carved out a unique place for itself at the heart of Irish life. Commissioned by the GAA to mark its anniversary, it looks at how ordinary people shaped the games and the social world of the association.
Through interviews and archived material it explores how the GAA shaped the lives of generations of Irish people at home and abroad.
"From parades and ballads to epic journeys across land and sea, this history of the GAA is as much about what happened off the field as what happened on it," said a spokesman for publisher Collins Press.
The book is being launched at GAA clubs next month -- beginning with an event at St Colman's College in Newry, Co Down next Wednesday at 7pm.
- Ciaran Byrne
Irish Independent
