Gone from Bloody Sunday to playing ball at Croke Park
Sunday February 18 2007
WHAT'S special about the match against England in Croke Park on February 24 is that it is being played in the stadium of a Gaelic Athletic Association which, up until 1972, actually banned its members from playing rugby, cricket, football or hockey on the grounds that they were English games.
What's more, members of the GAA who played hurling and Gaelic football weren't even allowed to watch what were called 'Foreign Games', and the organisation actually sent out spies to see if a player was committing a sin by watching a rugby or soccer match - and if you were, you were suspended or expelled from the association.
The irony of the whole thing was that in the Anglo-Irish War of Independence many of the Irish volunteers who fought against England in that war were actually rugby or soccer men. The most famous was Kevin Barry, the 18-year-old student who was hanged for military activities, about whom ballads have been written which are sung all over the world today. Yet the only picture of Kevin Barry available after his death was one of him in his black and white Belvedere College rugby jersey.
Eamon de Valera, who was condemned to death in 1916, but reprieved, became President of Ireland in 1931. He was a fanatical rugby fan who, after he became president, publicly lamented that the GAA wouldn't allow him to go to watch international rugby matches so he had to listen to the games on the wireless.
"I hear the matches on the radio."
This was hard cheese for a man who had been a loyal member of Blackrock Rugby Club (the same club Brian O'Driscoll comes from) and who really cherished the game. However, de Valera accepted an invitation from the GAA to an All-Ireland final at Croke Park to throw in the hurling ball (about the size of a cricket ball) at the start, which caused an infuriated spectator to roar: "Why don't you throw your own two in after it Dev, and make a pawn shop out of the game the same as you are making out of the country."
Of course Croke Park has a special association with Irish history. It was the site of the first Bloody Sunday in November 1920, when a truck of British military went along to Croke Park during a football championship, stationed themselves on the railway line above it, and machine-gunned the crowd, killing 14 and wounding 60. This was allegedly in reprisal for the shooting of British secret service agents that morning by the Irish Volunteers. But the brutality is still engraved in Irish folk memory today. It really is ironic that it is on the brilliant green of Croke Park pitch, where this terrible event took place, that Ireland will be playing England later this month in a peaceful rugby international in the Six Nations Cup. If, 50 years ago one had suggested that this could happen on Croke Park's sacred turf, it would have seemed as preposterous as proposing that the Folies Bergere give a performance in front of the Pope at the Vatican.
But things have changed, changed utterly. Football has replaced conflict. One particular rugby event that occurred in 1973 has left its mark on the Irish memory. Wales and Scotland had steadfastly refused to come to Ireland to play their Triple Crown matches in that year at Lansdowne Road in Dublin because of the Troubles.
But when it came to England's turn, the president of the English Rugby Union, Dicky Kingswell, made a statement in which he said they'd given their word and they were coming.
I can never forget that incredible moment as the roar went up when the English team came on the field for that match.
The crowd clapped for five minutes and there were tears in a number of eyes. If ever sport could have been said to have begun a bonding, it was this moment.
I simply had to stop at the Shelbourne Hotel on the way home to leave a note for Dicky Kingswell to thank him for coming here and putting sport above politics.
- Ulick O'Connor
