The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) was founded in the billiards room of Lizzie Hayes’ Commercial Hotel in Thurles on this day in 1884.
The meeting happened because of an exchange of letters between Michael Cusack, a teacher and newspaper columnist from Clare, and Maurice Davin, a farmer and hugely successful athlete from Carrick on Suir, in the summer of 1884. In their correspondence, they had a general plan to hold a meeting in Thurles in November 1884 in order to establish an association to take control of athletics in Ireland.
By the early 1880s, the Irish athletics world had descended into something of a shambles, apparently stained by gambling and general disorganisation. Irish athletics clubs, which held formal sports days on Sundays since the 1850s had failed to establish a governing body and the rules governing sport in Ireland had largely been adopted from England where the Amateur Athletics Association was founded in 1880.
On 11 October 1884, Michael Cusack published an article entitled ‘A Word about Irish Athletics’ in the weekly newspaper United Ireland. In the article he said neglecting the pastimes of Irish people was a sure sign of national decay. He railed against ‘the Englishness of everything which was now associated with sport in Ireland’ and added ‘we tell the Irish people to take the management of their games into their own hands.” In the following week’s United Irishman, Davin wrote an article in support of Cusack. He called for the establishment of a proper athletics association to draw up rules for athletics in Ireland, and also for hurling and ‘Irish football’.
Cusack and Davin issued a circular to say a meeting was being called in Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles on 1 November, 1884 at 2pm. According to the circular, the goal of the meeting was ‘to take steps for the formation of a Gaelic association for the preservation and cultivation of our national pastimes and for providing rational amusements for the Irish people during their leisure hours.’
The meeting started at 3pm on 1 November 1884- an hour late. Cusack welcomed those in attendance and handed over to Davin who chaired the meeting. Davin said that he and Cusack were determined to ‘provide amusement and recreation for the ordinary people of Ireland who now seem born into no other inheritance other than an everlasting round of labour.’
Davin was chosen as the first President of the new association which was to be named the ‘Gaelic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of National Pastimes’. Cusack, along with John McKay, a Belfast journalist, and John Wyse Power, editor of the Leinster Leader, were elected as secretaries. Understanding the political and social mood of the 1880s, it was decided at the meeting to approach Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, Thomas Croke, as well as Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt to be patrons of the new association. All three later accepted the invitation. The meeting was concluded with a promise to hold a second meeting in Cork in the near future.
The names of those in attendance is the only source of debate about the meeting. Cusack and McKay both made it clear that at least seven were present at the meeting - those mentioned above along with JK Bracken, IRB-man and stonemason from Templemore, Thomas St. George McCarthy, policeman and friend of Cusack, and Joseph Ryan, a solicitor from Callan, Co. Kilkenny. Over the years, many others claimed to have been at the meeting but it is not possible to verify these accounts. Whoever was or was not present, the organisation that became known by its shortened name of the GAA was set on a path that would turn Irish sport on its head.
Sources:
Paul Rouse, Professor of History at UCD, speaking on the History Hub podcast. Retrieved at https://historyhub.ie/what-actually-happened-at-the...
https://hayeshotel.ie/hayes-hotel-the-gaa/
