Foreign Games, ‘The Ban’ and Vigilantes

I must confess to a wry smile recently when I heard that Croke Park was putting back the starting time of the Dublin /Meath match because it clashed with the Ireland/France European Championships game. Not only that, they were showing the soccer game live on the giant screens and the stadium was to be opened early to cater for soccer fans who might be attending the GAA game! My, how times have changed!

You see, in 1964 I came within an ace of losing my place on the Cork Minor hurling team – as captain! – simply because I attended a soccer match – not played, just attended! At the time, I was a student in Coláiste Chríost Rí where an enlightened Presentation Brother, James (John O’Connor) had introduced me to the wonderful world of photography and the magic of the darkroom, where you developed your negatives and printed your pictures. (The digital age of photography today is so instantaneous by comparison.)

You see, in 1964 this writer came within an ace of losing his place on the Cork minor hurling team simply because I attended a soccer match – not played, just attended!

Looking back on it now, over 50 years later, it seems like a different country – maybe it was! – but in the 1960s ‘The Ban’ was a very live topic within and without the GAA.

 

My hurling mentor in Ballinlough, Derry Cremin, very quickly saw my photography as a means of publicising the Parish Leagues in the local Cork Examiner & Evening Echo and, hey presto, I was a press photographer, with photographs being published in both publications on a regular basis. (And being paid a guinea a time for each photograph!) I quickly branched out from the Rockies under-age leagues and began photographing other fixtures – and other codes – and this is where Aughrim was very nearly lost.

 

Remember this was before free third level education and, with my father below in Dunlops trying to scrape together the mortgage to pay for our home in Ballinlough, the prospect of his having anything left over to fund yours truly through UCC was remote. But the money from the photography would open that door for me and so I was haring around from fixture to fixture snapping everything that moved.

but my activities did not go down well with the hierarchy of the GAA in Cork at the time who had been informed of my attending ‘foreign games’.

The Cork Examiner Office may have been thrilled with me – they published nearly everything I submitted – at a guinea apiece! – but my activities did not go down well with the hierarchy of the GAA in Cork at the time who had been informed of my attending ‘foreign games’. Also, I had been fortunate enough to get selected for the Cork minor hurling team that year and, therefore, my head was above the parapet – and was very nearly chopped off!

 

No doubt, technically I was offside and the officers were merely implementing the rule as it then stood – but try explaining that to my father! He was apoplectic and we nearly had to tie him down to prevent him marching on Cook Street, GAA headquarters at that time. But, looking back now, the whole episode looks so antiquated, doesn’t it? A rule that had been introduced out of necessity at the start of the century had been allowed to outlive its need and had become an embarrassing albatross about the neck of the GAA. Little wonder it was quietly buried at the Annual GAA Congress of 1971.

 

P.s. By the way, we won the minor All-Ireland that year, Cork’s first title in any grade for 15 years.