Pride

What a year it's been supporting our local GAA club Maigh Cuilinn. They fell at the second last fence and Don Connellan and his men can be very very happy with the dedication, commitment and drive that his team showed throughout the Championship in 2022/2023.

As you drive around the village, many house have green and white flags flying proudly in their front gardens and half of the village made the trip to head quarters (AKA Croke Park) last weekend to cheer on their local heroes. In the end it was a hurdle too far for the men from the West, but boy did they do us proud with their efforts this year and they gave Glen a good run for their money and on another day, they might just have gotten over the line. The players will have lots of what if and if onlys flying around their heads this week, but they did their community, their county and their province proud and made history in the process. They are the first Maigh Cuillin team to reach the All Ireland semi finals in the Senior football championship and hopefully they have paved the way now for teams of the future, as there are many promising players coming through at under age level.

The All Ireland Semi Final

Team effort and cohesion is paramount for teams to win in my opinion, but you do need some star quality within a team as well if you want to win the top competitions, and for club footballers the length and breadth of Ireland, the All Ireland Club Championship is that pinnacle.
Both Maigh Cuilinn and Glen boasted such players last weekend and although it's fair to say that they did not exactly serve up a classic for the ages, neither set of fans cared as they willed on their respective teams.

Neutrals at Croke park complained of a bland match with very defensive set ups by each team and they had a point to be fair, as the game was a low scoring affair, with Glen winning by 1-11 to 0-12 in the end. Maigh Cuilinn would rue second half wides from Conneely and Cooke, but that is high level sport for you. It does not always go your way and you have to be ready to react and when its not your day, you lick your wounds and go again next time.

That's exactly what Maigh Cuilinn will have to do next year, as they aim to win back to back Galway senior football championships, which will be a tall order with Corofin,Mountbellew Moylough and others looking to topple the Corrib siders. Here they are before the match started the last day.

Don't worry about all of those empty seats in the Cusack stand!! They only had the near side stand, the Hogan stand open, so the place looks empty in this photo as a result. This second photo from late in the second half gives a better indication of the crowd that came to watch the semi finals.

What it's all about

You will remember the wall below from some of my previous Sports posts and I will share it again for any new readers. This wall shows all of the club crests from every GAA around the country and shows you how many teams start off the season hoping to be crowned All Ireland champions, so I am extremely proud to say that our boys made it to the last four from all of these clubs. Well done to Maigh Cuilinn's players, sponsors and Don Connellan the manager who guired them.

This wall is on display as you walk into Croke park and the clubs dotted around every city, town and village in Ireland is the life blood of the GAA and is a very important part of our heritage and identity as Irish people.

For those unfamiliar with what the GAA, let me share some content from a blog post I wrote last year.

What is the GAA?

The Gaelic Athletic Association or GAA is an Irish amateur sports organisation. The main focus is on promoting and managing indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes. This includes Irish sports such as hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, Gaelic handball and rounders. It is much more than this though, it is a type of social glue that binds communities large and small together throughout our little country. You won't travel far on any day in any county without seeing a match in progress from Under 7s to senior level or young lads on a green having a few pucks (Passing a ball called a sliothar from person to person with wooden sticks known as hurleys)

The association also promotes Irish music and dance, as well as the Irish language which has enjoyed a welcome resurgence in recent times. Gaelic football and hurling are the most popular activities promoted by the GAA and I will dedicate a later post to each sport.

Where did it all begin?

The year was 1884 and the location was the snooker room of Hayes Commercial Hotel in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. A small group of men, believed to be somewhere between seven amd fourteen met at the hotel and formed The Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of Irish National Pastimes.

The seven founder members were Michael Cusack, Maurice Davin, John Wyse Power, John McKay, J. K. Bracken, Joseph Ryan and Thomas St. George McCarthy.

This foundation meeting of the GAA was the by product of many months work by Cusack and Davin. The activity included a meeting in the Galway town of Loughrea of a group of local athletic enthusiasts and included Cusack and the Bishop Clonfert Father Duggan, who is said to have recommended Archbishop Croke of Cashel as a patron of the proposed body. Croke was a central figure to the start of the association and I share a letter below which he wrote to Michael Cusack in 1884 accepting an invitation to be a patron to the GAA. Both men are extremely well known, at least by name, as the main stadium for finals is called Croke park in remembrance of Father Croke and one of the stands is called the Cusack stand in honour of Michael Cusack.

Dr. Croke’s Letter

To Mr Michael Cusack, Honorary Secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The Palace, Thurles, 18 December 1884.

My dear Sir—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your communication inviting me to become a patron of the ‘Gaelic Athletic Association’, of which you are, it appears, the honourable secretary, I accede to your request with the utmost pleasure.
One of the most painful, let me assure you, and, at the same time, one of the most frequently recurring reflections that, as an Irishman, I am compelled to make in connection with the present aspect of things in this country, is derived from the ugly and irritating fact that we are daily importing from England not only her manufactured goods, which we cannot help doing, since she has practically strangled our own manufacturing appliances, but, together with her fashions, her accent, her vicious literature, her music, her dances, and her manifold mannerisms, her games also and her pastimes, to the utter discredit of our own grand national sports, and to the sore humiliation, as I believe, of every genuine son and daughter of the old land.
Ball-playing, hurling, football kicking, according to Irish rules, ‘casting’, leaping in various ways, wrestling, handy-grips, top-pegging, leap-frog, rounders, tip-in-the-hat, and all such favourite exercises and amusements amongst men and boys, may now be said to be not only dead and buried, but in several localities to be entirely forgotten and unknown. And what have we got in their stead? We have got such foreign and fantastic field sports as lawn-tennis, polo, croquet, cricket, and the like—very excellent, I believe, and health-giving exercises in their way, still not racy of the soil, but rather alien, on the contrary, to it, as are, indeed, for the most part the men and women who first imported and still continue to patronise them.
And, unfortunately, it is not our national sports alone that are held in dishonour, and dying out, but even our most suggestive national celebrations are being gradually effaced and extinguished, one after another, as well. Who hears now of snap-apple night, or bonfire night? They are all things of the past, too vulgar to be spoken of, except in ridicule, by the degenerate dandies of the day. No doubt, there is something rather pleasing to the eye in the ‘get up’ of a modern young man who, arrayed in light attire, with parti-coloured cap on and racket in hand, is making his way, with or without a companion, to the tennis ground. But, for my part, I should vastly prefer to behold, or think of, the youthful athletes whom I used to see in my early days at fair and pattern, bereft of shoes and coat, and thus prepared to play at hand–ball, to fly over any number of horses, to throw the ‘sledge’ or ‘winding-stone’, and to test each other’s mettle and activity by the trying ordeal of ‘three leaps’, or a ‘hop, step, and a jump’.
Indeed, if we continue travelling for the next score of years in the same direction that we have been going in for some time past, contemning the sports that were practised by our forefathers, effacing our national features as though we were ashamed of them, and putting on, with England’s stuffs and broadcloths, her habits and such other effeminate follies as she may recommend, we had better at once, and publicly, adjure our nationality, clap hands for joy at sight of the Union Jack, and place ‘England’s bloody red’ exultingly above ‘the green’.
Deprecating, as I do, any such dire and disgraceful consummation, and seeing in your society of athletes something altogether opposed to it, I shall be happy to do all that I can, and authorise you now formally to place my name on the roll of your patrons.
In conclusion, I earnestly hope that our national journals will not disdain, in future, to give suitable notices of those Irish sports and pastimes which your society means to patronise and promote, and that the masters and pupils of our Irish colleges will not henceforth exclude from their athletic programmes such manly exercises as I have just referred to and commemorated.—I remain, my dear sir, your very faithful servant.
T. W. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel.

From simple and humble beginnings in 1884, the GAA has grown to be the most popular sport in Ireland (attendance) and is played across the length and breadth of the country from islands to cities and everywhere in between. Here are two of the most scenic pitches I've played on:

Inis Oir, Co. Galway

Killybegs, Co. Donegal

A day out in Dublin

We decided to make a weekend of it and stayed the night in the Croke park hotel directly across the road from Croke Park, which I must admit was ridiculously handy and is a hotel that I would quickly recommend to people, I stay there regularly for work.

We did not want to travel 2.5 hours up and 2.5 hours back on the one day, especially if Maigh Cuilinn lost the match, so we decided to treat the kids to an overnight stay in a hotel and a trip to the zoo, which went down really well. Here are a few of the animals we saw which went down a treat.

The photos used throughout this post are my own except for the ones from Inis Óir, Killybegs and the black and white one (I'm not that old!!) The sources are below for the photos I did not take

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/the-gaa-and-the-1916-rising-playing-a-major-part-in-our-history-1.2560719

https://m.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/pat-spillane-new-era-of-attacking-play-leaves-gaelic-football-in-a-good-place-38568038.html

https://www.balls.ie/amp/gaa/most-beautiful-gaa-pitch-in-ireland-435509

Thanks as always for stopping by everyone.

Peace Out