The games people play
Sport and Nationalism in Ireland: Gaelic games, soccer and Irish identity
since 1884
By Mike Cronin
Published by Four Courts Press
Price 14.95 (pb); £35 (hb)
Pádraig O Snodaigh
Said games in their diversity and conforming all tell us much of what we
are and how we are - where we are to some degree, in world perspectives,
and to what extent sports do reflect what we think we are and what we would
have others think of us.
d I didn't think any of this when I got banned for life for `disagreeing'
with a ref on a lousy, wet, winter morning on a greasy pitch in a junior
match in Dublin's Phoenix Park. And yet I was part of the whole that Mick
Cronin tries, in rather turgid style, to analyse in his book.
Dr Cronin's book lacks an adequate international context such as that in
Bowyer Bell's To Play the Game[italic] (Transaction Books): a book not
listed in Cronin's bibliography and one which sees hurling and cricket as a
more useful paradigm:
``When the British arrived on an island in the sun, cricket bat in hand, it
did not matter who won or lost, the islander is playing the game - and the
name of that game is cricket colonialism.''
While golf ``stopped just short of developing into a Celtic imperial game...
without a home base... lost to England with the Act of Union''. Bell's a
better read too!
Cronin tries to annexe ``Cad'' as a precursor of soccer but had he read the
account of a game of ``Caid'' in Mícheál O Guithín's Beatha Pheig[italic]
he'd place it closer to Rugby, Australian Rules, American Football (with 32
killed in 1905!) and of course Gaelic Football as codified and modified
under GAA rules. But then this book is short on sources in Irish - no
reference to Béaloideas[italic] for example or the books of L.P. O Caithnia
including the massive Scéal na hIomána[italic].
other bibliographical aside, Con Houlihan's Come all you Loyal
Heroes[italic] is missing as is Eugene Kamenka's symposium on Nationalism
and Richard Rose's The United Kingdom as a Multinational State[italic]
which would have clarified ``what a British identity actually is''.
Dr Cronin suggests that ``rugby has its base in three main areas: parts of
Ulster, County Limerick and around Dublin''; what Limerick and Cork cities
would make of that one wonders. But his handling of the story of soccer is
not all that clear either.
He makes no reference to the IFA drawing on players from all over Ireland
(Jackie Carey for example) up to 1949, and ignores that fact that the 2-0
victory of the new republic's team over England in Goodison Park was not
accepted for decades by English commentators and others as their first
defeat on home grounds - they continued to say the Hungarian victory of the
Galloping Major in 1956 was their first `home' defeat.
It all depends on what one means by `home' I suppose. The GAA was always
sure on that point.
The account of the fortunes of Derry City is good though Finn Harps are not
mentioned, oddly enough; and the story of the fortunes of Donegall Celtic
in Belfast is told as if they were not in reality Belfast Celtic writ
junior. What is of perennial interest perhaps is that ``the (Irish) League
has made it clear that no other Northern club will receive the same
dispensation''. In other words they would oppose the affiliation of say,
Omagh, Newry Town and Donegall Celtic to the League of Ireland. Should they
have that power; political borders are not always sacrosanct in sport!
Nationalism I fear is a ``problem'' for Dr Cronin; Clio does not expect her
adherents to be solvers of problems. ``It is difficult'' says he, `` to see
how Irish history can escape the problem. Nationalism has become a Gordian
knot''. Oh begod!
Did you know that Mary Robinson was `` one of the first Presidents who had
not taken part in the Irish Revolution'': Childers, O Dálaigh and Hillery
back off please!
That type of groping for sound-byte is a recurring and disappointing
feature of this book on an important significant and pervading phenomenon.
Sport as Dr Cronin argues ``has been (largely - POS) ignored as a method of
seeking to understand Irish society or history'' and his contribution should
be welcomed. But it is not good enough unfortunately: a more careful reader
should have spotted, for example, the howler about the game at Croke Park
on Bloody Sunday 1920 as being between Dublin and Kildare - when the same
paragraph refers to the death of the Tipperary captain, Michael Hogan.
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