Sport question fouled up by learned gentlemen

ON Sunday morning last on Newstalk I heard David Norris interview the distinguished Prof Art Cosgrove of UCD.

During a discussion on the GAA and on Down winning the All-Ireland football final in 1960 – the first time the Sam Maguire cup went across the border – those two august gentlemen referred to the man after whom the cup is named. One of them said he thought he was from the North and the other said he might have been a Protestant, though he wasn’t sure.

Is it any wonder there is so little understanding of our history and the various strands that make it up when those two learned gentlemen did not know Sam Maguire was a west Cork Protestant. And no wonder west Cork Protestants, like a lot of their compatriots, are largely written out of our history in the definition of Irishness.