How Éamon de Valera’s GAA spat kicked off

TAOISEACH Éamon de Valera told a dinner of the Past Pupils Union of his old school, Blackrock College, at Shannon in Apr 1957: “I have not been at a rugby match since 1913 because I do not want it being raised as a political matter and having rows kicked up about it.”

This was the era of the GAA’s ban on foreign games.

“There is no football game to match rugby. If all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales, but France and the whole lot of them together.”