Paul Rouse: Why the GAA brought in The Ban - and how TV helped end it

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the deletion of the 'Ban on Foreign Games' from the GAA's rule book.

COME ON YOU BOYS IN GREEN: Éamon de Valera, Douglas Hyde and Oscar Traynor watch Ireland defeat Poland 3-2 in Dalymount Park, Dublin, in 1938.

“Congress ’71 is fated to pass into GAA annals as one of the most critical, decisive and indeed historic assemblies since the dawn of the Association in 1884. In a short while now you will acknowledge the expressed will of the association and delete a rule, which for many of us was a rule of life and reflected and epitomised the very spirit of the association. The rule deleted – what then? Do we then reject the past and with deletion, proclaim ourselves a mere sports organisation?” 

THE rule in question was the GAA’s ‘Ban on Foreign Games’ and the speaker was, Pat Fanning, the president of the association.