Remembering where we sported and played

IF you want something done, you ask a busy man, and Mike Cronin got a lot done this year.

He steered not one but two sports books to publication.

When we chat, we start off with The GAA: County By County. He gave the background: “It’s part of the GAA oral history project, which was commissioned in 2008 as part of the 125th anniversary and will finish in August 2012.

“The starting point was that while the GAA had a good understanding of its history in terms of great matches, players, Central Council and so forth, what it didn’t have was a sense of the history of the people who make up the history of the GAA — the punter in the parish, if you like — so we went interviewing people around the country and overseas.

“We wanted to get an idea of the people in the GAA, and a wider Irish social history — for instance, most people drive to games now, while for years beforehand, it would have been the train. The idea was that the GAA would reflect Irish social life.

“We did a couple of thousand interviews, and gathered photographs from all over the country, and that’s where the book comes from.”

And the title, which is no accident.

“We were interested in the county as an idea, an arbitrary line on the map which generates pride and excitement,” said Cronin.

“If you’re near that line on the map, then your neighbour in another county may be a sworn enemy for one day, yet a friend for the rest of the year.

“Yet the chapter I liked best was the overseas chapter, it was a microcosm of the rest. If you’re born in Kerry that’s where you’re from, but what was interesting in the overseas section was how often, with traditional emigration to Britain and the US in the 20th century, people didn’t really replicate an Irish identity so much as a county identity.

“In Boston, New York and London, people still maintained an identity based on where they were from — Mayo, Leitrim or wherever.

“If we’d written the book as a collection of potted histories it would have been very similar all through. We took a different approach — obviously with the northern counties you were dealing with the Troubles, but in other places you’d have issues of why hurling was strong at the start of the century and had gone by the end of the century, changes in Dublin with the sprawling estates.

“It was a matter of picking something out within the county that maybe illustrated something much larger in Irish life.”

Places We Play is different – a book examining the venues and locations where sport in Ireland has been played. Like The GAA: County By County, there’s a historical dimension.

“That was funded by what is now the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and was sparked off by the debate about tearing down the old Lansdowne Road.

“There was some discussion at that time about the old World War I memorial in the stadium, the houses in one corner — the idea that sports followers want to sit in a nice, safe stadium, but what do you lose in the rush to achieve that? “The thrust of the project was to understand what sporting sites there are across the country, and the book tries to give a sense of that — to explain how the sports revolution arrived in the country in the 19th century, and the sporting map of the country.”

Cronin points out the two big drivers of that revolution, apart from the GAA, were the British army and the railways.

“Sport emerges because of big macro changes in society, such as industrialisation, a transport revolution or, in Ireland’s case, the presence of a large army.

“It was all very well having these rough-and-tumble games but you also needed rules, you got spectators, and you needed a physical space for them.

“As a result, you see the rise of tennis clubs, racecourses and so on in the landscape, and the book tries to show how those things change and how they’re built.

“Take the GAA. Apart from some of the provincial stadia and Croke Park, most of their facilities were built by volunteer effort — lads borrowing breeze blocks, etc — and may not be of architectural significance, but they reflect volunteer effort, which is integral to the association.

“With soccer clubs, because soccer has historically been economically poor, you have never had the huge expansion seen in England in the Premier League. As a result, most of the grounds are still where they were a hundred years ago. That might be nice historically, but it also means that many of them are ramshackle and falling down.

“By contrast, private clubs, schools and universities probably had more wealth and stability and created better facilities.”

Cronin has an unusual example to offer in that regard: “Shannon Rowing Club in Limerick is an unusual building, not because of its rowing status, but because when it was built in the 20s, the club members were wealthy enough to employ one of the arts and crafts architects of the time.

“William Clifford Smith designed it, and it’s such a fine example of that kind of architecture that it’s a listed building. The only listed sports building in the country, as a matter of fact.”

* The GAA: County by County’ by Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, €23.99, and ‘Places We Play: Ireland’s Sporting Heritage’ by Mike Cronin and Roisin Higgins, €19.99, both published by Collins Press.