Programmes prove priceless glimpse into GAA’s past
Promoting a game in the schools competition, now known as the Hogan Cup, it wouldn’t have warranted a second look until the Cardinal Ó Fiach library-based Ulster GAA archivist noticed the Sweet Afton cigarettes ad overleaf.
The GAA were pioneers in doing away with tobacco sponsorship but here was an example of how it was once tolerated — and in an underage competition, perish the thought (incidentally, the trophy on offer for the Munster intermediate hurling championship is still referred to as the Sweet Afton Cup).
The year before, in 1945, Congress had rejected a motion to abolish the hand-pass, although in his account of the annual convention, GAA secretary Paddy Ó Caoimh suggested the proposal had succeeded, which caused a great deal of furore at the time.
Reflecting the rumpus, the tag-line accompanying the Sweet Afton ad read: “You Can Still Handpass Your Aftons.” Mad Men’s Don Draper eat your heart out!
To McAnallen, it represented a window into the sensibilities of the GAA and Ireland at the time.
“When you do see the old programmes, they tell you about the games and the attitudes of people that have been forgotten,” he said. “I picked up that innocuous-looking programme and it just gives you a sense of the current issues at the time and the humour of people that isn’t always realised. The hardships and the controversies of the time.”
For that, among several reasons, McAnallen and the Ó Fiach library have organised the third national GAA Programme and Memorabilia Collectors’ Fair today. It’s the most appropriate setting. There in Armagh city are the minutes of every Ulster Council meeting going back to 1917. Those of 1920 make for particularly fascinating reading as they record Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy being arrested by the British forces who the minutes describe as “armed aliens”.
“We’ve been building up an archive with the Ulster Council and this event gives us the opportunity to open an exchange with other collectors,” explained McAnallen.
“Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, the forum for collectors to make contact was through magazines like Gaelic Sport and Gaelic World and so on.
“The network developed around that and they got to know each other and did business by post or occasionally meeting up. Paralleling that, there was a programme collectors group set up in Croke Park and that was going from something around the mid-80s. That network has remained even if some people would maintain it’s a pastime that’s in decline. That may be so but with the advent of eBay and high profile auctions, prices of such items have risen exponentially. Even old programme collectors would generally have exchanged rather than sell to one another but that has changed.”
McAnallen appreciates it’s largely an anorak interest but details how it can be a lucrative one too.
Programmes from the early 1940s regularly sold for up to €2,000. Indeed, one mint condition programme from the 1944 All-Ireland senior football final between Kerry and Roscommon went for €2,500.
The number of newly-found items has shrank with GAA memorabilia pre-1940 becoming more difficult to find.
Outside the Croke Park museum, Sam Melbourne’s collection at the GAA interpretative centre in Thurles is regarded as the most impressive bounty. However, McAnallen is aware of a willingness among children of deceased collectors to sell their wares.
“More items have come on the market because there are people whose parents would have been collectors and they have seen the monetary value of pieces of memorabilia. Collectors have started to go to auctions in bigger numbers.
“It is taken very seriously by some of these guys. They spend a lot of time and money on it.
“It might be regarded as a nerdish thing and I suppose I can’t deny that but there is a greater appreciation of it with passing of time of the historical value of some older memorabilia.”
