Taming the wild West: Cork’s role in shaping Gaelic football’s ruleboook

The place of Cork in the history of the GAA is well understood. The number of clubs in the county, its success in theAll-Ireland championships, the manner in which it has earned unmatched success in women’s games, and the dual nature of its commitment to Gaelic games have created for the county an essential place in the story of the GAA.

A thing happened, however, right at the very beginning of the GAA which has had long term implications for theplaying of Gaelic football and the nature of the game that was forged.

It has been widely noted before that the making of Gaelic football in the first years after the founding of the GAA was a process that did not runentirely smoothly.

The first rules were vague in the extreme and the propensity for violence on the field was extensive.

This violence in play had a well-established precedent. A letter from Patrick Begley, Killorglin, a founder of the Laune Rangers, was quoted in P.F.’s book Kerry’s Football Story in which he described how football was played in rural Ireland in the years immediately preceding the establishment of the GAA:

“There was no game in the country but rough and tumble. That was the biggest curse that ever came on the country.

Two parishes organised a match; the day and place appointed, usually on some boggy commonage as there were no shoes worn but every man got out in a white shirt and flannel underpants.

"The ball was set in motion and before 10 minutes, every two on the pitch were at each others necks, with friends on both sides giving and taking heavy blows.”

There was no enormous change to this approach when the first Gaelic football matches were played under GAA rules.

As T.F. O’Sullivan, wrote in his brilliant Story of the GAA, published in 1916: “Football matches at first and indeed for some years after the establishment of the Association, led to exciting scenes, in which not only players but spectators frequently became participants.

“Physical violence between members of teams was not unknown; the encroachment of spectators on the playing ground often terminated a match abruptly, and the referee enjoyed no particular immunity from rough handling. His person was by no means sacrosanct.”

It wasn’t just the violence in the game that O’Sullivan wrote about. He also noted how the play was evolving:

“In football, ‘dandling’ the ball with one hand and hopping it were conspicuous features of the game in the earlier years of the championship competitions. Striking the ball with the arm, which has now all but completely disappeared, was very common.

"It was not unusual to see players sending the ball a distance of almost 50 yards by this means.”

This point of the manner in which the play was evolving was taken on by the Cork journalist and author, P.D. Mehigan:

“When I went to Dublin in 1900 I found the attractive catch-and-kick style dominant. Players rarely handled the ball in the West Cork fields of my youth.

Half the team in those distant days crowded around midfield and swept the ball with them goalward. Rivals met in waves.”

The idea that the city had a different idea of play to the countryside, the idea that there was a wildness to the violence that could manifest itself in Gaelic football, the idea that the rules were very much in the making and the idea that the styles of play adopted in the game were already changing and changing again can be seen in a meeting held in Cork in March 1886.

This meeting took place on Sunday night, March 6, in the Foresters’ Hall in Cork. The hall was thronged with members of football clubs from all over Cork.

They were there to discuss the future of football in the county — how it should be played and who should organise it.

The meeting was chaired by a man called John Forrest, who was secretary of the newly- formed Cork National Football Association. Forrest made clear the nub of the problem as he saw it.

He said: “Gaelic rules might do very well for country clubs. But they are not suitable for clubs in the city.

If a young man behind the counter received a black eye or scratch playing football under GAA rules it would be of more consequence to them than a player not employed in the city. He would be sent playing football for the other six days of the week.

Forrest had allied himself with J.F. Murphy, a man so prominent in the GAA that he was actually a vice-president of the Association. They were ‘Gaelic’ men, but shared a dislike of the physical nature of Gaelic football as manifest in its violence.

Because of this, six months previously, in October 1885, various football clubs in Cork city had held a meeting and had adopted a code of rules which, it was intended, would be submitted to the GAA for consideration at its first annual convention.

They made it clear that they were not adopting soccer and rugby rules, rather they wished to reform Gaelic ones. But when he received a copy of the rules that were sent to him from Cork, Michael Cusack (a founder and secretary of the GAA) condemned them as “rugby undisguised”.

Maurice Davin, the GAA’s president, was equally unimpressed and the Cork rules were dismissed out of hand by the annual convention.

The Cork city clubs were undaunted and duly established their own association, the Munster National Football League, with J.F. Murphy, as its president.

The League proceeded to frame its own rules, ones which they considered to be suitable for players who worked in the city behind counters.

The view expressed at the founding meeting of the Munster National Football Association was that — after assessing the rules of the GAA — they needed better rules for football as all the existing ones were “inadequate”.

In the weeks that followed, clubs around Cork proceeded to play by their own set of rules. Michael Cusack was outraged.

He immediately dubbed the new association ‘The Murphy National English Football League.’

The GAA reacted to the threat from Cork by unanimously agreeing at a general meeting that J.F. Murphy should be removed from the position of vice-president and expelled from the GAA.

It was further agreed that affiliated GAA clubs now be requested not to play matches against any other club which is not properly organised and playing under GAA rules.

It was then that the football clubs of Cork held their meeting on that Sunday night at the beginning of March 1886.

The meeting was intended to protest against the expulsion of J.F. Murphy from the GAA, but Cusack took the train to the city to defend the decision.

Cusack later said that he was appalled at the notion of one set of football rules being suited to ‘vulgar rustics’, while another be framed for the residents of towns and cities.

Although the meeting ended with a vote of confidence in Murphy, the new Munster National Football Association collapsed soon afterwards.

It proved simply impossible to build another new footballing code in a county where three (Rugby, Association, and Gaelic) already existed.

An enduring split was thereby averted and the Munster National Football League disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived.

But it left two significant legacies. The first was that as he was leaving the meeting in Cork, Michael Cusack was followed out onto the street and was booed and hissed at.

From this began a series of events which ultimately led to Cusack being thrown out of the GAA in the early summer of 1886. The second was the expedition of attempts to tidy up the rules of Gaelic football.

This proved no straightforward challenge, but there were a series of small victories. The first of which was the banning of wrestling from Gaelic football and hurling later in 1886.

This was a move well told by T.F. O’Sullivan, writing in 1916 for a new generation of players:

Many players will be surprised to learn that wrestling was permitted in hurling and football matches up to the end of 1886. Two players came into collision, and at once got into handgrips.

"Only one fall was allowed. ‘What became of the ball when the two men were wrestling?’ I asked an old Dublin Metropolitan player. ‘There were 40 other players to look after that’ he dryly replied.”

And, ultimately, it was another step to allow the various football codes in existence in Ireland to develop sets of rules and styles of play that allow them to diverge rather than converge.

Paul Rouse is associate professor of history at UCD.