On 21 December 1882, the Irish Times published a letter from a man using the pseudonym Omega who claimed to have played hurling in his youth and now lamented that the game had disappeared from his life. He explained that he was one of just four people in Dublin who knew the game of hurling ‘thoroughly’ – a game that was ‘manly, generous and exhilarating’. Omega, later identified as Frank A. Potterton, a graduate of Dublin's Trinity College, offered to organise a meeting and help to establish a hurling club. In the days that followed three more letter writers, including Michael Cusack, contacted the Irish Times.
Over five years later, on Easter Sunday, 1 April 1888, forty-two men from Meelick (Galway) and Thurles (Tipperary) played in the first All-Ireland hurling final. Paul Rouse's book The hurlers: the first All-Ireland championship and the making of modern hurling tells the remarkable story of how hurling was modernised and progressed from a position of near extinction, ‘played in traditional ways by a handful of rural communities’, to the successful, if fault-riddled, staging of an All-Ireland championship in the modern version of the sport.
Hurling was a product of the Victorian sporting revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century when the manner in which sport in Britain was organised and managed was transformed. Sport was codified and commoditised, new sports were invented, clubs were formed, national and regional associations were established to manage the different sports and organise local, regional and national competitions. The establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association (G.A.A.), the codification of hurling and the invention of Gaelic football was a manifestation of this historical process, which was adopted and adapted by the Irish for their own cultural-nationalist ends. Rouse suggests that the model used for the first All-Ireland championships was based on that used by the Football Association in England for its knock-out cup competition.
Omega's letter inspired the formation of the Dublin Hurling Club, an experiment that proved to be short-lived. Michael Cusack, the towering presence in this book, persevered and in September 1883 he returned to the Phoenix Park with some friends and began hitting a hurling ball around. Others were attracted and on Easter Sunday 1884 these Dublin hurlers travelled to Ballinasloe to play Killimor, a club from one of hurling's traditional strongholds. The match ended in disarray when Cusack removed his men from the field shortly after the game began. This episode essentially ended the second attempt to promote the sport. Michael Cusack's desire to restructure Irish athletics provided the third opportunity to revive hurling. He recruited the respected veteran athlete Maurice Davin to his cause and on 1 November 1884 the G.A.A. was founded in Thurles and at Cusack's insistence the promotion of hurling was included in the programme of the new association. This proved to be the master stroke and, although progress was initially limited, in 1886 the rebirth ‘gained a relentless unshakeable momentum’. Cusack, ‘an intemperate man who was not blind to his own limitations’, was the visionary evangelist of this initiative. The pragmatic Maurice Davin was the sport's architect and was responsible for drafting the rules for modern hurling (and inventing Gaelic football), rules that catered for the demands of the time and respected the local traditions of the areas where hurling still survived.
The decision to stage an All-Ireland championship between the champion club of each county was made in November 1886 and the fun and games and controversies this generated are examined in seven of the book's thirteen chapters. The story of this championship is a story of disputes, matches conceded, the refusal to accept the decisions of referees, pitch invasions, abandoned matches, disputed scores, teams eliminated because of their political affiliations, disorganisation on a grand scale and a championship that involved just a total of four matches between clubs from different counties.
Critical events in the early history of the G.A.A. form an integral part of the study – the foundation of the association in Thurles, Cusack's removal from the position of secretary in July 1886 and the vicious power struggles between the extreme nationalist I.R.B. wing and the more moderate nationalist and clerical members – are examined in detail. Rouse makes it clear that ‘the G.A.A.’s politics was much more moderate than either the I.R.B. wanted it to be or some policemen believed it to be’.
The penultimate chapter is a wonderful piece of total history with the focus on All-Ireland final day that begins with a mini-history of the town of Birr. The final chapter focuses on the personal biographies of the principal individuals responsible for the creation of modern hurling. Michael Cusack's later family life was tragic and complicated. Pat Madden, captain of the Meelick team, was evicted from his small farm and later lived in a hut by the side of the road; James Lynam, who promoted hurling and preached revolution in east Galway, suffered the same fate and ended his days in Dublin.
The research underpinning The hurlers is forensic and is newspaper-based in the main. As a result, the social, economic and political context in which modern hurling developed is documented and explored. The book wears its scholarship lightly; it is liberally sprinkled with colourful anecdotes that enliven the text without in any way compromising its scholarly rigour. The work is enhanced by Paul Rouse's empathy for the G.A.A. and his understanding of the intricacies that underpin rural life. The definitive history of the origin and development of modern hurling and of the first All-Ireland championship in the sport has been written.
