Hayes Hotel where Cusack founded GAA needs saving

As preparations are finalised for tomorrow’s All-Ireland hurling championship final at the magnificent Croke Park stadium, the GAA’s leaders should spare a thought for the fate of another, much less fortunate landmark associated with its history, Hayes Hotel in Thurles.

At what was then Hayes's Commercial Hotel, the billiards room provided the venue for the meeting that led to the establishment of the GAA on November 1st, 1884. This happened a few weeks after crusading nationalist and athlete Michael Cusack had published an article under the title "A word about Irish athletics" in the Parnellite United Ireland newspaper. In it he claimed that sports in Ireland were organised by those "hostile to the dearest aspirations of the Irish people" and that most athletics meetings consisted of little more than "foot-races, betting and flagrant cheating".

It was imperative, he insisted, that Irish people should establish their own sporting organisation “to encourage and promote in every way every form of athletics which is peculiarly Irish, and to remove with one sweep everything foreign and iniquitous in the present system”.

Outlandish flaws

When Maurice Davin, another well-known athlete, responded enthusiastically to Cusack’s article they called a meeting in the hotel on November 1st. Less than 10 men attended that meeting, but there were in the region of 60 messages of support and those present founded the GAA.

The resultant history of the GAA has been fascinating and includes extraordinary successes, but as an organisation it has at times been as frustrating as its founding father, Cusack, who died in 1906.

Historian Paul Rouse has memorably encapsulated the essence of Cusack: “At his best, he was extraordinary and brilliant, capable of great warmth, humour and generosity. His life’s work is clearly that of a man of considerable vision. But Cusack’s flaws were as outlandish as his talents. He was impetuous on a cartoonish scale. He thrived on confrontation and managed to find it in most quarters.” A provocative historian might be tempted to apply the same description to the GAA as an organisation.

Internal divisions

Cusack’s tempestuous career and association with the GAA was inspirational but also messy, contradictory and full of rancour, as were many aspects of the GAA’s early years, in common with some of the other political, sporting and social movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite a show of solidarity at the time of his death, and the naming of a stand at Croke Park after him, the GAA was subsequently notably quiet about Cusack and his legacy, probably because that legacy, as well as including foresight, energy, self-reliance and ambition, incorporates themes of internal division, aggression, and excessive centralisation. These issues are, arguably, common to all sporting organisations and should not be overlooked in any historical assessment of the GAA. Nor, given the nationwide community contribution to the GAA, should the contemporary issue of finance be overlooked, including the GAA’s recent deal with Sky Sports that critics rightly insist subverts equality of access to its games.

The GAA generates a huge amount of money, and spends a lot too, which brings me back to Hayes Hotel, an institution that has fallen on hard times and is now due to be sold at an Allsop Space auction later this month, with a guide price of €450,000-€500,000. Why the GAA has not made more noise about this milestone and its welfare is puzzling. As a declaration of interest, I admit my preoccupation with the hotel is not just as a historian but also personal; my grandfather, John Ferriter, worked hard there as a porter for almost 50 years until his retirement in the early 1960s. He took great pride in its history, appearance and reputation and his own contribution to its quality.

Focus on where it all began

Sadly, in more recent times it has fallen far from the elevated status it once enjoyed, and into receivership, which is even more of a reason why a very wealthy GAA should take the opportunity that exists to buy it and transform it. It could become a fitting monument to the history of a unique and extraordinary organisation and add significantly to the existing GAA museum in Thurles, Lár na Páirce, so that, for a national organisation on the scale of the GAA, there is a museum outside Dublin to rival the one in Croke Park, and which would also bring advantages to a town that has suffered more than its share of economic hardship over the last few decades.

Whatever GAA’s faults, few will deny the veracity of the assertion by former taoiseach Brian Cowen when he said, on the 125th anniversary of the organisation in 2009, that“Ireland without the GAA is unimaginable”, a sentiment even more acutely felt on an All-Ireland weekend. All the more reason why the GAA hierarchy should now avert its gaze from richer pickings, focus on the spot in Thurles where it all began and do it justice.

Diarmaid Ferriter is professor of modern Irish history at UCD