GAA nostalgia continues to prove attractive to fans

GAA nostalgia continues to sell. The recent release of GAA Hurling Gold 2, the latest collection of All-Ireland hurling final highlights compiled by the Irish Film Institute joins on the shelves two previous volumes, covering hurling finals 1948-59 (released in 2010) and football finals (released 2011) over the same period.

Annmarie Gray, deputy director of the IFI, says hurling exercises a particular fascination. "There's something about it that seems to catch the imagination of the public. Maybe it's because the first release was hurling and it got quite a lot of publicity but it has outsold the football over the years."

Sales are steady. To date about 20,000 copies have been bought with hurling outselling football ones by around 3:2.

Gray has a particular interest in the hurling as her father, Jimmy (the former Dublin chairman) kept goal for Dublin in the 1961 final.

“I got a copy for Dad before it was released – he’d never seen it – and after he’d finished watching it, he said, ‘they never showed the disputed point’.”

Controversy wasn't a priority for the film makers – the double sending off of Tom Ryan and Lar Foley doesn't appear either – but the voiceover acknowledges Dublin were very unlucky in what is described as "the most thrilling final in history".

Slow-motion footage

The films are longer than their predecessors from the 1940s and ’50s and more focused on the matches – with in one instance two camera angles on a goal and also slow-motion footage of Kilkenny goalkeeper Ollie Walsh pucking out the ball.

But the social context isn’t forgotten with shots of flights arriving in Dublin Airport replacing the earlier obligatory footage of fans arriving at Heuston Station.

One mystery is solved by looking back at the finals. Croke Park proved unable to answer a relatively recent enquiry as to which year ended the practice of the Archbishop of Cashel throwing in the ball for an All-Ireland final. These recordings show the practice ended in 1964. From 1965 onwards, whereas the archbishop is introduced to the players before the match, he no longer throws in the ball to start the match.

GAA Hurling Gold 2 retails at €14.99 and is available from www.ifi.ie, the IFI Film Shop and DVD outlets.