Horde gathers at Tara as GAA hoard goes under the hammer

NOW THAT another championship is officially underway you may want to take some advice from Mealy's auctioneers: Don't throw away your match programme. Hold on to that ticket stub. And if you have any blood ties with potential All-Ireland medal winners then make sure it's written in their will.

If today's auction of rare and collectable GAA items is anything to go by then some day they'll be worth a lot of money. Over the past year, Mealy's of Castlecomer have accumulated several hundred such items to be sold today on behalf of their owners.

Many of them date back to the earliest days of the GAA, and others to some of its most historic moments. There is the exceptionally rare All-Ireland winner's medal from the first football championship final of 1887, won by Limerick Commercials.

In the early years of the championships, clubs represented counties, and on April 28th, 1888, Commercials beat Young Irelands of Louth 1-4 to 0-3, the venue being the former playing field in Clonskeagh known as The Big Bank.

Playing corner back for the Limerick club was Patrick Q Reeves, and his winner's medal will be auctioned today, valued between €20,000-€30,000.

It should be noted the medal wasn't actually issued until 1910, when the team finally got its due recognition. Two years ago, a similar medal was sold at auction for £22,000 sterling, brought by the Limerick Leader newspaper.

Of equal interest will be one of Kilkenny's first All-Ireland hurling winners medals, from 1904, when they were represented by the Tullaroan club, and the year they beat St Finbar's of Cork by a point.

Playing corner back for them that day was Jack Hoyne, and his medal is now valued between €12,500 and €17,500. In 9ct gold, it comes in the traditional Celtic cross design, and the full inscription is still in excellent condition.

Winners' medals, naturally, are very hard to come by, yet most GAA supporters have old match programmes or ticket stubs lying around the house somewhere. Among such items on offer today is the original printed ticket from a football challenge game between Tipperary and Dublin, played in Croke Park on November 21st, 1920.

Of course, that turned out to be no ordinary game, as British soldiers infamously stormed into Croke Park and started firing into the crowd, indiscriminately killing 12, and wounding 60.

Among those in attendance that day was a Mr Lamb of Moycarkey, who was only 15 years old at the time. He kept the ticket in his blazer pocket for years afterwards, then passed it on to his grandson. It's now valued at between €5,000 and €8,000.

Match programmes can also turn out to be valuable items. Mealy's have got their hands on the earliest known extant All-Ireland hurling final programme - the 1913 final between Kilkenny and Tipperary.

All eight pages are in remarkable condition and simply reathe history, with rose-coloured covers and several adverts.

The match itself was historic for several reasons as it was the first final where the teams were reduced to 15 players, with Kilkenny's Mooncoin beating Tipperary's Toomevara 2-4 to 1-2, also making them only the second team in GAA history to claim a third successive title.

The programme is valued at between €2,500 and €3,500, but likely to go for a higher figure. It's beautifully preserved in a custom made box, and may well survive another century.

There are dozens more excessively rare collectors' items. In their earliest days, the GAA were also responsible for organising athletics in Ireland, and there's a medal from their first such athletic event in 1885, just a year after the Association was formed, and awarded to Mr P McGrath from Tipperary for his victory in the long jump. McGrath later went on to become chairman of the Tipperary county board, and president of the Munster Council.

All the items were on display at the Tara Towers Hotel on Dublin's Merrion Road yesterday, ahead of today's auction - which takes place at the same venue starting at 10.30am. George F Mealy, who is directing the auction, admits there are some particularly rare examples of early GAA memorabilia.

"This is our third year of having such an auction, and every year the interest in these items have been growing."