Stars took a while to shine

Hurling All-Stars: Seán Moran looks at how far the players awards have come since their first incarnation in 1963.

Tomorrow night in Dublin's Citywest hotel the Vodafone GAA All Star awards will be presented. Although the event is an established entry on the sports calendar it's not that well known that the awards have been running for 40 years in a variety of guises.

Originally thought up by a group of journalists, the detailed idea is credited to the late Mick Dunne, then Gaelic games correspondent of the Irish Press and later of RTÉ. For the first few years between 1963 and '67, the scheme was organised by the Gaelic Weekly periodical before falling into abeyance. Four years later it was revived by the journalists who had initially promoted the idea and tobacco company Carroll's agreed to sponsor it.

Since then there have been changes of sponsor. In 1979 and '97 and for two years, in 1995 and '96, a short lived experiment that saw players vote on the awards.

The only surviving journalist of the group that devised the idea is Paddy Downey, formerly Gaelic games correspondent of this newspaper.

"In 1962 a number of us based in Dublin and outside decided to form an organisation and called it the Association of Gaelic Sports Journalists. We wanted it to be only for journalists and decided to exclude teachers and postmen and others writing about the games in some papers. It would be confined to full-time journalists," he recalls.

For two years the association held a function, principally sponsored by Gael Linn, in the Gresham Hotel. Presentations were made to the outstanding footballer and hurler of the year, The scheme was set up in opposition to the Caltex (now Texaco) awards. But the limitations of what they were doing were brought home to the journalists.

"I remember one of the years," says Downey, "when Liam Devaney was the winner of the hurling. In his speech he thanked Caltex. The poor guy - it was a slip of the tongue - but we were embarrassed. Jack Lynch was our guest of honour on the day.

"So afterwards a few of us talked about it and felt we banging our heads against a stone wall. We needed a different idea for our awards. Mick Dunne was very interested in American sport and came up with the All Stars. That's where the name came from.

"Anyway we held a meeting of the AGSJ some time later upstairs in a pub in Moore Street. Mick proposed the All Stars idea and there was a debate because some people felt the whole thing would involve too much expense and difficulty. But the motion was passed by a good majority.

"However, Val Dorgan of the Cork Examiner, God be good to him, was the chairman and decided that the proposal needed a two thirds majority. There followed a row or at least an argument and the meeting dropped the idea."

With the All Stars stuck in the AGSJ's procedural rut, Gaelic Weekly decided to run with it themselves and an announcement to that effect appeared.

Although more than a little miffed that their idea had been lifted, most journalists agreed to take part in the selection process when invited.

"There were presentation dinners in the Gresham," remembers Downey. "It lasted five years and faded, never getting publicity in the other papers or anything like that. It was very low key."

In the midst of the Gaelic Weekly years a scheme very close to what would become the modern All Stars nearly got off the ground. Alan Montgomery had been editor of The Irish Times before leaving to take up a position as Guinness's first press officer in 1962. He was friendly with Downey and one day asked him up to the brewery to advance a proposal.

"In 1964 I went to lunch with Monty," says Downey. "He was accompanied by Guy Jackson the managing director. They said that Guinness would like to sponsor a GAA event and suggested that an All-Ireland football team be picked and that they would send the players abroad to play exhibition games.

"They wanted to know would I approach the GAA. I agreed and rang Paddy O'Keeffe (then Secretary General) and went to his house in Orwell Park because it was such a sensitive matter. He didn't turn it down. Now he wasn't a very voluble man and a bit cagey but he didn't say no. He said he'd bring it to the council but he never came back to me.

"About six weeks later at the 1964 Whit tournament (then played annually between top counties at Wembley) in London after the Saturday matches were over word came through that Paddy had died. And the idea died with him."

The matter was so sensitive because sponsorship was then disapproved of by the GAA.

After the Gaelic Weekly scheme folded there were three years, 1968-70, in which no awards took place. In the spring of 1971 the four national GAA correspondents, Downey, Dunne, John D Hickey and Paddy Purcell, were asked by Eugene McGee (then involved with the UCD GAA club) to come to a seven-a-side tournament he had organised and judge some awards. "We were asked to adjudicate things like the best goal, the best turned out team, the player of the tournament and that sort of thing," says Downey.

"Carroll's were sponsoring the event and they had a caravan near the pitch and although it wasn't a big deal, their PR manager Pat Heneghan was there. Mick said 'let's go down and see if he's interested in the All Stars'.

"Pat was immediately interested but said it needed to be discussed with his management. 'Give me a week,' he said. Mick was our spokesman and kept in touch with them. Carroll's said they would do it if the GAA agreed."

By this stage the world was changing. In May of that year the GAA's McNamee Commission would recommend a cautious engagement with sponsorship.

"Seán Ó Síocháin (O'Keeffe's successor) was interested but said he would have to discuss it with the president and officials. After a relatively short time we were asked to a meeting. I don't think it ever went to Central Council - or its equivalent back then. We had been concerned. The president Pat Fanning was a particular worry because he was a traditionalist on many issues."

Instead the whole process moved so quickly that the first Carroll's All Stars team was selected by the end of that year.

In the years that followed the scheme grew in prominence but by the end of the decade Carroll's were feeling the winds of change in relation to tobacco sponsorship and quietly withdrew in 1979 to be succeeded by the Bank of Ireland.

"It was the first major sponsorship the GAA ever embraced," says Downey of the scheme that tomorrow night marks 33 straight years in operation and 38 years in all.

The first All Stars teams:

1963 FOOTBALL

Andy Phillips (Wicklow)

Gabriel Kelly (Cavan)

Noel Tierney (Galway)

Pa Connolly (Kildare)

Séamus Murphy (Kerry)

Paddy Holden (Dublin)

Martin Newell (Galway)

Mick Garrett (Galway)

Des Foley (Dublin)

Seán O'Neill (Down)

Mickey Whelan (Dublin)

Tom Browne (Laois)

Jimmy Whan (Armagh)

Tom Long (Kerry)

Pat Donnellan (Galway).

1963 HURLING

Ollie Walsh (Kilkenny)

Tom Neville (Wexford)

Austin Flynn (Waterford)

John Doyle (Tipperary)

Seamus Cleere (Kilkenny)

Billy Rackard (Wexford)

Larry Guinan (Waterford)

Theo English (Tipperary)

Des Foley (Dublin)

Jimmy Doyle (Tipperary)

Mick Flannelly (Waterford)

Eddie Keher (Kikenny)

Liam Devaney (Tipperary)

Jimmy Smith (Clare)

Phil Grimes (Waterford)