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The Heroic Importance of Sport: The GAA in the 1930s
Author(s)
Date Issued
2008-07-30
Date Available
2016-09-08T11:33:35Z
Abstract
This article examines the cultural importance accorded to sporting activity by Ireland's largest sporting organisation, the Gaelic Athletic Association, during the 1930s. Making use of the source material provided by a short-lived paper funded by the GAA, as well as the minutes of its central organisational bodies, it examines the paradigm of opposed Irish and British civilisations which underpinned ideas of the cultural role of sport. The article suggests that many of the attitudes evinced by the GAA actually derived from nineteenth century and contemporary British notions of team games and athletic competition. Nevertheless, by transforming sporting choice and preference into a badge of national identity, the article suggests that the GAA performed an important role within the touchy nationalism of the newly independent Irish Free State, and its conviction of its own importance helped fuel the elaboration of a genuinely distinctive variant of the European practice of sport.
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Journal
International Journal of the History of Sport
Volume
25
Issue
10
Start Page
1326
End Page
1337
Copyright (Published Version)
2008 Taylor and Francis
Keywords
Subject – LCSH
Gaelic Athletic Association--History
Sports--Social aspects--Ireland--History--20th century
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
File(s)
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