First Foreign Game in Croke Park

**Jerry The Saint** · 01/02/2007, 5:33 PM

Excellent article from Con Houlihan in the Irish Times 6 Nations supplement today (not sure if it's available online).

The first foreign sport played at Croke Park?

Gaelic Football.

...it wasn't until 1911 that the GAA headquarters first housed a "foreign" game. The honour fell to Cork and Antrim.

Well worth checking out. Unfortunately the supplement is let down by kindof a pr!ckish article from Tom Humphries and the same tired old guff from Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.

**paul_oshea** · 02/02/2007, 10:17 AM

jerry can you pm me the article? i dont have access

**Jerry The Saint** · 02/02/2007, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

jerry can you pm me the article? i dont have access

I don't have ireland.com access either - just read it on the old-fashioned ink and paper. Not sure if they put their supplements online anyway

Good piece about how early-GF was just a mix of elements of rugby and soccer (rugby mostly) and that its institution more or less wiped out the traditional, ultraviolent game of cad which was the Irish version of no-holds-barred village against village "football" as played all over Europe.

**wws** · 02/02/2007, 11:29 AM

ultraviolet cad?

ure codding me

I posted up here that the GAA was all a cod ages ago - someone google it up - twas invented by the anglo irish gentry class involved in the gaelic revival (which was all based on a fanciful notion of some imagined ancient Irish past)

bunch of knob jockeys they were

**BrayUnknowns** · 02/02/2007, 11:58 AM

First Foreign Game in Croke Park ? Really bad headline IMO, Rugby is played virtually world wide now including Ireland (one of the most popular sports in the country) so to call it foreign is very ignorant and uninformed really.

**Dricky** · 02/02/2007, 12:03 PM

Never mind that Croke Park used to be a football "soccer" ground before it was GAA.

Did it not hold a shinty game there as well??

**Schumi** · 02/02/2007, 12:05 PM

Originally Posted by BrayUnknowns

First Foreign Game in Croke Park ? Really bad headline IMO, Rugby is played virtually world wide now including Ireland (one of the most popular sports in the country) so to call it foreign is very ignorant and uninformed really.

The article was about GAA being the first foreign game in Croke Park.

**Jerry The Saint** · 02/02/2007, 12:06 PM

Originally Posted by BrayUnknowns

First Foreign Game in Croke Park ? Really bad headline IMO, Rugby is played virtually world wide now including Ireland (one of the most popular sports in the country) so to call it foreign is very ignorant and uninformed really.

Qu�

Con is saying that Gaelic Football was the first foreign game played in Croke Park. The thrust of the article is that calling a sport "foreign" is ignorant and uninformed and if the rules of rugby/soccer were formulated in France instead of England it wouldn't even be an issue. I wouldn't really class rugby as a worldwide sport though -if it truly was Ireland would never be in contention to be European and World Champions in the same year.

**Dodge** · 02/02/2007, 12:18 PM

Con is still the best sports journalist around.

**Jerry The Saint** · 02/02/2007, 2:58 PM

Originally Posted by Dodge

Con is still the best sports journalist around.

Haven't read him in ages but thought this was top-notch stuff - pointing out the absurdities of the politics of Irish sport without going down the path of "Grrr, bleedin bigots/bleedin anti-bigot bigots, think they already own the place" guff (Take note Humphries/Dervan et al).

**paul_oshea** · 02/02/2007, 4:05 PM

bleedin anti-bigot bigots

hmm, there are a few of them on here too jerry

**Lionel Ritchie** · 02/02/2007, 9:19 PM

Unless there's a Kung Fu tournament or something on there soon that I haven't heard about there won't be any foreign games played in Croker in the forseeable.

**Dodge** · 03/02/2007, 8:10 AM

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

hmm, there are a few of them on here too jerry

And loads of bigots tooo. That was his point

NFL for Croker? Again?

**finlma** · 03/02/2007, 9:09 AM

I was at the Notre Dame v US Navy (I think they were the teams) AFL game around 10 years ago.

Just found out I have a ticket for the Hill next Sunday.

**Thunderblaster** · 05/02/2007, 8:09 PM

I had to listen to thunder over the weekend from a bogball head preaching how Ireland does not have it's own football stadium. I gave him a bit of thunder by telling him that no football federation actually own their own stadium. Everyone knows that bogball fans have a warped sense of ideology, eg "foreign games".