The Old Lady Creaks No More

The End Of An Era At Lansdowne Road

By Daniel McCarthy

On the back of what was an enriching, merited win by the Irish rugby team over their Australian counterparts in dripping Dublin last Sunday, it is worth reflecting back on the last traditional fixture to have been played at the storied old ground of Lansdowne Road prior to the entry of the wrecking balls. The Wallabies were stifled in every single aspect of the match, with a consummate professional performance by the Irish choking the living daylights out of their recently restored flair game which Campese, Ella, Lynagh et al once championed.

Lansdowne Road is the oldest rugby stadium in the world. The creation of Lansdowne Road Stadium was the vision of Henry William Dunlop, an outstanding young athlete who organised the first All Ireland Athletics Championships. His vision was to create a purpose built sporting venue and this he did at Lansdowne Road where the Stadium first opened for athletics in 1872. It is ironic that closure comes to this quaint old stadium as we know it, in the same forthcoming week when Michael Cusack, the founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association is to be officially commemorated by the opening of the Cusack Memorial Centre in his native Carran, in County Clare. Ironically, Michael was indirectly involved in the establishment of the Irish Rugby Football Union, having been a sitting member since 1878 on the council of the Irish Champion Athletic Club, from which the rugby union originally sprang. Indeed in one of the great quirks of history, especially in the light of the opening up of Croke Park, Cusack himself helped to secure Lansdowne Road for Irish athletics, at a time when the ICAC founder proposed to turn the organisation into a company. This move had met with much opposition, including from the future GAA fathers, the great Tipperary world champion athlete Maurice Davin who had frequently graced Croke Park, and Cusack, leading to the whole affair ending up in the Irish High Court. Cusack chaired a fundraising committee to alleviate the debts which the ICAC had accumulated by this time.

Cusack was indeed an accomplished all round athlete. He was a member of the Trinity College Rowing club and played in a handball tournament organised by the same college. Cusack won the 16 pound and 42 pound weights events organised by the Dublin Amateur Athletic club in 1875 and later claimed successive All- Ireland titles in the 16 pound weight event in 1881-1882, with his throw at Lansdowne Road setting a national record. He could wield the willow as well as the ash and indeed was praising the virtues of cricket into the early 1880s. It is recorded in a college ledger that part of Cusack's living expenses was a pair of cricket trousers worth 15 shillings.The Cusack Academy had a rugby XV. Its captain, one Michael Cusack, known to his pupils as the 'governor', was the team's leading player, and it was affiliated with the Leinster branch of the IRFU in November 1880. Folklore would have it that the man from the Burren could make hits as excruciating as what Best and Leamy inflicted on the Aussie back rowers last Sunday!

The first rules for ancient game of hurling were codified in 1869 by Pat Larkin of Kiltormer for the guidance of the Killimor hurlers, in south Galway and became known as the 'Killimor Rules'. It favoured the southern summer game of wide bás hurling. A year later the laws of 'hurley' as played by the students of Trinity College Dublin were published. This latter sport was closely related to shinty or 'camánchd', a ground hurling, winter game popular in parts of Kerry, the northern half of Ireland, and Scotland, where players were not allowed to handle the ball. Edward Carson, the future unionist leader was an avid hurley player in Trinity.

It has been an accusation levelled against Cusack in the past that he killed off the ancient winter stick games of the north by focusing exclusively upon the southern summer game of hurling. Actually Cusack was also an avowed internationalist in terms of a pan-celtic world at any rate and it is not commonly known that he himself presented the Celtic Times Challenge Cup in 1897 to mark the international hurling/shinty match between Ireland and Scotland at the grounds of Celtic FC in Parkhead, and indeed officiated thereafter at a return match played at Jones' Road in Dublin. Cusack used to refer to himself mock-heroically as Lughaidh Lámhfháda, the fabled king and father of the ancient Tailteann games of Ireland, who is accredited with first playing hurling on a competitive Olympian basis all of four thousand years ago. Another great Irishman whose centenary is being celebrated this year is Michael Davitt, and Cusack acknowledged that it was the Mayo man who first conceived of reviving those ancient games on an international basis, which came to fruition in 1924 where teams from all over the world entered into this great feast of Celtic games.

The GAA has looked at ways of broadening its international appeal, and more often than not, has met with moderate success at best. It is ironic that handball, with a far smaller Irish participation rate than hurling and football is the only Gaelic game that features today as a world competition. The former world handball champion Pat Kirby, of New York and Clare, is amongst the greatest of Ireland and America's handballers, with both he and Louth's Joey Maher who represented Canada blazing the trail for modern world champions as Cavan's Paul Brady who combines a handballing gift which has seen him win prizes such as $50,000 in the Ultimate Handball Showdown with his amateur duties as a member of the Cavan senior football panel. Kirby was a direct product of the east Clare handball renaissance fostered by Dr Edward MacLysaght around the time of the Irish War of Independence, and his natural talent allied to the superb coaching facilities he availed of in the US made Kirby a potent force. He has the dubious distinction of once sharing the same coach with Mike Tyson.

Gaelic football has recently developed an international dimension with the International Rules series against Australia, and Noel Roche from Kilkee, was the first Irishman to have played in four consecutive test series against the robust antipodeans. Indeed catch and kick games are rooted deep in man's history from Tsu chin in fifth century B.C. China to the Harpostrom of the Roman world. Football is specifically mentioned in an Irish context as 'the great game of foote' in the 1527 Statute of Galway, and again in the Sunday Observance Act of 1695 which banned football on Sundays.

Various global media have commonly highlighted the insular nature of Irish sport, especially the GAA. The GAA has periodically attracted much negative publicity, with the infamous Ban rule a major cilice on the organisation from its earliest days. However the facts suggest that the ban on non GAA sports invoked by the GAA was only a response to the ban first introduced by British sporting organisations. Cusack wrote in the Freeman's Journal of 1885:

With regard to boycotting I have to observe that, so far as athletics are concerned, it is entirely of English origin. Not only did the athletic laws in force in Ireland previous to last St. Patrick's Day boycott every man who competed at sports not held under foreign laws, but they endeavoured to boycott tradesmen, labourers, artisans, soldiers, policemen, boatmen, coastguardsmen and the like. In 1882 I succeeded, with the help of J.H. Stewart (an Ulster Presbyterian who stood steadfastly behind Cusack after the founder's removal fro office) in removing the exceedingly offensive and therefore intolerable disability under which the honest sons of toil laboured, and with the assistance of my other colleagues of the GAA I swept away all foreign laws in 1884.

He was speaking from direct experience. On the occasion of the 1883 Cork Athletics Sports meeting, Cusack supported the RIC member, Maxwell's right to participate. His entry was originally accepted, but was then objected to on account of his 'non-gentleman' status. Cusack, no lover of the RIC, was however affronted by this class distinction and much to the disgust of the Cork organising committee, proceeded to insist on the man's right to compete after his entry had been accepted. A citizen's right to have a sporting chance, Cusack might say. Good luck to the old Lansdowne, these new Irish boys might be returning there as world rugby champions by the time it re-opens. Ten to one odds say it.