The Study of Gaelic Games and Irish Society
This book is about Gaelic games, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the body that governs Gaelic games, and Irish society. The term ‘Gaelic games’ refers to a number of ball games—hurling, Gaelic football, rounders and Gaelic handball—which fall under the governance and administration of the GAA. The two more widespread and popular, and perhaps more familiar, of these ball games are Gaelic football and hurling, which are the games examined in this book.
Many readers, though perhaps to varying degrees, will be familiar with Gaelic games—hurling and football in particular. However, given the sociological focus and relevance of this text there will also be some readers perhaps less familiar with them. For that reason, the following is a short summary of the sports; however, we would suggest a quick view on YouTube would perhaps give one a better grasp! Hurling is a field game of fifteen-a-side played with a wooden stick, with a broad base known as the bas (pronounced ‘boss’), called a hurley and a small ball known as a sliotar, which is similar in size to a tennis ball. The game is played both on the ground and ‘in the air’ (unlike field hockey). The ball can be propelled long distances through the swinging action of the player with the hurley. The ostensible object of the game is to accrue scores through propelling the ball between goalposts, either under the bar to score a goal (worth three points) or over the bar to score a single point. Each team has a goalkeeper, and the goalposts resemble the H structure of rugby, though with netting in the lower part as with soccer, which is minded by the goalkeeper. It has a long history in Ireland, though its precise form has changed over time. Similarly, Gaelic football has a related structure. A field game involving two teams of fifteen-a-side, the goalposts are the same as in hurling and each side has a goalkeeper. The ball can be kicked, fisted and caught ‘in the air’. The scoring structure of both hurling and football is the same, while the playing surface is wider and longer than of either soccer or rugby.
As the title implies, the book is also about Irish people—how they think, feel and act has changed over the course of the last 150 years—and how this relates to Gaelic games and the GAA. It is generally acknowledged that the formation of the GAA in 1884 was related to broader changes involving the rise of cultural nationalism in Ireland1 during the late nineteenth century (Mandle, 1987). Yet more contemporary developments in both Gaelic games and in the organisational structure of the GAA tend not to be linked with wider social changes to the same extent. Thus, underpinning this book is the belief that to understand and explain developments in Gaelic games and the GAA we must simultaneously examine the changes in Irish society. As Elias (2008b, p. 26) argues, ‘studies of sport which are not studies of society are studies out of context’.
A large body of academic work (Cronin, Duncan, & Rouse; 2009 Cronin, Murphy, & Rouse, 2009; De Búrca, 1989, 1999; Mandle, 1987; McAnallen, Hassan, & Hegarty, 2009)2 and more journalistic-style texts (e.g., Corry, 1989, 2005; Fullam, 1999) on Gaelic games and the GAA now exists. Indeed, the number and diversity of such manuscripts have grown exponentially in recent years. Most of these emanate from historians, journalists, players, former players and managers, many of the latter in the form of autobiographies. In contrast, only a relatively small pool of sociologically informed work exists (Mullan, 1995), including our own which we build upon here (Connolly & Dolan, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b; Dolan & Connolly, 2009, 2014b). This book provides sociologically informed explanations of particular developments in Gaelic games and the GAA. More specifically, we explain:
- the shift in the direction of more rounded and even self-restraint and more advanced thresholds of repugnance towards violence in relation to the playing of Gaelic football and hurling.
- changes in the structure of spectator violence and how these changes are connected to changes in the structure of Irish society.
- the greater suppression of displays of superiority feelings and animosity towards the competing sports of soccer and rugby.
- decentralisation and centralisation forces in the organisational development of the GAA.
- the relationship between the increasing seriousness of involvement and achievement orientation and the change in the tension balance between amateurism/volunteerism and professionalism at playing and administrative levels.
- shifting balances of power between players and administrators and the emergence of the concept of ‘player power’.
- how and why the discourses of amateurism and professionalism were amplified or de-amplified over the years by different groups constituting the GAA.
- changes in how GAA administrators sought to attract and integrate young people into the GAA and how this was connected with increasing social interdependences and shifting intergenerational power balances.
Overall, this book is an attempt to sociologically theorise developments in Gaelic games, the GAA and Irish society. It is in this way too that this book is much more than a mere sociological study of Gaelic games and Irish society, for it involves an examination of Elias’s (2010, 2012a, 2012b) ideas and theories.
While this book is written from a sociological perspective, we hope it will be read beyond academia, and become a vehicle for public discussion about Gaelic games, the GAA and Irish society itself. It was clear to us in writing this book that the developments we sought to explain were matters of public interest. The subject matters—player ‘violence’, the amateur–professional tension, the rise of what is referred to as ‘player power’, spectator behaviour, the structure of decision-making within the GAA, the relationship between GAA functionaries and those of other sporting organisations—are perennial issues of discussion in Irish society. They resurface regularly within the media and public discourse, as well as being formally debated issues within the various organisational units of the GAA itself. Within mainstream contemporary media many of these issues are treated a-socially, a-historically and in static rather than processual terms—the latter being a feature of some academic scholarship too. Indeed, within many academic accounts generally we also find somewhat limited explanations offered for specific developments. Historians, perhaps the most prolific discipline when it comes to published research on both Gaelic games and the GAA, tend to provide explanations from the ‘big man’ perspective. Here the assumed power of the single individual is accentuated while broader social changes, while recognised, tend to take on the position more reminiscent of a background choreography. Certainly, in some instances the social is given greater credence. But it often takes the form of locating changes as a reflex of a change in society. One of the problems with this mode of explanation, and the thinking and observation it reflects, is that it encourages ‘the impression that society is made up of structures external to oneself, the individual, and that the individual is at one and the same time surrounded by society yet cut off from it by some invisible wall’ (Elias, 2012b, p. 10). Indeed, a central focus of Elias’s work, and the theoretical approach he developed, was dismantling the assumption that society is something abstracted from individual people. His concept of figuration is central to overcoming this view of individuals and groups as substantially different (a point we will return to below). Figurations are fluid networks of interdependent people with different and shifting power balances between the people comprising them: ‘Individuals always come in figurations and figurations a...