Twenty five years ago this week, the GAA concluded the second test of a resumed International Rules series.
The hybrid game had originally been devised for the GAA’s centenary year but after four series in 1984, ‘86, ‘87 and 1990, the concept stalled.
An underage series kept going, which was significant because the manager was John Tobin, from Galway, currently chair of the GAA’s National Coaching and Games Committee. He played a key role in the resumption of the internationals.
“Joe McDonagh was president and they made contact through me. I got a phone call from Ian Collins [the AFL director of football operations] at the time. He said we’re interested in resuming this with the AFL officially in charge.
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“Then they came over to Dublin to meet the GAA. Pat Daly [GAA director of games development and research] was very involved and he sat down with Kevin Sheahan [AFL]) to write the rules and update them from the original game in the 1980s. It was the only new game of football that had been innovated in a century.”
The involvement of the AFL was significant because in the original years of the internationals, the series was run in Australia by a promotions company rather than the organising body for the game. Getting official recognition meant that the series would get the full attention of the AFL.
Tobin said there were a couple of motivations behind the rebirth of the series in 1998.
“One was that there should be an international opportunity for players and that was a strong element. They certainly embraced it. Another was that players with the less successful counties would get international recognition, a step beyond the traditional interprovincial level. It attracted phenomenal crowds both here and there.”
That was not immediately evident 25 years ago. The Ireland team, captained by Meath’s John McDermott – who actually got married on the Friday before the second test – and featuring stars of the day, including Séamus Moynihan, Peter Canavan, Anthony Tohill and new All-Ireland winners from Galway, Jarlath Fallon, Michael Donnellan and Seán de Paor, had lost the first test to a late Australia rally.
The attendance was 22,900 the first day – the preponderance turning up all together as the match was starting and it looked as if hardly anyone was in Croke Park – which rose to 35,221 a week later when a strong third quarter turned the test and the series Ireland’s way.
For those who suspected a disparity in interest, Australian coach Leigh Matthews confirmed as much in the press conference afterwards.
“I likened it last week to the Vietnam War for Australians. No one back home cared about it that much, but the people over there did.”
Tobin was involved in manager Colm O’Rourke’s backroom team and watched as the internationals took off, drawing 65,000 to the MCG in Melbourne a year later and 45,000 to Adelaide for the second test.
“For five years the graph of its success was nearly vertical,” he says. “The quality of the promotion definitely helped. Coca Cola played a big part in that.”
The challenges for the new game were firstly to maintain a reasonable standard of discipline and then that the actual matches should be competitive.
Ultimately neither challenge was met and the series faltered ironically at its apparent zenith, a capacity attendance at Croke Park, when the Australians unleashed some spectacular violence after losing the first test in Galway. The series was suspended for a year and then put on a twice every three years rotation.
Australia also began to gain the upper hand whenever they fielded their best players. Tweaking the rules to keep Ireland competitive contributed to declining interest Down Under and in 2024 it will be seven years since it was last staged.
The original hiatus in the 1990s lasted only nine years.
In terms of the experience, Tobin feels the internationals were a great addition to both games at the time. He dismisses the charge that the connections between the AFL and the GAA simply facilitated the loss of players to Australian Rules.
“Is it a drain on our games? No it’s a career opportunity that has led to a trickle rather than a torrent out of our games but it has also enhanced our games because the majority come back to play with us. The theory that we have lost more than we gained has been debunked.”
At the start of the season just ended, there were 11 Irish footballers on the books of AFL clubs.
Are there any lessons from the series that might address some of the problems facing football at home.
Tobin’s Croke Park committee recently commissioned detailed research into the game, which showed the trend towards a possession-based game persisting. Would the international rules tackle discourage players from holding on to the ball for too long?
“So many people have said that,” he says. “A fella who knows he can be tackled from the shoulder to the knee? It’s an interesting point. Would this finally get rid of all this ambiguity about the tackle. There would be some pushback but might it help?”
With 25 years’ perspective, Tobin feels that the series’ time is gone for all that it was so exciting while it lasted.
“In the context of the current split season, I don’t see any chance of it coming back. The Australians have a longer league as well. In the modern calendar there’s just no room. It’s context and evolution. Everything has changed. It had its time and it was a great odyssey.”
