Cuala’s historic success in the Leinster club final at the weekend overlapped with Dublin CEO John Costello’s annual report, which nonetheless manages to mention it, but in many ways it represents a perfect snapshot of what the GAA is striving to do in the capital.
Costello’s reports are always engaging, particularly in their focus on broader issues such as the importance of sport as social capital and the imperative for public policy to take that into account. His comments on the funding issue can be represented as alarmist or self-serving but what he has to say still has to be addressed.
“Put bluntly,” he writes, “extra funding for other counties should not come at the direct expense of Dublin’s games development initiatives. Bleed that well dry and it won’t be long before soccer and rugby make inroads back into terrain that Dublin GAA has fought, tooth and nail, to colonise in the first place.”
It’s hard to think of better examples of that terrain than south county Dublin but before getting carried away by the image of missionaries bringing Gaelic games to the previously uninterested it’s worth remembering that the GAA always had a presence, however small and constantly changing.
There has been in history a roll-call of clubs, amalgamations and reformations in the south east of the county: Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey, Sallynoggin and drawing from surrounding areas.
Hurling outpost
Cuala is the old Irish name for the region stretching from the city down the east coast to Wicklow. Hurling – with camogie – was always the pre-eminent game and as recently as 1969 there was a story in Gaelic Life magazine (which is reproduced on the club website: http://www.cualagaa.ie/a-hurling-outpost-in-south-dublin-1969/) headlined "A Hurling Outpost in South Dublin" and detailing the strides made by the club at underage level.
Five years later, symbolically the year when Kevin Heffernan put Gaelic games back on the city map, the current club, Cuala, was formed. The GAA's Strategic Review Committee in 2002 proposed that some of the big units on the south of the city, the so-called 'super clubs' be split up to allow more rational husbandry of resources. It wasn't unreasonable: how can clubs with catchments the size of some counties provide meaningful activity programmes for all age groups given that only 15 can play on a minor or under-16 team?
The problem though was and is a very GAA-related one. All such clubs – and Kilmacud and Ballyboden would be more prominent examples than Cuala – came from somewhere. They had their own history and traditions and simply carving them into more manageable slices would, in many cases, upset those.
The reason why Cuala was “an outpost” in 1969 was that Gaelic games were massively under-subscribed. Addressing that issue has opened up swathes of territory and the growth of the club has reflected that. When Costello writes about the importance of state assistance – or at least allowance – for the value of sport in the community he makes valid points about how public policy could require developers to make portions of land available at below-commercial value for recreation and amenity as part of planning permission.
That’s been an issue for Cuala, set amongst some of the most expensive real estate in the country. The recent attempt to acquire some land from Blackrock rugby club demonstrated the need for expanded facilities, and the symbolism was lost on no one. At times Dublin clubs have been characterised as ‘League of Nations’ collectives, drawing players from all over the country as they come to the city for work reasons.
Fluent Irish speakers
On Monday's Morning Ireland Cuala chair Adrian Dunne pointed out that of the 32 names on the Leinster final programme, all but four were home produced players coming up through the ranks. On an unrelated point, 10 of the starting team are fluent Irish speakers – testament to Scoil Lorcáin and Coláiste Eoin.
Paul Schutte spoke after Sunday's victory about the players' pride in equalling and bettering the achievement of the previous generation. "It's absolutely brilliant but it was more so beating the dads and uncles. They always held it over us that they've won three championships when we done the back to back, but they never got a Leinster so that was the big one for us."
Looking back at the Cuala team that lost a previous Leinster final 27 years ago, it’s just like any other club: the same names – Schutte, Treacy, O’Callaghan. There’s no doubt that the club through the relentless hard work of its volunteers has tapped into the modern concerns of parents about the importance of sport for children’s health but there have also been out-reach programmes into schools in the area, started by Damien Byrne and Willie Braine.
I remember being at a primary schools blitz organised by Damien, the former Dublin goalkeeper and selector who founded the club’s Sports and Social Integration Project, and being struck by the diversity of the children playing football. Cuala is a very GAA story from an area that for a long time wasn’t.
That, away from the All-Irelands and the funding arguments, is a measure of Dublin’s success.
smoran@irishtimes.com
