The first marathon, as we now know it

The search for extra Irish Olympic medals

In an earlier blog, I referred to Ireland’s quite respectable Olympic medal count of 31 and how this number could also be enhanced further if we were to consider the many medals won by Irish athletes representing other countries in the early years of the Olympics, primarily Britain, along with those three medals won in the Olympic art competitions of 1924 and 1948 https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/olympian-warfare-art-and-tipperary.html

And then Richard Askwith’s recent article reminded me that the Olympic spirit is about so much more than medal counts, as exemplified at the first post war Olympics in London in 1948 when, in the words of Emil Zátopek, the revival of the Olympics amidst the ruins of six years of war ‘was as if the sun had come out’ https://unherd.com/2020/04/how-the-olympics-could-rekindle-their-flame/

Some early Tipperary Olympians

But after all that, it has to be said that another few medals for Ireland would be nice. And that got me thinking of that wonderful bronze statue in front of the courthouse in Nenagh commemorating Olympians with Tipperary connections. There’s Bob Tisdall with his 400m hurdle gold medal at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, rightly credited to Ireland in the record books. But then there’s Matt McGrath (born in 1875 in my own parish of Ballina/Boher and just a few miles from Nenagh) who over the course of three Olympics (London 1908, Stockholm 1912 and Paris 1924) amassed three medals in the hammer throw, two silvers and one gold. However, he won the medals representing his adoptive country of the United States, so Ireland misses out there.

The life-sized bronze statues in Nenagh of (left to right) 

Matt McGrath, Johnny Hayes and Bob Tisdall

And the third athlete commemorated in Nenagh is Johnny Hayes, whose father Michael was a baker in Silver Street in the town before emigrating to the United States. Johnny was born and reared in the United States, so we have only a tenuous claim on his Olympic marathon gold won in the 1908 London Olympics. But although we can’t claim the medal for Ireland, the key role of this Irish American in perhaps the most eventful and important of all Olympic marathons should make us proud.  

Johnny Hayes (1886-1965)

Some Ancient Greeks and two Frenchmen

The distance of 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.2 km in new money) is a distance that most runners can tell you off the top of their head as being the official distance for a marathon. Prior to the 1908 Olympics, marathon-like races were generally set at in or around 25 miles and, despite the neat creation myth that modern Olympic marathons are based on a mystical revival of certain military events in the history of Ancient Greece, the 19^th century had already seen a steadily increasing interest in long distance walking and running races without any great heed being paid to the Ancient Greeks.

One of the most well established stories behind the Ancient Greek origins of the race is based on Pheidippides, who was a hemerodromus (professional long distance running courier) and ran 25 miles from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over the invading Persians. Legend has it that his last words (before dropping dead) were ‘Chairete, Nikomen’ ('Joy to you, we’ve won'). Incidentally, it may be that the 25 mile trip was merely the straw that broke the back of this unfortunate hemerodromus, as he had allegedly covered 150 miles over the previous two days in seeking military help from the Spartans in the fight against the Persians, that particular run giving rise to the modern annual Spartathlon ultra-running race https://www.spartathlon.gr/en

Pheidippides announcing the Greek victory over the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC

Painting by Luc-Oliver Merson, 1869

Ultimately, the adoption of the Ancient Greek creation myth for the modern Olympic marathon race may have been due to Baron de Coubertin being nudged into the idea of a ‘marathon’ race at the first modern Olympics in 1896 by his friend and fellow Frenchman Michael Bréal, after Bréal had read and become inspired by Robert Browning’s 1879 poem about Pheidippides, ending with the melodramatic lines:

Till in he broke: ‘Rejoice, we conquer!’, Like wine thro’ clay,

Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died – the bliss!

The 1908 London Olympic marathon

The Polytechnic Harriers athletics club designed the course for the marathon at the 1908 London Olympics with the requirements that the race have a royal book-ending, so to speak. In order to gain the approval of the royal family, the race started underneath the East Terrace of Windsor Castle so that the royal children could enjoy the spectacle. The race was to end at the now long gone White City Stadium and, in another effort to gain royal approval, the runners were required to complete a full circuit of the track inside the stadium before finishing beneath the royal box, thus bringing the distance to ‘around 26 miles and 385 yards’. Despite the completely arbitrary setting of this distance (unless you have strong royalist tendencies), the distance has become the standard for marathons and was formally codified as such by the International Amateur Athletic Federation in 1921.

The course for the 1908 Olympic marathon, with royal 'bookends' 

at Windsor and White City Stadium

The Americans before the start of the race, with Johnny Hayes 
second from left wearing number 26

The race itself would turn into a war of attrition between the main competitors from the fifty five starters, but two of the athletes would ultimately make all the headlines. In what turned out to be a hot day and a grueling race, after nearly three hours of running the Italian confectioner Dorando Pietri was the first to enter the White City Stadium, looking to be a clear winner. But those extra few royal yards added on to the end of the race were to be his downfall, quite literally. First taking a wrong turn on entering the stadium and then falling five times before finally breaking the finishing tape, we can only hope that the nightmarish experience for Pietri was numbed by his obvious confusion and delirium. Possibly adding to the immense pressure he felt, and Pietri may not even have been aware of it, a brass band started playing ‘The Conquering Hero’ as Johnny Hayes entered the stadium in second place.

A very famous photo: after a wrong turn and five falls in the stadium, 

Dorando Pietri crosses the finish line to claim gold, or so it seems

But it was only after falling over the finish line in a near Pheidippidean collapse that Pietri's nightmare really began. Because as soon as that Irish American son of a Nenagh baker, Johnny Hayes, crossed the line in second, the Americans began their objections to Pietri’s finish. They rightly claimed that he had been helped in the last part of the race by numerous interventions from the stewards and assorted onlookers. The appeals of the Americans were successful and Pietri was disqualified. Therefore, Johnny Hayes became the first winner of the current Olympic marathon distance and, simultaneously, the first world and Olympic record holder for the specific distance. 

A much less famous photo: Johnny Hayes about to finish second, or so it seems

Interestingly, Johnny Hayes' time of 2 hours 55 minutes and 18 seconds would be regarded as only an average time for a top club runner today, such is the progress that has been made in training, nutrition and running shoes since 1908. In fact, just yesterday I noted on Strava that a friend of mine completed a marathon in training on his own in a time of 2 hours 52 minutes, this with the additional challenge of keeping his route within the COVID-19 restricted two kilometres of his home.

And in stark contrast to the fastidious preparation of modern athletes of all levels, the two main heroes of 1908 had bizarrely unconventional approaches to race nutrition and hydration. Pietri wore a handkerchief on his head that he had doused in balsamic vinegar, which he would occasionally put in his mouth for refreshment. He also repeated the mantra to himself ‘vincero o moriro’ (meaning 'win or die', both of which he nearly achieved). Johnny Hayes reported having had ‘a little beef and toast and a cup of tea’ before the race but he did not eat or drink atall during the race: ‘I merely sponged my face and gargled my throat with a little brandy’. 

To compensate Pietri for his disappointment (and maybe as a manifestation of royal guilt for those extra near deadly yards added to the end of the race), he was awarded a silver cup by Queen Alexandra. The photograph of Dorando Pietri crossing that finish line in 1908 is one for the ages and, in yet another strange twist, an eyewitness account was provided by a very famous journalist and author with Irish genes. Because one of Pietri's falls occurred right in front of a certain Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote afterwards: ‘I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow face, the glazed expressionless eyes. Surely he is done now?’ 

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930): an eyewitness reporting journalist 

at the London 1908 Olympic marathon

The Italian would go on to become something of a celebrity, buoyed up by the Ancient Greek levels of heroic tragedy of his marathon. In contrast to his Italian rival, Johnny Hayes led a quieter and, perhaps because of two specific physical limitations, a luckier life. He had had a tough beginning, born into extreme poverty, with his parents dying within weeks of each other and his younger siblings being taken into orphanages. He went on to work as a ‘sandhog’, tunneling for the New York subway. He then joined the Irish American Athletic Club (IAAC), maybe to get some respite from the demands of his gruelling labouring job. Members of the athletics club were often found jobs by the IAAC, typically with the New York Police Department. However, standing at only 5 feet 4 inches, Johnny Hayes was too short to become a policeman and so, because of this first physical limitation, he got the altogether safer and more pleasant job of working in Bloomingdales. And he turned that building itself into a training camp, running circuits on the rooftop cinder track at night in preparation for the Olympics.

His second physical limitation proved to be even luckier when, just a few years after the Olympics, because of colour blindness, he was denied entry to the US Army at the dawn of the First World War. 

'Moneyball': why it just didn't work for me

Sportiness during a pandemic

The ongoing COVID-19 restrictions on sport of all types and levels means that sporty types are frantically modifying their exercise and training routines to be compliant with government guidelines on social behaviour while at the same time keeping active and ready for their next competitive event, whenever that might be. And as there’s only so many times you can click into the BBC Sport website to see if or when the Premier League might restart, sporty types are also listening to sports podcasts and watching old matches like never before (e.g. see the wonderful GAA development at https://www.gaa.ie/gaa-now/archive/).

‘Moneyball’

Then when things get really desperate, sporty types can resort to the lowest form of sports spectatorship: films about sport. So it was the COVID-19 restrictions that led me to sit down with the Blonde and finally watch the much lauded 2011 baseball film ‘Moneyball’, described by one reviewer as a melding of two other films, combining the romanticism of the baseball film ‘Field of Dreams’ with the zeitgeistiness (my word) of ‘The Social Network’ https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/27/moneyball-review-brad-pitt-baseball

Along with COVID-19 desperation for sporting stimuli, I was also interested because I had heard about the portrayal in the film of John W. Henry, principal owner of both the Boston Redsox baseball team and my beloved Liverpool Football Club.

John W. Henry and wife Linda helping bring home the 2019 European Champions League trophy for Liverpool

'Moneyball' is based on the 2003 book ‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game’ by Michael Lewis and is centred around two real individuals. There’s Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), a former professional baseball player who was the General Manager of the chronically underfunded baseball team the Oakland Athletics (‘The A’s’) from 1997 to 2015 and then there’s Peter Brand (possibly based on a character such as Paul DePodesta and played by actor Jonah Hill), the economics graduate from Yale who had never played baseball but who seems to have harnessed his nerdiness to develop special statistics based insights into the game.

Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) and 
Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) in 'Moneyball'

The real Billy Beane, General Manager of Oakland Athletics from 1997-2015

Michael Lewis, author of 
'Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game'

The film opens with Oakland Athletics losing in the 2001 end of season match (American League Division Series) to the much wealthier New York Yankees, thus missing out on advancing to the World Series. To add insult to injury, bigger and wealthier clubs then swoop in on Oakland’s three best players and whip them away, leaving Billy Beane forlornly looking for extra money for the coming season so he can buy replacements. Told by the owner that ‘we’re a small market team and you’re a small market GM’, Beane realizes that his team, in having to sell their best players to wealthier teams, are merely ‘organ donors for the rich’ and 'the last dog at the bowl'. He goes on to define their place in the baseball pecking order: ‘There are rich teams, poor teams, fifty feet of crap and then there’s us’.

So Beane is left to scramble around for replacements and goes (baseball cap in hand) to other teams, most notably the Cleveland Indians. There, in what seems an unlikely scenario, he meets with half a dozen of their management (most of whom sit behind him for the meeting) and he gets nothing from them, but he does notice an overweight nerdy young man who whispers into the ears of key individuals as the meeting progresses. He approaches this individual (Peter Brand) afterwards, having noticed his quiet influence on proceedings earlier and hires him as an assistant at Oakland.

In a few brief scenes, Brand outlines his science and philosophy to Beane. Essentially, baseball teams pay huge amounts (e.g. 7 or 8 million dollars per year in salaries) for players who often look good and talk the talk but turn out to have limited talent and contributions to their teams. On the other hand, there are thousands of players who are frequently overlooked and grossly undervalued because of superficial characteristics such as their playing style or their appearance. Brand argues that ‘baseball thinking is mediaeval’. He does detailed statistical analysis on the performances of all of the 51 Oakland players, outlining to the intrigued Beane that ‘It’s about getting things down to one number’. He communicates his revolutionary ideas calmly and persuasively. He calculates that, to get to the World Series, the team will have to win a certain number of games and score a certain number of runs in the process.

Peter Brand outlines his methods to Billy Beane

Specifically regarding players, he argues that a player who produces a certain number of runs in a season can for example be replaced by three unknown, undervalued (and thus inexpensive) players who in combination can produce the same amount of runs. Brand’s approach is based on Sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball, deriving its name from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Brand talks about an unclaimed and undervalued pool of players, ‘an island of misfit toys’, who if purchased shrewdly based on their performance indicators (e.g. number of runs and their ‘on-base percentage’) could be crafted together jigsaw-like to form a winning team. So far so good.

There are interesting scenes involving clashes between the older and ‘wiser’ Oakland scouts in contrast to Beane and Brand, where they question the new Brand-inspired Sabermetrics player purchasing strategy. These are set pieces designed to make the older and more conventional scouts look outdated in their approach and suspicious of the new approach. Beane throws questions at them to shake up their thinking, asking of one player being eyed up for purchase: ‘If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?’ There is resistance too from the team manager Art Howe (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is concerned about his tenuous one year contract and unhappy with the new purchasing strategy employed by Beane. 

The new season starts badly for Oakland, losing several games and finding themselves well down the league table. There is predictable questioning of the novel player purchasing methods, both from the older scouts and from Beane himself, but he persists with Brand’s methods, knowing that ‘these are hard moves to explain to people’. He occasionally checks with his nerdy sidekick: ‘Do you believe in this thing or not?’ and pushes on despite the poor performances. Along the journey there are a few tense scenes when Beane confronts the losing Oakland team and highlights his anger and disappointment with them, but he also gets closer to the running of the team as the season progresses.

And then things start to change for the better and Oakland start winning. They start on a string of victories that goes up and up from 12 to14 to 16 and then starts getting close to an all-time record of 20 straight wins, which they ultimately achieve. Beane has now fully bought in to Brand’s methods and is starting to see a bigger picture beyond his own team: ‘If we win on our budget we will have changed the game’.

Oakland Athletics after securing a record breaking 20th consecutive victory in 2002

The problem is, Oakland don’t win in the end. The 2002 season ends quite similarly to the 2001 season, with defeat in the final game and lack of progress to the World Series, again. The end of the film involves a meeting between Beane and the aforementioned John W. Henry of Boston Redsox/Liverpool FC fame, who tries to lure Beane to the east coast with a huge offer. Beane sticks with Oakland and (as far as I can see from reviewing the baseball results since 2002) does not progress to the World Series. In contrast, the Boston Redsox win the World Series in 2004, thus breaking ‘the curse of the Bambino’, alluded to in an earlier blog of mine https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/tipperary-and-kilkenny-curses-hurling.html. 

It is believed that the Redsox employed some of the Beane/Brand 'Moneyball' purchasing strategies in their success.

‘Moneyball’: some reflections

So what to make of it all? Ultimately, like many films about sport, the actual sport features very little in the film, and this was disappointing. You don’t need to know anything about baseball to watch this film, but likewise you will not learn much about baseball from watching it. And despite the setting up of Beane and Brand as co-revolutionaries, this is not a buddy movie, if you’re into that sort of thing, and their working relationship seems to come out of nowhere, based on that chance meeting when Beane visited the Cleveland Indians and subsequently changed his entire approach to player acquisition based on a few brief tutorials from Brand.

Likewise, although described a few times in nerdy excitement by Brand, the film does not really sell Sabermetrics as a method that can change baseball because, despite the reliance in Sabermetrics on the importance of numerically defined performance and results, the irony is that Oakland Athletics did not and have not won a World Series since 1989 (at a time when, incidentally, they actually had a very high payroll) and it is hard to prove if the more successful Boston Redsox won their four World Series titles since 2002 because of ‘Moneyball’ tactics or simply because of the considerable financial might of John W. Henry.   

So I remain unconvinced about Sabermetrics, because there is no clear evidence that it worked for Oakland and, more importantly, because it involves a ludicrously oversimplistic and frankly depressing approach to the complexities and frustrating beauty of team sports, relegating them to the level of ‘fantasy football’ and other ‘virtual’ versions of real games. To quote one of the older 'conventional' Oakland staff in 'Moneyball': 'You don't put a game together with a computer'.

No importance is given in this film to the possibility of players changing, developing and improving under the leadership of a talented coach; instead they are seen as immutable and unthinking pawns. No importance is given to the vital role of team dynamics and cooperation, or lack thereof. No importance is given to the influence of supporters, history, culture and tradition on team performance. No importance is given to the thousands of factors that influence individual and team performance for any particular game, from nutrition and injuries through to such intangibles as confidence, morale and luck. 

In short, the application of Sabermetrics or ‘Moneyball’ tactics to baseball or any other sport seems to me to be exactly the kind of hare-brained idea that would be thought up by an economics graduate with no experience of actually playing the sport.

Finally...

And now that I’ve started ranting, I will continue. Having done a little research on baseball before watching 'Moneyball', I remain convinced that it is spectacularly boring and hard to follow. The reason that there are so many films about baseball is, in my opinion, because it is regarded as the national game of a country that makes a lot of films. It’s also possibly because of the cinematic potential for those admittedly dramatic showdowns between pitcher and batter (‘strike three - you’re out!’, and all that) and those sentimental and schmaltzy life-affirming home-runs, set to orchestral accompaniment.

And another thing: it always both amuses and irritates me when Americans refer to their baseball ‘World Series’, involving as it does twenty nine teams from the United States and one from Canada. I suspect that I’m like many other Liverpool fans when I feel a bit shy about referring to my team as current World Champions, even though that title was achieved after winning a multi-nation European championship and then beating the best of the rest of the world in a seven nation tournament. Likewise, I wouldn’t dream of referring to my other team, the Tipperary hurlers, as current World Hurling Champions. But maybe I should, considering the international nature of the All-Ireland hurling championship, involving as it does teams from both parts of Ireland and the United Kingdom.  

Oakland Athletics: World Series Champions for 1989, after their defeat of the San Francisco Giants, a team from not only the same country but from 
the very same state 

Now here's an actual world championship winning team...

And while we're at it, let's finish with the 2019 World Hurling Champions:

Easter Sunday, 1888 - part 2 of 2

In part 1 of this blog, I covered the early years of the GAA and two of the key figures in its formation, Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin:

https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/04/easter-sunday-1888-part-1-of-2.html

The first All-Ireland hurling and football championships were seen by the GAA executive as a necessary next step for the development of the new organization. Twelve counties initially undertook to run club championships in both hurling and football: Clare, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, Louth, Meath, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow, although championships were not held or completed in all cases.

The first All-Ireland hurling championship began in 1887 with championships designed to find the best club in each county and these clubs would then go on to represent their county in the All-Ireland championship. 

By the end of a chaotic and controversial series of county championships, with byes, walkovers, Fenian/IRB involvement and club expulsions, only four matches went ahead in the All-Ireland championship. 

And before I go on, it’s worth making a few points about the actual game of hurling at the time as there were many key differences in comparison to the modern game. 

Hurling depicted in an 1884 edition of the London paper 

'Illustrated Sports and Dramatic News'

The shape of the hurley has changed over the years and, in 1887-1888 was probably longer than the current hurley and with a narrower 'boss', more comparable to a modern hockey stick. This may have reflected the increased emphasis on ground hurling and overhead striking at the time, in comparison to the modern catching and carrying game.

Games were played on pitches of at least 200 yards in length by 150 yards in width, thus bigger than modern pitches. Teams had twenty one players aside. Based on newspaper reports from the time, most players played in their bare feet. The games lasted eighty minutes.

Regarding early tactics, it seems that teams moved in groups around the field (the group known as a scriob) with 'whips' or fringe players waiting on the margins for the ball to come loose. 

The scoring system was complicated and games tended to yield low scores. A goal was more valuable than any number of points. And there was a score known as a ‘forfeit point’, awarded to the attacking team when a defender knocked the ball over their own end line. A forfeit point was worth only a fifth of a regular point. 

All in all, it seems like quite a different game to our modern version of hurling. 



The 1887 county hurling championships 

After a hotly contested and controversial campaign, Thurles ultimately won out in the Tipperary championship, winning the final against North Tipperary (a combined team from several clubs in the region). ‘The North Tipps’ had been favourites for the Tipperary championship, having beaten a combined team from east and south Galway in a high profile exhibition match in the Phoenix Park in 1886. The highly rated Moycarkey team was eliminated without losing a match and their case at GAA executive level was apparently not helped by their lack of IRB alignment. 

In Limerick, there was also controversy and an inconclusive end to the county championship. Murroe defeated Plan of Campaign in the first semi-final. The second semi-final involved South Liberties defeating Castleconnell but the match was spoiled by crowds encroaching on to the field and ended in disarray. After a chaotic final, in which both teams declared victory, the GAA Central Executive took the remarkable decision to award the Limerick championship to Castleconnell in a move that may also have been influenced by IRB members.

The Clare county final was very much an East Clare affair, with Ogonnelloe losing out to the nearby Smith O’Briens club from Garraunboy, just outside Killaloe. The Killaloe GAA club is still known as Smith O'Briens. 

No hurling championship was played in Wexford but the football champions (Castlebridge) were persuaded to represent the county in the All-Ireland hurling championship (playing their first ever hurling match).

Strange as it may now seem, cricket and 'Irish football' were more popular sports than hurling in Kilkenny in the early years of the GAA. Only four teams contested the first county hurling championship, in comparison to nineteen for the football championship. In the hurling final, Tullaroan defeated Mooncoin.

Although there is some uncertainty regarding whether a championship was played out in Galway, Meelick were declared the county champions and may have also had players on their team from surrounding areas such as Killimor, Eyrecourt and Mullagh. This region of south and east Galway was, along with northern Tipperary, one of the few places in Ireland where hurling had continued to thrive from antiquity, prior to the establishment of the GAA,  

Along with the Limerick championship, the Cork county championship was among the most controversial and bitter of all and, like the Limerick championship, failed to produce a definitive champion. St. Finbarr's and Cork Nationals both claimed victory in their semi-final, and the planned final against Passage did not go ahead.

The Phoenix Park was very much the epicentre of Dublin hurling in the early days of the GAA, with The Eblana club playing near the Wellington Monument, Kickhams playing on the Fifteen Acres, Grocers' Assistants on the polo grounds and Metropolitans and Faugh-a-Ballaghs playing on the Civil Service cricket ground. This may have been as a result of a call from Michael Cusack for GAA clubs to claim ownership of the Phoenix Park, thus putting an end to favouritism for 'knots of well-to-do people' living in 'charmed circles'. He wanted the Phoenix Park to be used by ordinary Irish people, playing Irish games 'for the benefit of the children of the poor who are being slowly poisoned in their own homes'. Metropolitans won the Dublin county championship as had been expected. 



The All-Ireland championship of 1887

In what would be the first ever first inter-county hurling championship match, Meelick of Galway defeated Castlebridge of Wexford in Elm Park Dublin on July 2nd 1887 on a scoreline of 2-8 to one goal. The result was not surprising, considering that the Meelick team came from a traditional hurling heartland and were among the favourites to win the All-Ireland championship. Remarkably, the Castlebridge team was primarily a football team and, having been persuaded to represent Wexford in the absence of a hurling championship in that county, this was their first ever hurling match. 

The Kilkenny champions Tullaroan were due to meet the champions of Cork and then Limerick but received byes in both matches because of inconclusive county championships. So the Kilkenny champions progressed on to the All-Ireland semi-final without playing a match.

The Tipperary champions received a walkover when Metropolitans of Dublin failed to field a team for their match in Mountrath. They then went on to beat Smith O'Briens of Clare in the next round, in a match played in Nenagh.

The penultimate match of the championship pitted Tullaroan of Kilkenny against Thurles of Tipperary in the All-Ireland semi-final, played in Urlingford on the border between the two counties. Before the match, Tullaroan objected to Thurles including some players from their team who were from outside of Thurles town. Changes were made and the match went ahead, with the Tipperary champions winning on a score 4-7 to nil and thus drawing first blood in a sporting rivalry that would go on to become one of the most fabled in GAA history, the latest installment being last August's All-Ireland hurling final. 

The scene was thus set for an All-Ireland showdown between the champions of Tipperary and Galway.


Easter Sunday, 1888: the first All-Ireland hurling final

It is unclear why Birr was chosen as the venue for the delayed All-Ireland hurling final of 1887 (played in 1888) but it may well have been because of its situation in a hurling heartland and between the two competing counties. Records of the actual day and match are sketchy and there are many legends associated with the game. However, we do know that the two teams gathered at Cunningham's hotel and marched in military style out of the town down Wilmer Road, across the Camcor river and on to Railway Road and the beginning of what is now the N52 (coincidentally, my aforementioned route for All-Ireland final ticket hunting). On their march to Johnny Farrell's field, the match venue, they were led by three Fenian members from their clubs: James Lynam of Meelick (a veteran of the American Civil War) and Hugh Ryan and Andrew Callanan of Thurles. 

The Tipperary hurlers wore green jerseys with 'a little galaxy of stars artistically worked around the centre' and the Galway men also wore green jerseys, but with a white stripe. Three thousand people assembled to witness the spectacle, having travelled from all over the surrounding countryside by various means. Despite the strongly nationalistic feelings of the day, it may be that 'a friendly regiment of the Scottish Highlanders stationed in Birr at the time, volunteered to keep order and control the sidelines', although this may also be legend.

The referee was Patrick J. White, a native of Toomevara in Co. Tipperary but living in Birr. Despite his own protestations and concerns about perceived bias in favour of his native county, he was persuaded by both teams that they would accept his judgement and authority.

Like many other aspects of the game, there is legend associated even with the match ball, one story being that it was fashioned together from cork, twine and covered with red leather, all in a pub in Killimor, and by three members of the Meelick team. 

Whatever the origins of the ball, it was thrown in at 3 p.m. and went 'whizzing in all directions, now here, now there, threatening one goal, now another'. Each team pressed and harried - 'the play was simply fierce' - and the Tipperary men opened with a point. This would turn out to be the only score of the first half.

A key event of the second half involved a fracas between John Lowery of Meelick and one of the Thurles players, with the unnamed Thurles player going off injured and Lowery possibly being sent off. 

After a subsequent period of sustained pressure, Thurles pushed for a goal but had to be content with a forfeit point. 

The final score of the match was definitive, with Thurles scoring a goal. Thurles captain James Stapleton named the scorer as Tommy Healy but the Midland Tribune reported the scorer as Jim Leahy. A surely reliable eye witness was the Meelick goalkeeper John Mannion who said: 'The ball came down to me out of the sun and a 17 stone Tipperary man arrived at the same time. The ball went in between us, but they won it fair'.  

The teams were cheered off the pitch and marched back again in military fashion to Cunningham's Hotel. And thus ended the humble beginnings of the All-Ireland hurling championship. 

A few final words: echoes of the past

Mark Rode’s wonderful statue is a striking and fitting tribute to the first All-Ireland hurling championship played on Easter Sunday, April 1st, 1888, as is Paul Rouse's book 'The Hurlers', the source material and inspiration for this blog. The first All-Ireland football final was played at the end of April 1888 in Clonskeagh, Dublin, with the Commercials club of Limerick defeating New Irelands of Dundalk, Co. Louth on a scoreline of 1-4 to 3 points and that site is marked with the plaque below.

From the little acorn of these 19th century matches grew the great oak of our modern leagues and championships, with hurling, football and camogie clubs now flourishing throughout Ireland for men, women, boys and girls and All-Ireland championships that are the centre-pieces of our sporting summers. One small irony is that Johnny Farrell’s field is now no longer, but is in fact the site of a large multi-national British superstore, so Mark Rode's statue faces not the field where the first All-Ireland hurling final was played but instead, built on that sacred site, is a Tesco superstore. I can only imagine the lyrical fury of Michael Cusack in response to this.

The bigger picture is that the dream of Cusack, Davin and their contemporaries of an Irish sporting organization for Irish games has probably exceeded even their wildest dreams. 

And although the modern game of hurling differs greatly from the game played in 1888, there are still strong echoes from our past in the passion, skill and vigour of the game itself, the intense club and county pride and loyalty and the love of our Irishness. Cusack was first and foremost a hurling enthusiast and I can only imagine his joy at the stratospheric skill levels now displayed in his favourite game. 

And those 19th century military parades are echoed in Croke Park at the end of every summer when teams march before the football and hurling finals, under the shadows of the stands named after Cusack and Davin, surely proving Cusack's words to be prophetic when he he wrote that, if their mission proved to be successful, he had no doubt 'that coming generations will bless us for the service we have rendered them'. 

Tipperary and Kilkenny hurlers parade in Croke Park before 

the 2016 All-Ireland hurling final