'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

 

Easter Sunday, 1888 - part 1 of 2

Easter and the Irish

I wonder if there’s something uniquely Irish about the dawning of new and revolutionary beginnings at Easter. Maybe it’s related to that palpable seasonal shift out of the long winter into the hopefulness of a summer ahead or maybe it’s related to our Christian heritage and belief in resurrection from death, or maybe it’s just coincidence. But looking at the 20^th Century, we had the seminal 1916 Easter Rising rebellion near the start and the Good Friday Agreement at the very end, in 1998. And then going back to the end of the 19^th Century there was also an Easter of new beginnings for the Irish, with the first All-Ireland Hurling final being played in Birr, Co. Offaly on Easter Sunday, 1888.   

The N52 in late summer

I am a fine day hurling fan (literally), not paying much heed to muddy winter league matches, instead focusing on the Premier League during that time of the year. And I have to admit that even the early stages of the Munster championship sometimes pass me by, unless Tipperary hit some obstacle. But come July and August, I am as immersed in the hurling championship as anyone else, as long as Tipperary is still involved. And the last decade or so of hurling championships have been particularly fruitful for Tipperary, contesting six of the last eleven All-Ireland finals and winning three, while also finally slowing down the juggernaut of Kilkenny hurling success.

As a result, I’ve spent many hours in late summer over the past decade driving around the countryside to gather rare and valuable tickets for All-Ireland hurling finals. The N52 between Nenagh and Birr is usually the most productive route for such journeys, as I have a few trusty ticket sources along that road. And I know the key ticket stops and the names of the towns and villages along that route by heart, going northwest from Nenagh and on to Ardcroney, Borrisokane, Ballingarry, Carrig, Riverstown and finally Birr; that journey has become as much a part of All-Ireland final rituals as the trip to Croke Park itself.

Paul Rouse and ‘The Hurlers’

So it happened that on one of those late summer ticket-hunting N52 trips that I first came across the work of historian Paul Rouse. I had always had a vague notion that Tipperary had played Galway in the first All-Ireland hurling final and that it was contested somewhere outside of Dublin. But it was not until August 2010 that I got stuck into the detail of that historical event. Coming in to Birr from the Tipperary side, I noticed a powerful and imposing statue of a hurler. Standing at 16 feet in height, made of bronze and resting on a sandstone base, it is the work of Mayo sculptor Mark Rode. 

Hurling statue in Birr, Co. Offaly commemorating the first All-Ireland hurling final, played in the nearby Johnny Farrell's field on Easter Sunday, April 1st, 1888

The plaque beside the statue, the content written by Paul Rouse

The information on the plaque beside the sculpture was written by Paul Rouse, an Offaly historian based in UCD who was apparently working on a history of the first All-Ireland hurling final at the time. So soon after the 2010 final and still delirious at the Tipperary victory over Kilkenny, I contacted Paul Rouse by email to enquire about his project. In an act of real generosity and trust, he forwarded me several early draft chapters of his book on the topic. And I was delighted for him and for fans of both the GAA and Irish history to see his work come to fruition with the 2018 publication of ‘The Hurlers’, a scholarly and thoroughly researched yet highly accessible and enjoyable account of the first All-Ireland hurling championship. ‘The Hurlers’ provides most of the source material for this blog.

'The Hurlers': Paul Rouse's wonderful account of 

the first All-Ireland hurling championship

The very difficult birth of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), and two strong men

The GAA was founded at a meeting in Hayes Hotel, Thurles, Co. Tipperary on November 1^st 1884, when a small group of like minded visionaries met and set out their plans for a revolutionary new Irish sporting body. Forged in a tense political climate of increasingly strident and militant Irish nationalism, tenant evictions and boycotting of landlords throughout rural Ireland and set up in defiance of the all powerful British Empire and establishment, the move was brave and, like all revolutions, hopeful beyond reason. 

The two leading figures in the early years of the GAA were both from rural Ireland and shared a love of sport and all things Irish. In many other respects, Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin were very different characters. However, their contrasting personalities and styles were both needed in those difficult early years, with Cusack setting the initial fire of the GAA and Davin and others keeping the flame burning. 

Michael Cusack comes across in Paul Rouse’s book as a man possessing supreme self-confidence, vision and passion, who was determined at all costs to establish an Irish sporting organization for Irish games. He was also temperamental and pugnacious, seemingly never able to turn down the chance of a row, and fearless in whom he took on. Born in Carron, Co. Clare, Cusack became a very talented and successful teacher and journalist. Interestingly, he played cricket and rugby as a younger man and, consciously or unconsciously, adapted some of the principles of successful 'British' sporting organizations and competitions in establishing the GAA.

When it came to his writing and journalism, Cusack was highly productive, opinionated, abrasive and often prone to wild lyrical flourishes. Regarding his inspiration for founding the GAA, he wrote: 'I essayed to rouse the people from the appalling torpor that was creeping over them and, vampire-like, thinning out the heart's blood of the Irish nation...I took it into my head to strike one smashing blow on behalf of Ireland', and in doing so he 'declared war against the foreign faction'. His pen was also frequently poisonous when dealing with topics and individuals not to his liking. For example, a game that was confusingly known as 'Hurley' had been played in Trinity College Dublin and some Dublin schools in the years before the foundation of the GAA. It may have been similar to modern field hockey or the Scottish game of shinty but it certainly did not meet the athletic freedom and manly standards of Cusack's vision of hurling and he referred to those who played the game as merely 'civilised eunuchs' and 'grown-up little boys'.  

His abrasive style, his long list of enemies within and outside the GAA and his complete disregard for attending to the detail of his role as GAA secretary meant that he was ousted from the role within two years of the foundation of the GAA. Despite this, he remained a strong voice and constant presence in all things related to the GAA until his death in 1906.

Michael Cusack (1847-1906): teacher, journalist and visionary, founding member of the GAA and its first secretary. Note the distinctive beard, blackthorn stick and workman's boots - Cusack was noted for his unique style and powerful presence.

Michael Cusack (front row, second from left) with the Phoenix Rugby Club during the 1881-1882 season. He played with Phoenix against Dublin University in December 1881 in the inaugural match in the Leinster Senior Cup.

In contrast to Cusack, Maurice Davin seems to have been altogether calmer, more measured and (literally) presidential in his approach. Coming from a wealthy family of merchants and landowners in Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, Davin was regarded as one of the most accomplished all round athletes of his generation, excelling in all types of athletics, rowing, cricket and boxing. As an athlete, he was meticulous and forward thinking in his training methods, diet and even his research about opponents, keeping detailed notebooks in this regard. One of the many high points in his athletics career came in 1876 when, in the first ever international athletics match, he won the shot-put competition against his English opponents.

And when Michael Cusack came up with his idea for an Irish sporting organization, he turned to Davin, who had been a friend of his for nearly a decade at that stage. Perhaps Cusack knew that he needed someone of Davin's temperament to help him deliver on his vision and perhaps this is why Davin was also elected at that founding meeting in Thurles as the first President of the GAA. 

Maurice Davin (1842-1927): farmer, businessman, athlete and 

first President of the GAA, subsequently becoming the only two term President. 

Maurice Davin with some of the spoils of his athletics victories

The initial work of the GAA involved setting up clubs and competitions and devising rules for athletics, hurling and, perhaps most challenging of all, 'Irish' football. It appears that the first two hurling matches conducted under the new GAA rules took place in March 1885, with a Tipperary match involving Silvermines and Nenagh and a match between 'The Shannon District' of Galway and Lusmagh of Offaly (then known as King's County). Clubs started to spring up all over the country, playing hurling and football. For some areas, the move from their individual localized rules and styles of play took some time. Cusack attended hurling  and football matches throughout the country and wrote enthusiastic reports in his newspaper columns. 

But while the sporting side of the GAA seemed to be flourishing, the internal politics within the organization was becoming bitter and divided. This was in part down to the adversarial behaviour of individuals such as Cusack himself. More importantly, however, the organization was gradually taken over by prominent members of the militant nationalist group the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), who in the first three years of the GAA took all the key positions on the executive (apart from the Presidency, which was still held by Maurice Davin) and started to exclude and generally make life difficult for any clubs throughout the country that were not affiliated with the IRB. 

Things came to a head at the national convention of 1887 in Thurles. A heated confrontation broke out between the IRB members, led by P.N. Fitzgerald and IRB opponents, led by Fr. John Scanlan, a curate in Nenagh. After five hours of intense debate and wrangling, the IRB member Edmond Bennett of Clare was elected as the second President of the GAA. Then followed months of strife with Michael Cusack and, even more importantly, GAA Patron Archbishop Croke coming out strongly against the IRB takeover. Ultimately, a Reconstruction Convention was held in January 1888, again in Thurles, and Maurice Davin was re-elected President, thus becoming the first and only GAA President to serve two terms. Meanwhile, the British ruling establishment looked on with interest and Paul Rouse writes that the police force were instructed to foment division and conflict between GAA members.

Somehow, despite the tense and unstable national political situation and the bitter internal power struggles within the GAA, the first All-Ireland hurling and football championships were played out in 1887 and 1888. 

The hurling championship culminated in two teams of twenty one men meeting at Johnny Farrell's field in Birr, with the county champions of Galway and Tipperary facing off against each other.

It is unlikely that any of the players or the three thousand assembled spectators realized just what they were starting on that fateful Easter Sunday, 1888.

For the next installment of this blog, I will cover the controversies, triumphs and failures of the first All-Ireland hurling championship and an account of that actual final itself. 

Olympian Map-Art

Strava, and the likes

Ever increasing numbers of sporty types take both training guidance and simple pleasure from recording their work-outs on GPS based watches or other devices and then analyzing their uploaded performance data on websites such as Strava. And then these sporty types start to share their exercise data with their ‘followers’ on Strava, giving each other comments and thumbs-up ‘kudos’ signs comparable to the ‘likes’ of Facebook. It’s becoming a maxim among the more serious exercise sloggers that a workout ‘didn’t happen unless it’s on Strava’ and I have to admit that poring over my Strava running stats, while also keeping a friendly eye on how my followers are doing, has become an established part of the cooling down part of each training session. But among the most serious athletes, Strava data tends not to be shared, to avoid athletic espionage around training practices, performance levels and readiness levels for upcoming competitions. 

Athletic maps

The data recorded on Strava includes a map of your activity route, whether it was walking, running, cycling, swimming or even ‘COVID-19 activities’ such as trampolining with your children (the latter maps tend to be a bit crazy looking). And then there’s detailed performance data to look at, including your distance covered, pace and heart rate.

But being a lifelong cartophile, it’s the maps that interest me most. Many runners are creatures of habit, so they tend to beat out the same routes and resultant Strava maps week in and week out. I’ve alluded in a previous blog to the 5 kilometre (quite misshapen and askew) bow-tie shaped route between Ballina and Killaloe that is my most well trodden path, although my COVID-19 travel restricted maps of recent days are slightly different and by necessity all within two kilometres of home. 

My most commonly trodden Strava map - a 5 km, quite askew bow-tie 
between Ballina and Killaloe

In more normal times of international travel it’s nice to see the exotic maps generated by friends while on holiday or travelling for work, such as one Strava friend who travels all over Europe, China and the United States, thus giving the rest of us the virtual vicariousness of international running routes. And of course there are those very special personal Strava maps, produced from my first few morning runs with my children, maps that I hope to show them in years to come, like the athletic equivalent of baby photos.

And then there are the novelty Strava maps that people have started to produce in recent years. They vary from the sublime to the bizarre, with people tracing out on their runs and cycles various shapes and characters, sometimes of very impressive complexity and quality. I have a few examples below. The Canadian cyclist Stephen Lund has become something of an athlete-artist, going to great lengths (literally) to cycle-sketch his way across the country and earning himself the artistic sobriquet 'Cycleangelo'. And of course whenever there’s the opportunity to draw genitals, people will gladly have a go, so you can google plenty of pornographic Strava maps.

Two of 'Cycleangelo's' creations:

And then here's a political one from the UK, relating to that thing that was in the news all the time before COVID-19 (this took 40 miles of running by Nathan Rae and is entitled 'Goodbye friend, I will miss EU'):

Then helicoptering above the individual maps and combining the maps of multiple individuals and populations produces Strava heat maps, and this is where it gets really impressive. Of course the paranoid part of my brain thinks of the many nefarious uses for such data (e.g. it’s possible to pick out military training bases and the activities of the occupants) but to me these national and international level heat maps present beautiful and at times poignant images of human activity and endeavour, while also highlighting the vast cultural, ideological and wealth disparities of our planet.

So a look at the whole world picture shows that the wealthy Europeans and North Americans light up the world, because we can afford to burn calories on mere exercise and we can buy GPS watches and computers to analyse our exertions. Meanwhile, although the continent has produced more champion runners than anywhere else for my whole lifetime, Africa remains the dark continent, in Strava terms.  And then there’s those clear differences that can be evident because of a stark ideological divide between neighbouring nations, such as that between the two Koreas. 

A picture paints a thousand words, as does this Strava heat map, highlighting vast differences in wealth and human behaviour 

The two Koreas, with '38th parallel' levels of division as demonstrated 

by this Strava heat map 

Olympic Map-Art

So finally, all this thinking about athletics and maps brings me back to an idea alluded to in the last blog, that of Olympian art:
https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/olympian-warfare-art-and-tipperary.html

It was a wish of Baron de Coubertin himself that art be included in the Olympics (perhaps inspired by his own father, who was an artist) and this was the case from 1912 to 1948, with competing entries required to have a sporting theme. And with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics now deferred, wouldn’t it be nice to have a Strava-map based Olympics athletics/art competition? 

GPS watch manufacturers could get in on the game and help out by distributing watches to less well off nations at low cost. Strava and similar data analysts could help in the collation, presentation and analysis of data. And there could be an endless number of competition categories, based on the type of work-out (running, cycling, etc.), individual and team efforts and entries could be judged based on athletic parameters such as pace and distance covered along with, as per the wish of Baron de Coubertin, their artistic merit. And for amateur athletes of advancing age, such as myself, it might finally give me an outside chance at Olympic gold for Ireland.

Baron de Coubertin (1863 - 1937) 
French founder of the International Olympic Committee and generally regarded as the father of the modern Olympic games