New in print: The games people play

Pádraig O Snodaigh

Said games in their diversity and conforming all tell us much of what we are and how we are - where we are to some degree, in world perspectives, and to what extent sports do reflect what we think we are and what we would have others think of us.

And I didn't think any of this when I got banned for life for `disagreeing' with a ref on a lousy, wet, winter morning on a greasy pitch in a junior match in Dublin's Phoenix Park. And yet I was part of the whole that Mick Cronin tries, in rather turgid style, to analyse in his book.

Dr Cronin's book lacks an adequate international context such as that in Bowyer Bell's To Play the Game[italic] (Transaction Books): a book not listed in Cronin's bibliography and one which sees hurling and cricket as a more useful paradigm:

``When the British arrived on an island in the sun, cricket bat in hand, it did not matter who won or lost, the islander is playing the game - and the name of that game is cricket colonialism.''

While golf ``stopped just short of developing into a Celtic imperial game... without a home base... lost to England with the Act of Union''. Bell's a better read too!

Cronin tries to annexe ``Cad'' as a precursor of soccer but had he read the account of a game of ``Caid'' in Mícheál O Guithín's Beatha Pheig[italic] he'd place it closer to Rugby, Australian Rules, American Football (with 32 killed in 1905!) and of course Gaelic Football as codified and modified under GAA rules. But then this book is short on sources in Irish - no reference to Béaloideas[italic] for example or the books of L.P. O Caithnia including the massive Scéal na hIomána[italic].

Another bibliographical aside, Con Houlihan's Come all you Loyal Heroes[italic] is missing as is Eugene Kamenka's symposium on Nationalism and Richard Rose's The United Kingdom as a Multinational State[italic] which would have clarified ``what a British identity actually is''.

Dr Cronin suggests that ``rugby has its base in three main areas: parts of Ulster, County Limerick and around Dublin''; what Limerick and Cork cities would make of that one wonders. But his handling of the story of soccer is not all that clear either.

He makes no reference to the IFA drawing on players from all over Ireland (Jackie Carey for example) up to 1949, and ignores that fact that the 2-0 victory of the new republic's team over England in Goodison Park was not accepted for decades by English commentators and others as their first defeat on home grounds - they continued to say the Hungarian victory of the Galloping Major in 1956 was their first `home' defeat.

It all depends on what one means by `home' I suppose. The GAA was always sure on that point.

The account of the fortunes of Derry City is good though Finn Harps are not mentioned, oddly enough; and the story of the fortunes of Donegall Celtic in Belfast is told as if they were not in reality Belfast Celtic writ junior. What is of perennial interest perhaps is that ``the (Irish) League has made it clear that no other Northern club will receive the same dispensation''. In other words they would oppose the affiliation of say, Omagh, Newry Town and Donegall Celtic to the League of Ireland. Should they have that power; political borders are not always sacrosanct in sport!

Nationalism I fear is a ``problem'' for Dr Cronin; Clio does not expect her adherents to be solvers of problems. ``It is difficult'' says he, `` to see how Irish history can escape the problem. Nationalism has become a Gordian knot''. Oh begod!

Did you know that Mary Robinson was `` one of the first Presidents who had not taken part in the Irish Revolution'': Childers, O Dálaigh and Hillery back off please!

That type of groping for sound-byte is a recurring and disappointing feature of this book on an important significant and pervading phenomenon. Sport as Dr Cronin argues ``has been (largely - POS) ignored as a method of seeking to understand Irish society or history'' and his contribution should be welcomed. But it is not good enough unfortunately: a more careful reader should have spotted, for example, the howler about the game at Croke Park on Bloody Sunday 1920 as being between Dublin and Kildare - when the same paragraph refers to the death of the Tipperary captain, Michael Hogan.