REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF DOWN’S FIRST ALL-IRELAND VICTORY
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT AN EVENT TO MARK THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF DOWN’S FIRST ALL-IRELAND VICTORY
Dia dhíbh a chairde. What a great honour it is to be part of this first day of the GAA Congress 2010 and this golden anniversary celebration of Down’s first All-Ireland victory which was of course to become an even more remarkable two in a row. I am very grateful to Feargal McCormack for the invitation to be among members and families of the those legendary and history changing teams and their management. We gather here in the heartland of the Mournes along with GAA personnel and delegates from across Ireland and beyond, civic and religious leaders and present and past officers of Coiste Chontae an Dúin. Congress will plan for the future but before it does we will do what the Chinese proverb says - those who drink the water will acknowledge with gratitude those who dug the well.
And what a well they dug between them, those Down All-Ireland winning heroes of 1960 and 1961. They did not just win those mighty games of football, they did not just bring a unique freshness and style to Gaelic football, they lifted an entire nation, they inspired a people and above all the Kingdom of Mourne beat the Kingdom of Kerry. With a daughter who is now the daughter-in-law of one Mick O’Connell, you can imagine the additional and regular mileage I get out of saying that and I take full advantage of it you can be sure. It was Mick himself who confirmed the prophetic genius and rapid wit of Paddy Doherty when he recently recounted a conversation between himself and Paddy close to full-time. Paddy had just kicked that famous winning penalty that had brought the entire country to its feet. He was walking back to his place when Mick O’Connell asked him how much time was left. “364 days !” said Paddy. And he was not joking for a year later the Kingdom of Mourne did it again in another nail-biting finish against Offaly.
The shelf life of those thrilling matches is remarkable. The names of the players and the management team evoke ever since, not just static memories, but a stirring of pride, a rallying of effort and a push to victory – not alone on the Gaelic football field but in so many areas of life. Down’s loyal supporters smashed every attendance record in the book, and the respect they garnered was evident in the crowds who turned out at every cross-roads, town and village as the Sam Maguire Cup travelled North from Croke Park across the border to County Down. I was nine years old and nothing in my life until then had opened up to me such a realm of possibility, such faith in the future. I still have faith that before my time in Áras an Uachtaráin is through another Down team will lift the Sam Maguire as they did in 1960, 1961, 1968, 1991 and 1994. And if they do, they too will owe their pedigree, their ambition and the gold standard they seek to emulate to those we honour here today. I will not name them for they need no naming but let me simply call to mind those who have gone ar sli na firinne, Breen Morgan, Pat Rice, Patsy O’Hagan and Jarlath Carey. They and a host of others, long gone to their reward, handed to successive generations a baton of sacred care for Gaelic Games. At home and abroad the GAA is our family, our friend, our community, our opportunity. We are rightly proud of the stadium that is its heartland – Croke Park but right around the country, clubs of volunteers have built a sporting infrastructure at local, school, college and county level that has no equal. Football and Hurling, Camogie and Handball are flourishing and along with them Gaelic culture in its music, dance, language and above all its tradition of meitheal. During the floods in the west it was often Gaelic football teams that turned out to fill the sandbags and help the marooned. In Lavey a few weeks ago I saw what a small rural parish could accomplish when it set out to provide its hinterland with the best sporting and community facilities bar none. In Dubai I saw eighty children, Irish and Arab turn out for Gaelic football practice on a Saturday morning – coached by a young Armagh man who when asked why he did it said simply “the GAA has given me so much I had to give something back”. In San Francisco I saw the enthusiasm for the games and the respect generated by the GAA distil into the most magnificent sporting facilities for future generations of young boys, girls, men and women and I heard the city councillors who supported the project and provided the site speak of their gratitude for the GAA’s outreach to that city’s youth.
This Association was never just about sport or recreation. It was about building an active constantly renewing showcase for the heritage that is our community spirit, our identity and our character. With over one million members spread across 2,300 clubs in Ireland and another 300 abroad, we have in the GAA one of the greatest national institutions in the world, a life force that binds us and holds us, that makes us family to one another. The enduring appeal of our national games is a core mission that has been honoured diligently in every generation since the foundation of the GAA. The practitioners of the art of hurling, handball, camogie and football have given us a litany of leaders and idols, heroes and role-models. Each county has its own greats whose names stir their hearts and souls. The Down men of '60 and '61 have the rare distinction of stirring the hearts and souls of Irishmen and women from all thirty-two counties. They changed things, changed them for the better. They put an excitement and verve into life and we will be a long time repaying the debt of gratitude we owe each of them.
I hope this Congress 2010 – the first hosted in Down since 1980 when Paddy McFlynn was the distinguished Uachtarán Chumann Lúthchleas Gael – will in its discussions and its decisions set the scene for a great future for the GAA. The G stands for Gaelic. It also stands for an inclusive generosity which is the true nature of the Gael. We have been privileged to see that generosity offer Croke Park to the FAI and IRFU while the new Landsdowne stadium was being built. It is soon to open but those short few years have transformed and transcended the vanities of history that created not simply separate sporting codes but separated communities. Today the GAA is leading the way in respectful outreach to other traditions. Some day that investment will reveal itself fully in the reconciled Ireland we began to dream was truly possible on a September day in 1960. It is miraculous what just one penalty kick can do to the annals of history.
Enjoy the stroll down memory lane, the planning for the future and thank you for all of it, past, present and to come. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.