REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE SIGERSON 2011 CENTENARY CELEBRATION DINNER, O’REILLY HALL, UCD
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE SIGERSON 2011 CENTENARY CELEBRATION DINNER, O’REILLY HALL, UCD SATURDAY, 5TH MARCH, 2011
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur láthair ar an ocáid seo. Tá me buíoch dibh as an cuireadh agus an fáilte forchaoin a chur sibh romham.
Ladies, gentlemen and distinguished guests.
It is a great pleasure to be here with you this evening for the Sigerson 2011 Celebration Dinner to mark the centenary finals of the Sigerson Cup, to honour the memory of Dr George Sigerson and to celebrate the Sigerson Cup Team of the Century. Given UCD’s central role throughout the history of the competition, it is very appropriate that this University is hosting the Sigerson Festival 2011 in its centenary year. What may be less appropriate is my role here, given that I was once banned from UCD’s GAA pitches because as an enthusiastic spectator I made a brief incursion onto the pitch to offer advice to the referee. Happily that event happened during a McKenna Cup match and not during a Sigerson match but it did result in me being voted man of the match - at least on the way home on the bus. But my chances of a similar accolade during a Sigerson tournament were stymied by the fact that the revelries surrounding Sigerson were of such a legendary nature that they were even more controversial than my reputation as an overenthusiastic spectator and my parents banned me from attending the 1971 Sigerson tournament held in UCG. As a result I missed seeing live, Martin’s self-styled heroic efforts to bring the Sigerson Cup to Queens. Normally edited highlights are shorter than the match itself but for forty years now I have listened to Martin’s regular retelling of that victory that is famous at least in our house and frankly after four decades I think I am the one who deserves the medal. In fact to be entirely fair when we got engaged Martin gave me his treasured Sigerson medal on a gold chain which I wore for many years. When the chain broke and the medal got lost after we married, he gave me to understand that given a choice he would have preferred if I had fallen off the end of the chain and got lost rather than the medal.
The role of Sigerson in our lives some four decades after Martin’s participation in it is itself probably indicative of the complex and remarkable imprint that this tournament makes on so many lives. It was through Sigerson that so many life-long and life-affirming friendships were made at college. It was through Sigerson that Martin came to befriend the late great Moss Keane with whom, in my absence he danced at the celebration in UCG an event that may explain or not the fact that he has never danced since. Later when he and Moss shared a house together in the leafy Dublin suburb of Rathgar, I was introduced to the genteel nature of life in Dublin 6. Just to enter that house was to embark on a voyage of discovery into a new world. First there was the ten foot plank of wood to be navigated half way up the hall. It ran from the hall, into the living room and into the fire where one end of it was burning merrily.
This was an early form of renewable energy because apparently when all ten feet had been burnt it was replaced by another one liberated from a nearby building site, generally shortly after closing time. Then there were the milk bottles, standing on the rectangular dining table in groups of fifteen, each one covered in enough blue-mould culture to have innoculated a centenary of Sigerson players with penicillin.
Who could predict the memories that come with Sigerson. Who could ever hope to repay those who helped create them. When Wikipedia describes the GAA as
“an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation” you begin to realise the poverty of language to comprehensively explain this phenomenon, this leaven in our lives. For we who are part of the GAA family know that it is a home to us, created by countless volunteers. It is opportunity to participate, to learn, to compete, to know the pride of winning, to cope with the pain of losing, to admire talent and effort wherever it is displayed. It is love of Ireland, love of heritage, history, language, narrative. It is about supporting the school team, the parish team, the village team, the county team. It is about men, women and children of every background and ability, profession and trade, employed and unemployed, wealthy and poor united in solidarity, in passion for our national games and for the great big gifted family it holds together at home and abroad. If the GAA as an organisation has something of the gifted polymath about it, so too had Tyrone’s great George Sigerson the man who in 1911 donated the Sigerson cup to create the first ever intervarsity Gaelic football tournament. His was an important name on that cup - not one to be glossed over lightly for he was not only one of the preeminent civic and political leaders of his day but he was a prime shaper and key influencer of the world we inherited. Medical doctor, neurologist, zoologist, botanist, linguist, writer, poet, politician, journalist, patriot, internationalist, member of the Seanad. Long before the idea of the European Union or Erasmus schemes for students he was studying in France over a century and a half ago. He taught himself Irish, helped found the Feis Ceoil and over his ninety years exhibited a zest for life and a passion for everything that lifted the Irish spirit and revealed our nation at its best.
Today the Sigerson tournament has gone from three participating colleges to almost twenty- a sign of the massive development of third level education in Ireland. The British Imperial Ireland of 1911 at the founding of the tournament was a place of grinding poverty, cruel social conditions and appalling levels of social exclusion. Few got the chance to go to school and as for going to university well, University College Dublin had a mere 500 students, smaller than your average second level school today. The Sigerson trophy has survived considerable change and revolution in Irish society, not least the revolution effected by education, first the advent of free second level education, followed by the rapid growth of the third level sector. Of the hundred years of the Sigerson Cup that education revolution covers only the last forty, so we can be sure the best for Sigerson is yet to come in this Europeanised and multi-cultural Ireland where the GAA is flourishing at home and abroad never before.
Today in a host of our third level institutions both North and South something remarkable happens in the name of Sigerson that showcases the unique charism of the GAA. Players who have competed against each other at school or are still competitors at club or intercounty level, forge a new solidarity to bring the Sigerson to their shared Alma Mater.
In 1969, the great Enda Colleran, summed up the significance of the Sigerson for many people when he wrote that ‘of all the games I have played including All-Irelands, National Leagues, Railway Cups, the Sigerson Competitions that I had the pleasure to play in stand out most vividly in my mind, especially for the spirit shown, the tough but sporting manner in which they were played, and the host of friends I made with opposing players and all the enjoyment we had at the social functions that go with Sigersons.’
Fortunate to be married to a Sigerson player, I have good reason to know how very true those words are and not just for the many players but for all those who have known, felt and seen the enduring spirit of Sigerson at close quarters. If the fame of George Sigerson has faded in some quarters, his name on that hard fought trophy ensures that from time to time, on an anniversary like this or the many anniversaries to come, we will take time to remember a great Irishman and to be grateful that long before any of us came into the world he had already remembered us.
I would like to thank Dr Hugh Brady, President of UCD hosting this wonderful centenary celebration and I congratulate all those selected on the Sigerson Cup Team of the Century, everyone who took part in this year’s Centenary Sigerson Cup and all those who helped to make the tournament such a success decade after decade. In a special way let us remember all those players now on sli na firinne. Ar dheis De go raibh a anamacha dilis. This has the makings of one of the most elegant, refined and gracious of Sigerson dinners, but sure, try to enjoy it anyway.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.