Abstract
The founding in 1884 of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) attempted to create an autonomous production of Irishness that could be embodied through performance. As with the Gaelic League and the Irish National Theatre, the GAA needed to distinguish Ireland from Britain. The late nineteenth-century project of Irish nationalism required language, literature, drama, and other expressive culture2 to be de-anglicized and redefined in order to serve cultural and political purposes. For Gaelic games, this meant displacing contemporary rivals such as cricket, polo, tennis, soccer, and rugby. These ‘British’ activities (themselves recent products of British nineteenth-century sport codification) needed to be taken out of circulation and replaced by the ‘ancient’ pastimes of hurling and Gaelic football.
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