Yesterday marked the actual anniversary of the start of the 1916 rising and by good fortune gave us the Allianz Football League finals at Croke Park which was an opportunity for those of a sporting gene to gather as a community in celebration not just of sport but of the nation.
From a long way out the GAA had put up their hand and said yes we will lead the celebration.
The promise of pageantry as well as the clash of Dublin and Kerry ensured a massive sell out crowd of 80,000 in the stadium yesterday and few, other than the Kerry team and management perhaps will have left without a sense of pride in who we are and what we are capable of.
These things can be tricky. Inclusiveness is an attribute that we should all aspire to as humans but it is often easier to write on a screen rather than deliver in the flesh.
Those who feel slighted may do so through the most narrow of prisms but the hurt they feel can be no less genuine as a result and the historic narrative of the GAA’s place on the nationalist side of historic debate and action is well versed.
Laochra though was pretty much pitch perfect in terms of getting it right but not in such an anodyne fashion as to stir no passion or pride.
We had Celtic warriors going to war with hurleys, cannons fired, dances danced, Irish wolfhounds, or their likenesses, gambolling around on the pitch that is normally so carefully restricted in terms of access.
There was Micheál O’Muicheartaigh gaining the biggest cheer of the day as he read his lines on the pitch; a stirring passionate rendition of the Foggy Dew which had it been sung in a pub by the CEO of the FAI would have perhaps been criticised but different times, different places.
There were pictures on the giant screens of Sean Óg O’Hailpín in a seeming audition for the Game of Thrones, or perhaps the Game of Throw-ins, as well as pictures of those who had fought for King and Country in the trenches of World War One at the same time as the Rising was taking place at the GPO, on mount Street Bridge and across the city and the country.
The reading of the proclamation has been generally done by men in uniform through the centenary celebrations. That’s only right as historically accurate way to remember but yesterday was different.
Each line in turn was read by a child or young adult wearing the GAA county colours of their own personal heritage. It was a nod to the past and a look to the future and was the right way to bring to a close the big bang celebrations of who and what we are.
There will be trickier times ahead in the coming years as we mark an era of civil war that will raise painful memories within communities and families across the land but just as it did then, the joy of sport can play a part in making the wounds less angry, making the memory of those who have gone before more vibrant and making us feel good about ourselves. There is little wrong in that.
