GAA, A Life in Objects: A Conversation with Siobhán Doyle and Eimear Ryan

By Editor in Chief Claire Watson

On 17 November the Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures (CASiLac) held the event “GAA, A Life in Objects” which saw writers Dr Siobhán Doyle, author of The History of the GAA in 100 Objects and curator at the National Museum of Ireland, and Eimear Ryan, author of Holding her Breath and the Grass Ceiling, and co-founder of Banshee Press. The event took place in “The Shtepps” at UCC. 

The writers discuss “material culture” and its relationship to sports writing and history. Doyle’s book uses a variety of objects, both with personal and historical meanings, to explore a history of the GAA. Ryan’s memoir, The Grass Ceiling is dedicated to her experience with playing camogie. 

The writers and researchers take a lively approach to this complex topic, their conversation is filled with laughs and personal anecdotes that put a smile on everyone’s face. 

The conversation begins with each speaker bringing in special items that relate to their experience with the GAA. Doyle chooses a medal, which she won in while playing camogie in the under-14s division. She carries this medal on her car-keys, and through this, explored the culture of players repurposing medals into “wearable, useable things”. 

Through the process of writing her book, and her experience with museum curation, she understands the role personal possessions play within, not just people’s lives, but their histories. Displaying these medals as brooches, bracelets, or keyrings can be a way of commemorating the past. As Ryan says, “when you’re not seeing them on a daily basis, it’s hard to see these memories.”

Doyle also brings with her a cassette from the Wild Swans. The cover is the colours of Wexford: warm purple and gold. She explains the history of the song, “Dancing at the Crossroads” and how it reached number one when the Wexford Hurling team won the 1996 All-Ireland Championship, knocking the Spice Girls off their perch. She smiles and says, “It’s still an absolute banger”. The song celebrates the team by naming its players, and Doyle and Ryan take to reciting it with glee. 

She explains that the song has become a great comfort to her. She explains that she doesn’t play the song too often, for she doesn’t ever “want it to lose its magic”. 

Ryan brings her scrapbook, titled My Tipp Book (though “Tipp” is spelt as “Tiqq”), which she put together at age three. As she goes through the scrapbook, the audience laughs at the young Ryan’s adorable misspellings; backwards letters; and “big Nicky”, a two-page spread dedicated to a a cut-out of Nicky English. But as it dawns on everyone, Ryan points out that there is “not a single woman in the scrapbook.” 

Gender and sport are the predominant themes of Ryan’s memoir. As well as exploring her journey as a a girl, then a woman, playing camogie, she discusses the sport’s history. Pointing to the cutouts of the male players inside her scrapbook, she says “There wasn’t that material culture of the female players”. 

Memorabilia, while primarily sold to increase profits at sporting events, is an important way of representing a sport and its players. The lack of merchandise and posters available for female teams further pushes these players onto the sidelines.  

Ryan discusses the importance of objects when playing sport, especially one like camogie that involves a close connection between the player and their instrument, the hurl. The hurley becomes “an extension of the player” and Ryan explains how a player needs to have “a sensitivity of feeling” in their instrument; they need to feel through their hurl as they do with their hands. 

In her exhibit GAA: People, Objects & Stories at the National Museum of Ireland, Doyle displays Michael Collins’ hurl. She explains the magic of historical items, and the stories and legacies that become imbued within them, though “the hands that hold it are no longer here.”

These objects open a dialogue about diversity in the GAA, and how women and other identities have often been left out of the conversation surrounding Irish sport.  The history of camogie has been buried beneath the history of men.

In the talk, Ryan celebrates Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, who was an activist, political speaker, writer and artist. In 1904 Cáit, her brother Tadhg (Torna), and Máire Ní Chinnéide founded the Camogie Association. Máire would go on to become the association’s first president. Despite founding the association, Cáit becomes an unnamed fragment in Torna’s history. In her memoir, Ryan explains that it wasn’t until poet and friend Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh found Cáit’s scrapbook as an unlisted item in Torna’s paper, that she knew she had existed. 

Diagnosed with “dementia” at the age of 29, she was admitted to Our Lady’s Asylum in Cork. While figures like Éamon de Valera attended her brother’s funeral, there was no public record of Cáit’s funeral, only that it was “private.” Despite a vibrant career in the arts, Cáit is buried without a name in her brother’s plot. 

Both writers discuss the need for diversity, both on the playing field and at an organisational level. Doyle encapsulates the frustrations felt marginalised players and supports with the call to “listen to what other people are saying.”

Following the theme of objects and their ability to engage with the past, Doyle shares her experience with working as a curator at the GAA Museum. 

For the centenary of Bloody Sunday, a massacre that saw British forces open fire during a Gaelic Football match in Croke Park, the GAA museum coordinated an exhibit that would commemorate the tragedy. Doyle explains how she wanted to create a “level-playing field” between victims and survivors. “[Tragedies] are measured through victims and injured people,” she continues. Often, the trauma experienced by the survivors is overlooked, and are forgotten by history. 

The match was attended by a majority of working-class people in the 1920s, Doyle says, explaining the lack of photographs of victims. In the GAA museum’s collection, they displayed Annie M. Burke’s broken glasses. 

This artefact is significant, and highlights the scar that trauma leaves on a purpose. Annie Burke attended the match with friends. Her glasses were damaged in the conflict. After the British Forces opened fire, someone pointed to the body of player Mick Hogan. She covered his body with her coat and stayed with him until he had received his Last Rites. She then picked up her glasses, never to wear them again. The glasses were donated to the collection by her daughter, Margaret Looby. 

In the introduction to her book, Doyle writes “Damaged but not completely broken, the glasses act as a metaphor for all of those who suffered the consequences and traumatic memories of that day in the years that followed.”

Finishing up the talk, Ryan and Doyle discussed the covers of their books. Both covers feature an object that is important to each writer. 

Ryan’s is a picture of herself at age 10, in her blue and yellow jersey holding her hurl. She discusses the “subjectivity of memory” and the “Gulf between what the materials at the time said, and what I remembered”. 

In a book of 100 objects, Doyle explains the difficulty of choosing just one to be singled out and featured on the cover. Her and the designers settled on the Haughney Memorial cup. The cup was produced following the death of Denis Haughney, who died following injures sustained during a match. His club was the first team to win the cup, and have their name inscribed on its side. 

But Doyle explains that it wasn’t solely the object that was important, but the inclusion of GAA in its iconic font. It is those letters that have the ability to encapsulate each object within her book, as they come together to create a threaded history beneath that banner. 

The writers end their conversation on a heartfelt note, as they understand the complexities of navigating both their histories, and the histories of sport. With personal anecdotes, they uncover a past that is ever-changing, that brings all the same  triumphs and lows as playing sport. 

This talk was facilitated by the research cluster “Memory Commemoration and Uses of the Past”. This cluster is coordinated by Dr Kate Hodgson, Dr Chiara Giuliani, and Dr Dónal Hassett. This cluster aims to challenge “the relationship between memory and trauma theory” in the field of art, history, politics, and literature. The event was moderated by Dr Giuliani and Dr Hassett.