John Arnold: ‘It’s hard to be enthusiastic about Munster Championship’

It’s lashing rain outside as I pen these lines. ‘Bating’ down on the roof like the middle of winter. Sure we had hailstones as big as quail’s eggs last Saturday! One old man I knew from hereabouts told me many years ago, ‘John the last day of March can often be the tenth day of April’. Of course, he was recalling a folktale from ancient Irish mythology.

In one version of the folklore tale, The Days of the Brindled Cow, there was long, long ago in Ireland a very old brindled (striped or roan) cow. She had lived through frost and snow and arctic winds of the harsh winter up to the month of March. When she got near the end of March, she groused about the bad weather and boasted that she had survived the cold winter despite all it had thrown at her. Well, March resented this boast and ‘borrowed’ three days from April to extend the cold winter. This extended cold spell was too much for the poor cow, who did not have enough reserves to survive to the warmer weather of April, and the ainniseoir died. God knows we’re well past the tenth of April now, and you’d still want a fire by night.

Do you know I find it hard to even think about -let alone be enthusiastic about- the Munster Senior Hurling Championship, and it starting this coming weekend. Call me a conservative if ye like, or even a conservative sporting eccentric, but there’s just no ‘feeling’ like we used have in days gone by.

I can’t remember the first game in the 1972 Munster Championship, in the Old Athletic Grounds, when the Rebels won well against Waterford. That was May 22, but I know for a fact that my first ever Cork and Tipp match was the Munster semi-final in Limerick. Sunday, June 25 was my ‘initiation’ into the cauldron of that age-old rivalry. It ended a 3-8 to 3-8 draw. I was only 15 and not very tall, so on the grassy bank terrace, I only saw bits and pieces of the game. I was amazed at the absence of girls and women of any age -very few were there, so the three sheets of galvanised iron with the word FIR written in white paint was deemed sufficient as a gent’s toilet. It was hot that day and hotter two weeks later when Cork won the replay 3-10 to 2-7. Back then, while we mightn’t have the ‘hay saved’, the summer Sundays seemed endlessly sunny -then this is only April -that was July. 

Even in Limerick at the League Final, I felt that the atmosphere was ‘flat’ -no sense of excitement or huge anticipation at all, at all. One certainty there’ll be no dust in the square on Sunday, and the days of Thurles homes selling ‘Meat Teas’ and ‘Plain Teas’ are long gone. So too are the Dunne Brothers playing on the way out to Semple Stadium. 

Hopefully we’ll go to Thurles and take some Factor 45 in case of a heatwave! It’s so different nowadays of course, with the roundy robiney business, you’d think that once would be enough to bate any team – not so as we found out in last year’s Final in Dublin.

This week I was in the capital and, in the words of Bagatelle’s great song, ‘I jumped on a bus to Dun Laoghaire’ not to collect my guitar but to do a bit of GAA history research. Back in 2009, when the Association was celebrating its 125th Anniversary, I was on a history committee tasked with restoring and maintaining memorials to the GAA’s 1885 Founders. We are absolutely certain now that perhaps 10 or 15 attended the first meeting in Hayes’ Hotel, but just the ‘Magnificent 7’ have been mentioned down the years.

One of these lies far away in Canada, another in London. Of the five buried on the island of Ireland, Maurice Davin’s mortal remains are in Churchtown Dysert cemetery near Carrick on Suir. JK Bracken from Templemore is buried in Tankardstown near Kilmallock. The other three were interred in Dublin. My journey to Baile Atha Cliath lately was to visit Glasnevin and Dean’s Grange cemeteries. So on a miserably wet and cold April morning I jumped of ‘the bus to Dun Laoghaire’ at the end of Kill Lane and walked to Dean’s Grange. Here is buried a man often referred to as ‘the forgotten founder of the GAA’, Thomas St. George McCarthy. Born in Bansha, Co.Tipperary he joined the RIC and in 1884 he was a Sub Inspector stationed in Templemore. As a young man, he had attended Michael Cusack’s Academy in Dublin. A good athlete and rugby player, McCarthy would also have known Maurice Davin through athletics. He attended the meeting in Hayes’ Hotel in November 1884. There were certainly more than seven present, but seven names have been recorded as ‘founders’. McCarthy subsequently had no known involvement in the GAA, which introduced a rule banning RIC officers. Of ‘the Seven’, McCarthy lived the longest -he died in 1943. His grave was unmarked until we erected a headstone there in 2009, and it’s in perfect condition. Walking through a vast cemetery like Dean’s Grange is a bit like thumbing through rows of books on a library shelf -you never know what you’ll find. Noel Purcell, Dermot Morgan, John McCormack, Flann O’Brien, Sean Lemass, and John A Costello were just some of the names I saw inscribed on stone there.

I got a bus from near the GPO to Glasnevin. In 1832, Daniel O Connell was the man credited with the purchase of nine acre of land, which was dedicated as Glasnevin cemetery. Over the decades that nine acres was expanded to cover 124 acres. Both Michael Cusack and John Wyse Power are interred here. Cusack’s grave is covered with a ‘table’ type monument with a fine carving of his head at one end. The inscription is lead-lettered, and back in 2009 several of the letters were missing and that’s still the position today. The 150th Anniversary of the GAA founding is just eight years away, in 2034, so work needs to be done. Here lie the mortal remains of a great sporting visionary - far away from his home in Carron in the Burren district of Clare. It was in John Wyse Power’s home in Henry St that the 1916 leaders signed the Proclamation at the behest of his friend Thomas J. Clarke. A Waterford native Wyse Power was appointed one of the three GAA joint secretaries at the Thurles meeting. He moved to Dublin in 1885. He was a founder and the first President of the Dublin GAA Co. Board. James Joyce based his Ulysses character ‘John Wyse Nolan’ on the Waterford man. His gravestone needs cleaning and re-lettering. In Glasnevin, if I have time, I always visit the graves of Parnell (GAA patron) and the man who died of a broken heart -Arthur Griffith. ‘Twas nice just to stand by their gravestones and say a silent prayer. 

Near the new Museum is the most-visited grave in Glasnevin, that of Michael Collins. I’ve been there many times with groups and, like this week, alone, all alone. There’s a sense of pride and serenity at the spot. As I turned to leave, a strange thing happened. My phone rang. Was I around tomorrow Friday, April 17th? I got an invitation to attend a function in Collins Barracks on the northside of Cork City. ‘What’s on?’ says I. Well it’s the launch of Volume 2 of a publication, ‘The Michael Collins News’ a collection of articles and photographs related to Collins and the Irish Revolutionary Period. There I was, walking away from his grave in Dublin, this invite comes -coincidence or what? Collins was a great GAA man too -perhaps it’s a good omen for Sunday!