Rising from the Ashes: home away from home in 1947
11:46, 09 Sep 2009
Shane Stapleton
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This was the one and only year in the history of the GAA that an All Ireland senior final was held outside Ireland: New York in 1947. It is hard to imagine that happening again in the foreseeable future; it has been reserved only for the inter-provincial championships in recent times.
The NFL in America has exported its sport far and wide, most notably to Wembley Stadium in London in the past couple of years while Croke Park has opened its door to soccer and rugby. The FA Premier League hinted at the idea of bringing soccer on tour, as a means of further milking its cash cow.
Even though London had competed in nine All Ireland finals in the first couple of decades of competition, there had been no suggestions of holding the big day on the other side of the Irish Sea.
When the GAA took the All Ireland football final to the Polo Grounds in New York in 1947, it did so as a good will gesture to the Irish diaspora of America. It has been also suggested that it was a means of commemorating the great famine of 100 years previously. Canon Hamilton of Clare had lobbied the GAA Congress for three years before he got his wish to take the game across the Atlantic.
The provincial championships went ahead as normal that year with Meath, Kerry, Roscommon and Cavan picking up local honours. As with 2009, the Kingdom ousted the Royals; and in the other semi-final, the Breffni County accounted for the Rossies. All of which meant league champions Cavan and Kerry were the two counties with the distinguished honour of flying the Irish flag in the US and hopefully bolstering the diminishing profile of Gaelic games there.
Most of the Cavan team took a 29-hour flight – including a stopover in the Azores – from Shannon out to the Big Apple whereas the majority of the Kerry party took a six-day journey by sea from Cobh on the SS Mauretania. Radio Eireann sent out Micheál O’Hehir to cover the match; the company’s first live outside radio broadcast. There was some panic leading up to the game as a line on which to broadcast the game had not been booked, but it was eventually sorted out with one ordered from 3:30 until 5pm New York-time.
The conditions turned out to be far from suitable for a Gaelic football match, least of all an All Ireland final. The pitch belonged to a baseball team, New York Giants, and as well as the pitch being extremely hard and bald in patches, there was even a noticeable mound on the pitch. It was an extremely hot day and, to combat the conditions, many of the Kerry players wore jockey caps. With the playing of both the Irish and American anthems and the ceremonial throw in by Mayo native Bill of Dwyer, who was Mayor, the game did not start until 20 to four.
When the game did commence, it was the Kingdom who threatened to make it a rout. They had beaten their rivals at this level 10 years previously and an quick two-goal headstart suggested that would be the way of it at the Polo Grounds, even more so considering they had two more disallowed.
But Cavan regrouped and Joe Stafford and Mick Higgins pulled goals back. The later, Higgins, had actually been born in New York and so would go on to capture the first of his All Ireland titles in the city he was born. Peter Donohoe scored eight points for Cavan and was dubbed by the local media, the Babe Ruth of Gaelic football.
And yet there was a problem for all the radio listeners in Ireland 3,000 miles away: it was now 4:55 in New York, meaning there was just five more minutes of broadcasting time booked, and there was still 10 minutes of the game to be played. O’Hehir pleaded hopefully through the airwaves for the coverage to continue and luckily someone was listening, as he was able to call out the final score: Cavan 2-11 Kerry 2-07.
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