Croker and the Brits

Today Ireland play England in rugby in Croke Park, untill recently it was illegal to play the “foreign games” in the mecca of the GAA. My own father won medals for Dublin as a young fella and they were not given to him as it was found out that he was also playing rugby for Tarf.

Bloody Sunday was a day of violence on 21 November 1920 in Dublin, during the Irish War of Independence (1919 – 1921), which led to the deaths of more than 30 people.

The day began with the killing of fourteen of eighteen British agents of the Cairo Gang, or their informants, by the Irish Republican Army. Later that afternoon, British forces opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park in north Dublin, killing 14 civilians, including the captain of the Tipperary football team, Michael Hogan. That same evening there were scattered shootings in the city streets, and three Irish prisoners in Dublin Castle were killed by their British captors under suspicious circumstances.

footage from the film Micheal Collins, a republican revolutionary and creator of the IRA, in which the day is portrayed.

History of croker from BBC:

Postcript; Ireland beat England, and might win the competition.

But, personally speaking, there is a huge difference between Rugby in Croker and the buzz of an all-Ireland final…. PURE PASSION!

And in case your not familiar with that funny game with the sticks, its Hurling, a traditional Gaelic game that has been played here on this island for thousands of years, its the fastest field sport in the world…