23rd February, 8.00pm; Táille £5
The next North Antrim Cultural Event, Dónal McAnallen will cover the history of the GAA in North Antrim. It will be in Carey Parish Hall Saturday 23rd February 8.00pm. Contact your North Antrim club or Jimmy Gaston for tickets or pay at the door on the night.
North Antrim has been a place apart in Gaelic games since the earliest days of the GAA. While the ‘prairie fire’ started by Michael Cusack spread quickly to much of the rest of Ulster as a football frenzy, the Glens of the north-east took longer. When they eventually ignited they drew on a long tradition of regional Shinny-playing to create a distinctive hurling culture that would endure largely in isolation.
Following on from last year’s talk by Eamon Phoenix, this talk will outline how the establishment of the North Antrim Board from the 1900s catalysed the development of a club scene and became the bulwark of a new county hurling tradition, with Camogie and Gaelic football taking their place also; the ways in which clubs faced and overcame challenges on a local level, and North Antrim evolved as a group within a segmented Belfast-centric county framework, will figure strongly among the topics explored. Due attention will be paid to the clubs that made North Antrim: Armoy, Ballycastle, Carey, Cloughmills, Cushendall, Cushendun, Dunloy, Glenariffe, Glenarm, Glenravel, Larne and Loughgiel. It will be shown that the formative forty-year period up to the 1940s defined the structure and character of the GAA in North Antrim that we know today.
Dr Dónal McAnallen is an historian with a special research interest in sporting heritage. He authored ‘The Cups that Cheered’ (2012), a history of inter-varsity Gaelic games; was a joint editor of ‘The Evolution of the GAA: Ulaidh, Éire agus Eile’ (2009); and contributed to several international journals. More recently he edited ‘Reflections on the Revolution in Ulster’ (2015), and wrote the biography, ‘The Pursuit of Perfection’ (2017).
A History graduate of Queen’s University and NUI Galway, he has worked as a magazine editor, teacher and lecturer and on several development and outreach projects with the Cardinal Ó Fiaich Library and Archive in Armagh. He is now employed as the Community Engagement Officer for National Museums NI project ‘Making the Future’. He is currently the Irish-language Editor of the local historical journal, Dúiche Néill, a member of the GAA’s National History Committee, and Cultural Officer for his club, An Eaglais.