IRISH DISPUTE ON SPORT

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27308, 26 March 1954, Page 6

IRISH DISPUTE ON SPORT

ST. PATRICK’S DAY BROADCAST INTERVAL IN HURLING MATCH (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON. The Gaelic Athletic Association, a fervently patriotic amateur sports body in Ireland which bans any of its members from playing, or even watching, any corrupt foreign games such as Rugby, soccer or cricket, has had a private fight this week with Radio Eireann, the Government broadcasting corporation of Eire. It all arose over the radio authorities’ plans to broadcast St. Patrick’s Day celebrations to Irishmen overseas.

A broadcast, arranged with the French authorities, was to have relayed the final of a hurling match between Leinster and Munster through a French Equatorial Africa radio station. In a 15 minute half-time interval in the hurling match, the radio engineers planned to fill in the time by broadcasting part of a soccer match being played between the League of Ireland and the Scottish League. Mr M. V. O’Donoghue* p resident of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the champion of the pure Irish sports of hurling and Gaelic football, described the 15 minute football broadcast as “an insult to the Irish nation” and a mockery of hi 3 association. “We will refuse to be associated with this cunning attempt to give an imperialist game like Association Football a national complexion,” he» said. His association also weighed in with an impassioned statement noting “with shame” that a commentary on Gaelic football was also being omitted from the broadcast.

The director of the Radio Eireann, another Irishman, was not to be scared by words. He retaliated by stating that his corporation could not allow the Gaelic Athletic Association to decide what sports it should or should not broadcast.

Another patriotic organisation, the Gaelic League, which exists to revive the Irish Language, supported the Gaelic Athletic Association in its stand. “The broadcasting of Association football and the ignoring of our national language in an overseas relay could only be expected to confirm foreigners in the belief that Ireland was a province of England,” it fulminated. There was a successful—and—lrish ending to the dispute. The radio engineers cancelled their broadcasts of the hurling match.

No-one, Irish patriot at home or overseas, or a misguided imperialist foreigner, was able to listen to the sports celebrations from Dublin.