Old Drogheda Society
Just
a reminder that this Saturday 26 March at 2pm RTE Radio 1 will
air the documentary 'The All Ireland Behind Barbed Wire' as
part of their ‘Documentary On One - 1916 Season’.
You can also listen back
online here: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/
The
abandoned whisky distillery in Frongoch, North Wales became a makeshift place
of imprisonment during the First World War housing German prisoners of war
until 1916.
In
the wake of the Easter Rising, these German POWs were moved on and Frongoch
became a place of internment for approximately 1,800 Irish prisoners, including
notables such as Michael Collins, Frank Shouldice, Tomás Mac Curtain and
Richard Mulcahy.
Shipped
across the Irish Sea on cattle boats, the months in Frongoch, later known as
Ollscoil Na Réabhlóide or the ‘University of Revolution’ were used fruitfully
by the internees to radicalise, network and learn how guerrilla tactics might
ensure the mistakes of the Rising were not repeated.
Sport
played an important part in the life of the internees - keeping them fit,
focused and keeping their spirits up while also forging close bonds of
friendship. With so many of the detainees having played intercounty football,
they decided to hold a GAA intercounty football championship.
The
field used as the football pitch in Frongoch was named ‘Croke Park’ after the
stadium in Dublin on Jones’ Road which the GAA had only just purchased for
£2,400 in 1913 using record gate money generated by the Croke Memorial
Tournament between Louth and Kerry that year.
Posters
advertising the Wolfe Tone Tournament final match in Frongoch between old
rivals Kerry and Louth informed fans that ‘admission was 5 shillings and wives
and sweethearts should be left at home’!
One
hundred years on from this All-Ireland behind barbed wire, a grand-daughter of
Tom Burke, the man who captained the Louth side and refereed the first All
Ireland played for the Sam Maguire Cup in 1928, now wants to find out more
about what happened behind the barbed wire.
Together
with a grandnephew of the Kerry captain, the great footballer, Dick Fitzgerald,
who wrote ‘How to play Gaelic football’, the first handbook of its kind in the
GAA, and the grandson of the man who recorded the game, Joe Stanley, who acted
as Pearse’s and Connolly’s press officer, printing the War News from the GPO
during the Rising, retrace their relatives’ footsteps in search of the story of
the unique All-Ireland Final in Frongoch in 1916.
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