"Programmes of the games, programmes!"
John Kelly's 'The GAA Covered' book was launched last Thursday evening in Palatine Clubhouse
“Programmes of the game, programmes! Get your match programmes, programmes!” A definite inclusion on a soundtrack recalling Summer Sunday’s of yesteryear, a catchcry that along with “get your team’s colours, flags, hats, rosettes” conjures up fond memories of how a small boy was mesmerised by the sense of occasion generated by the street vendors outside Semple Stadium, Thurles ahead of his first ever inter-county match. The sales pitch continued inside the venue as “apples, pears, bananas, all ripe fruits” and “ices, ices, last of the ices” rent the air.
The young boy in question was delighted when the father placed a saffron and blue paper hat on his head and put a similar coloured flag in his hand though the blue of the flag was much paler than the blue on the hat! Partial to ice-cream the small boy was equally delighted to dip the little wooden spoon into the HB tub and extract the cooling substance contained within. He declined offers of a fruit purchase. Great though the hat and flag were, lovely though the ice cream was, the life-changing experience for the 11 year-old that 1971 May Sunday was the match programme which his father bought close to the little hump back Thurles bridge made famous by Raymond Smith in his series of hurling books. Over a half-century later I (for I was that small boy) can still see in my minds eye the sketch of a hurler on the top left corner of the black and white programme cover. It was only a four-page fold-over but that Clare v Wexford National Hurling League quarter-final programme became the first deposit in what was to become a treasured collection of GAA memorabilia.
Your scribes experience of that first match programme sparking a life-time obsession has many, many echoes and I’m sure lots of people reading this are whispering, “me too.” One man who is not whispering but declaring loud and clear on his memorabilia mania is Carlow and Palatine gael, John Kelly, who has just published an absolutely magnificent book tracing the history of the GAA match programme and gloriously illustrates the programme cover of every All-Ireland Senior Hurling and Football final since 1913 with every provincial final cover featured too. ‘The GAA Covered’, published by Gill, is a triumph for John’s thinking outside the box and the hard graft and hard yards involved in following through on his magical idea. It’s a triumph too for the publishers, whose design and lay-out, choice of paper quality and stitch finish gift-wraps John’s work into a perfectly finished product. Speaking of gift, this book will make the perfect gift for anybody of a Gaelic games persuasion and methinks this terrific tome will not only be a Christmas stocking filler but a festive hit.
The author of this great book, John Kelly, is well known in GAA circles, a player, coach and officer with his beloved Palatine, a club with which the Kelly family have a long association, his father Gus a stalwart of Cnoc Arda for many years while John’s mother Maureen is a proud native of Clare, Kilmurray-Ibrickane to be exact, Marty Morrissey country. Indeed it was a case of cousin v cousin in a couple of Carlow v Clare NFL games when John’s brother Brian and his Clare goalkeeper first cousin were in opposition. John, who is the Principal of Bishop Foley Primary School in Carlow Town, was also a trusted umpire with Paud O’Dwyer during his inter-county refereeing days. Let John himself tell the story of the genesis for the book, a story he relayed in last weekend’s ‘Irish Times’ … “Growing up in a house with a strong tradition of Gaelic games, being brought to matches was a regular feature of my childhood. As was the customary practice at the time, I was lifted over the turnstile and given the programme to mind. It was my good fortune that some of those matches were the great battles between Dublin and Kerry in the All-Ireland finals of the late 1970s. In the era before the internet and when sports magazines were mainly confined to English soccer, the match programme was my only source of photographs, statistics and team profiles.
“The programme was important to me, an object to be retained and cherished forever. My favourite programme from those childhood years is the 1982 All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Offaly. Kerry were the overwhelming favourites to become the first team to win the title for the fifth year in a row. Of course Offaly’s Seamus Darby shattered those aspirations in one of the biggest shocks in an All-Ireland final.
“The bright yellow cover of the programme is still attractive now, even if a little torn, with the smiling faces of the two team captains, not imagining the impact the match would have on the national sporting landscape. At the top of the cover is Noel Skehan’s autograph. The Kilkenny goalkeeper had just won his eighth All-Ireland hurling medal two weeks previously and was then seated just a couple of rows in front of me and my father in the Hogan Stand. However, this is not the most significant autograph on my programme. Many years later my brother, a garda, spent some time working with Matt Connor, himself a garda and full-forward on the Offaly team that day, scoring seven points. My brother got the great man to sign the programme for me, adding greatly to its value in my opinion.
“Like most programme collectors, I didn’t set out with the intention of building a collection. As the years passed, the programmes just seemed to accumulate until I had reached a critical mass. From there I set about filling in the gaps or missing years in my All-Ireland finals’ collection. Firstly, I tried to complete the set back to 1970. When that was achieved, I moved onto the 1960s and so on. As I got further back in time, the programmes became more difficult to acquire and increasingly more expensive.
“One of the programmes that eluded me for many years was the 1947 All-Ireland football final played between Cavan and Kerry. To commemorate the centenary of the worst year of the Great Famine, the final was played in the Polo Grounds in New York, still to date the only time an All-Ireland final has been played outside of the country. A few years ago the programme became available on eBay and even though it was pricey, I took the plunge and bought it. For a programme that survived the match, the journey back to Ireland and the passage of almost 80 years, it is in near mint condition.
It is unlike any other All-Ireland final programme of that era being larger in size and volume, and there is a wonderful, evocative, musty smell from the pages that stands testament to its longevity.
“Without a central archive of all the GAA’s programmes, I set out to compile as many of the All-Ireland and provincial final programme covers as possible in my book ‘The GAA Covered’. This involved visiting several private collections held in various parts of the country by dedicated collectors.
In the book, the transition of the programmes from old to new, black and white to colour, single page to souvenir booklet is detailed, dating back to the first All-Ireland finals played in the GAA’s newly-purchased Croke Park in 1913.”
The term ‘steeplechase’ originates from an 18th-century horse race in County Cork where the course ran from one church steeple to another. The first known race occurred in 1752, a cross-country wager between Cornelius O’Callaghan and Edmund Blake, who raced from St. John’s Church in Buttevant to St. Mary’s Church in Doneraile. This race inspired the name and subsequent development of steeplechasing as a sport, which eventually evolved from cross-country challenges to organized track events with prepared obstacles. What in the name of God has that got to do with John Kelly’s book you ask. Well last Thursday night, the night of his book launch, I conducted a steeplechase of my own, walking from St Clare’s Church in Graiguecullen to St Mary’s Church in Bennekerry before tipping into the nearby Palatine club house where GAA Director General, Tom Ryan, himself a native of Carlow, himself an avid programme collector, officially launched the book. “You what?,” some asked when I told of my trek - which, to my surprise, didn’t register 10,000 steps on the trusty Fitbit. Whether or which my ‘steeplechase’ was very much left in the shade by the presence of devoted programme collectors and strong allies of John Kelly who had travelled from as faraway as Mayo, Roscommon and Galway to celebrate the arrival of the ‘GAA Covered’ and guarantee first editions on their bookshelves. Cars also left Maynooth, Waterford and Graiguenamanagh among other diverse places in which can be found devoted programme collectors. Their presence was testament to the high regard in which John Kelly is held among the collecting fraternity.
