Royal destinations:THE BRITISH royal family has no connection with Croke Park, headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the most successful sporting organisation on the island of Ireland, builders and owners of one of the largest sporting stadiums in Europe.
That said, the ghosts of history will speak loud when Queen Elizabeth visits the 82,000 capacity stadium, meets senior members of the association. When she visits the association's museum, she will see how the GAA is intimately bound up with modern Irish identity, an identity it helped forge as part of the Gaelic Revival in the late 19th century.
Politically at the time, nationalist organisations such as Young Ireland and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians) were seeking to promote a sense of Irish national identity that was separate from anything derived from the neighbouring island.
Among those in the Gaelic Revival who feared for the future of football and hurling was Michael Cusack, a Clare-born Irish teacher and professor at Blackrock College in Dublin. On November 1st, 1884, Cusack called some like-minded associates to a meeting in Hayes's Hotel in Thurles, Co Tipperary. They were: Maurice Davin, a Tipperary farmer and world record runner who was the greatest Irish athlete of his day; John Wyse Power and James Bracken, both members of the Brotherhood (Bracken's son, Brendan, founded the Financial Times newspaper, became a British government minister and was a confident of Winston Churchill); Joseph Ryan, a solicitor; John McKay, a journalist; and Thomas St George McCarthy, a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary and a rugby player.
The association they founded that day codified Gaelic football and hurling, as well as camogie and handball, and set about promoting Irish music, dance and language. The link to political nationalism was apparent from the start with the appointment as patrons of Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party; Archbishop Thomas Croke, a strong supporter of Parnell; and Michael Davitt, head of the Land League.
Because of the association with the burgeoning nationalism of the late 19th century, the GAA was viewed with suspicion, and worse, by the British authorities and many members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which sought to infiltrate the association and spy on members' activities.
As a result, in 1897, members of the British forces were banned from joining the organisation and GAA members were prohibited from attending social events at which British soldiers or police were present. The ban was rescinded in 1900 but reintroduced in 1903 and remained in force until 2001. In 1901, rule 27 was introduced banning GAA members from playing foreign games - ie soccer and rugby - also known as "garrison games", or even watching them. The ban, which remained until 1971, resulted in President Douglas Hyde, a patron of the GAA, being expelled for attending a
soccer international.
In 1918, the British government banned the GAA and, notwithstanding this, the following year, the association decided to expel any civil servant members who had taken the oath of allegiance, swearing loyalty to the British monarch.
This was the cultural and political context to the events of Sunday, November 21st, 1920, at the height of the War of Independence, the worst day in the history of Croke Park.
That morning, IRA assassination teams under the command of Michael Collins fanned out at dawn across Dublin city centre to 10 separate locations with the aim of killing members of the so-called Cairo Gang, a group of British intelligence agents.
Nineteen of them were shot, 14 died, including four military intelligence officers and four members of MI5.
Collins used as cover for his operation the fact that a major match was scheduled that day for Croke Park, a challenge football game between Dublin and Tipperary. Knowing the city would be busy, Collins judged correctly that it would be easier for his men to move about undetected.
In response to the massacre, a mixed band of RIC officers, Dublin Metropolitan Police, cadets and British Auxiliaries (whose conduct in Ireland had, incidentally, been criticised by King George V), went to Croke Park to take revenge.
They entered the ground where 5,000 people had gathered for the match and opened fire on the crowd for approximately 90 seconds, killing 14 civilians, including Michael Hogan, the Tipperary captain, after whom today's Hogan Stand is named.