Just after 5.30 pm today, if you are within shouting distance of the Cusack stand at Croke Park, prepare yourself for a mighty roar. It will come from the mouth of a big, bearded fellow, a great Irishman and a fanatical sportsman, somewhere up in the stand.
Michael Cusack, founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, may have died just over a century ago, but his spirit is larger than life or death. In the state-of-the art stadium built by his successors, his voice will ring out, cheering Ireland's rugby XV to victory on the field of his dreams.
This afternoon's game is not his first big rugby occasion. He played rugby for the Phoenix club against Trinity College in December 1881 in the very first match of the Irish Rugby Union Leinster Challenge Cup. Trinity won, and went on to win the cup. This afternoon sees two of his passions come together, Ireland and sport. "He'll probably lie low for God Save the Queen, but he'll make his presence felt after that," says his biographer, Christian Brother Seán McNamara, author of The Man from Carron.
This will be no refined bleat of "Come on, Ireland", but a full-throated roar from the bottom of the black-laced boots of a Clare man. In sport Michael Cusack saw no boundaries. He loved his cricket - no better game for boys, he maintained - and he played it as a child in Carron. He was an accomplished high-jumper, clearing a five-foot gate almost from a standing start without difficulty. He probably also played road-bowling, according to Marcus de Búrca, author of Michael Cusack and the GAA. He definitely played handball, and he also rowed for Trinity, while teaching commercial subjects in Blackrock College, Co Dublin. He was all-Ireland champion at throwing the 16lb weight in 1881-82.
After Blackrock, he founded his own very successful school preparing students for examinations to join the Irish, British and Indian civil services, and began a rugby team known as Cusack's Academy XV, in which he played in the forwards, despite being over 30. Michael joined the Phoenix club, which took its name from the Dublin park in which it played. The photograph shows him with other members of the Phoenix club in 1881-82. It is in the possession of retired Dublin insurance manager Ossie Baily, whose grandfather E.O. Baily was also a Phoenix player.
Rugby was beginning to become established in Ireland, but the Phoenix belied its name and did not survive. Many members then joined Wanderers, but Michael was 35, and had the GAA to found and a wife and six children to provide for. A hurling club - Na Metropolitans - was founded at Cusack's academy in 1882 with Michael as president. (Michael Cusack's prominent role in the revival of hurling is another day's work.)
"A man of middle height, handsome features, dark eyes, black hair and beard, with scholarly shoulders. . . their great breadth. . . made him look shorter than he was," according to his friend the lawyer Joseph Maguire. The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in Hayes's Hotel in Thurles, Co Tipperary, in 1884, but the idea was conceived in Cusack's home and academy, and the Thurles meeting planned from 4 Gardiner place, Dublin. Nowadays it is the Dergvale Hotel, a popular watering-hole for fans on their way to Croke Park.
The infant Gaelic Athletic Association parted company with Michael Cusack a couple of years later. His departure from the secretary's position was largely personality-driven and he remained active at a less public level. Would the ban on members "playing foreign games", and restrictions on other codes using Croke Park have remained in place for so long if Cusack had remained in the inner counsels of the GAA? We will never know, but today that chapter is finally closed. And my hunch is that Cusack the sportsman would approve.
Eventually the GAA settled its differences with Cusack. He was very touched by a message of sympathy sent from the association on the death of his son, Michael Dominic, and a by sum of £50 voted to him in recognition of all the unpaid work he had done on the GAA's behalf, but by then his reputation had declined. James Joyce makes him a figure of fun, as "The Citizen", in Ulysses. He was fond of his drink and Joyce has him ranting about Leopold Bloom in Barney Kiernan's pub. Bloom remarked that Christ was a Jew and this made The Citizen apoplectic: "By Jesus, I'll brain that bloody Jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I'll crucify him, so I will."
But that is far from the whole picture. As Marcus de Búrca puts it: "Between October 1877, and November 1887, Michael Cusack made his mark on Irish education, played a decisive role in Irish athletics, revived the national game of hurling, took part in a seminal move to revive the Irish language, edited a new Irish weekly newspaper and founded the biggest and most successful of Irish sports bodies."
Not bad going. The attendance at today's historic match in Croke Park may prompt recollection of the epitaph of architect Sir Christopher Wren in the magnificent St Paul's Cathedral in London: "If you seek his memorial - look around you." Meanwhile, listen to that Clare man roar! If any one voice will get the lads in green across the line to a famous victory, this one will.