IF YOU had suggested 10 years ago that within a decade Ireland would open a Six Nations Rugby Championship - not just a Five Nations, mind - by playing Italy before a packed Croke Park, you would almost certainly have been dismissed as a fantasist. Strangely, however, if the first president of the GAA, Maurice Davin, had proposed that a GAA ground be used for a 19th-century rugby international this would have been considered entirely in keeping with his character, writes John G O'Dwyer
Born in 1842 to a prosperous Carrick-on-Suir family which owned a successful river trading business, Davin was a moderate nationalist with a voracious interest in all sport. With the security that a comfortable upbringing provided, he could afford to indulge a wide variety of sporting interests. Athletics was, however, his first love. Like his brothers Tom and Pat, he was a wonderfully talented competitor and achieved international fame in the 1870s when he broke several world records.
Regarded as one of the world's finest all-round sportsmen - he was also a rower, rugby player, boxer and cricketer - he was a respected household name across Ireland. The lack of a long-standing hurling tradition in the Davin family is, however, betrayed by the fact that Pat Davin's hurley - used on the 1888 GAA tour to the US - is made, not from ash, but from an elbow-jarring hardwood. Nevertheless, when Clare man Michael Cusack - who also played cricket and rugby - published a letter in 1884 calling for the formation of an organisation to foster Irish sports and pastimes, Maurice Davin responded with wholehearted support.
No doubt seeing the value of having Ireland's foremost athlete associated with the new organisation, Cusack then issued an invitation to an inaugural meeting in Thurles, signed by both Davin and himself. As the most prominent person present at this meeting, it was almost inevitable that Davin would become president of the new organisation, which was initially entitled the Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of National Pastimes.
His term of office was, however, relatively short-lived. A man of considerable moderation, he believed in sport without boundaries and was consequently opposed to banning GAA members from playing foreign games. Such views were out of step with some of the organisation's grassroots members who were also supporters of the radical Irish Republican Brotherhood. In February 1887, when the GAA national executive, meeting in Davin's absence, banned members of the (overwhelmingly Irish) RIC police force from GAA membership, Davin resigned the presidency.
Soon afterwards factional dissent within the GAA threatened to sunder the organisation. Davin was recalled to steady the ship and under his influence a split was averted. The newly re-elected president then supported an ambitious plan to raise funds for the new organisation by sending a team of Irish athletes to compete in America. That September Davin led 50 athletes, including his brother Pat, to the US on what became known as the "American Invasion". The venture proved a public relations success but a financial disaster. Davin was inevitably, if unfairly, blamed for the losses and this time his parting with the GAA at national level was permanent.
Despite the rancour that surrounded this second resignation, it is a mark of Davin's strength of character that he returned without recrimination to a life of farming and river trading. But, of course, he found new challenges. He took an active part in community affairs while continuing to promote Gaelic games at local level. Seeing the need for a sports field in Carrick-on-Suir he developed an enclosed GAA pitch on the family farm where the 1904 All-Ireland Hurling Final was played.
Another project that demonstrated Davin's wide range of skills was his design and construction of the Cruiskeen, a large racing boat which, after some modifications, was a convincing victor at a regatta in Waterford. This 38-foot craft has recently been painstakingly restored and is well worth visiting at the Tipperary County Museum, Clonmel, where it is currently displayed.
Clearly Davin played a crucial role in steering the GAA through its turbulent early period when its very survival was in doubt, but for many years this was scarcely recognised. Initially the national GAA stadium gave recognition to Archbishop Croke, Michael Cusack, Bloody Sunday victim Michael Hogan and the less influential Pat Nally. This anomaly was rectified in 2006 when the new stand at the canal end of Croke Park was renamed Ardán Daimhim after the GAA's distinguished first and third president.
So what would Davin have made of the recent Heineken Cup final? As an all-round sports lover, there is no doubt he would have been swept up in the tide of passion surrounding his native Munster. Most likely, he would have slipped inconspicuously across to Cardiff to take his seat, not in the VIP section, but among the ordinary Munster supporters. He would, of course, have been fervently cheering the men in red and praying for a second Munster victory.
And above and beyond even this, he would have been delighted to witness an absorbing and fair contest.