If one were to trace the beginnings of the present popularity of Gaelic games, one could go back some 13 years to the centenary year of the GAA. That event was marked in many and varied ways, most notably by the publication of scores of books touching on various aspects of the GAA - its past, present and future, and, on the local level, the social history of the parish from which a club had sprung.

Nobody could possibly have read, or even seen, all of these publications. But I was surprised to learn that one had escaped my notice until recently. Now, thanks to the generosity of the author, Criostoir O Floinn, I have been presented with a copy of his epic poem about the GAA, called simply Centenary.

The poem is 113 pages, or 5,050 lines long, so it is not the kind of thing that you will hear recited in a pub on a Saturday night before a big match. But it certainly covers the gamut of GAA history and activity. The style, and the author himself confirms this, is borrowed or adapted from Cuirt an Mhean Oiche (The Midnight Court) by Brian Merriman.

This is indeed a work which is worthy of the poets from whom O Floinn draws his inspiration such as Merriman, Raftery and others. And while the effort has its scholarly undertones, it has its mischievous moments and references. And there are always surprises around the corner, so the reader should beware of the traps that are being set.

Being a Limerick man, O Floinn has no difficulty paying due tribute to Michael Cusack and Douglas Hyde whom he sees as the inventors of much of what we have become. He is not so kind to some other institutions. For instance, going back to the years when Hyde and Cusack were about their business the poet has this to say:

Maynooth in mode ecclesiastical

Waxed strong but puritanical.

Importing Jansenistic thought

And preaching heaven must be bought

While suffering priests, with belly full

Laid laws of fast on famished faithful.

In many ways this could be regarded as a political poem with many references to the years when the Gaelic League and the GAA began to flourish. And the poet pursues the common line which saw political activism grow side by side with the GAA, the years which have shaped the GAA as it is today and which leave it open still to criticism about its political undertones within its constitution and its attitudes. He has little time, it would appear, for certain facets of Irish life and the way things such as Irish culture can be hijacked:

When Aonacht Tailteann was revived

To show the Irish Free State's pride

In ancient glory of our race

The gombeen mind itself disgraced

By choosing a committee formed

Largely of Anglo Irish lords

Who listed billiards, tennis, archery

And clay-pigeon shooting in the hierarchy

Of Gaelic pastimes.

The poet spares nobody, not even Jack Charlton's team:

Whenever our talented soccer emigres

Assemble in Dublin and a team plays

In our truncated Republic's noble name

Sounds and sight sadly proclaim

That players and crowd are a cultural transplant.

Supporters bawl concocted chants

Brought back from trips to English cities

Violence on the terraces, obscenities

Ritualised into behavioural pattern

Make sport's fair spirit a sulking slattern.

In view of the quite extraordinary growth of interest in hurling and football in recent years, it may be time for the poet to take a new look at the situation. He would probably find that both the GAA and its opponents have changed for the better.

The rebuilding programme at Croke Park is back on course and it betokens, more than anything else, a new and vibrant attitude as the new millennium approaches.

Hurling seems to have found a new lease of life with stirring victories by Clare and Wexford in successive years and a mould-breaking All-Ireland between two Munster teams the next item on the agenda.

Gaelic games are now being shown either live, or delayed, in dozens of places all over the world and are attracting much favourable comment. One fancies that the poet might detect that a prouder, more mature and purposeful GAA has emerged since he penned his lines for the centenary year.

Sadly, the book is out of print, but a keen eye might still pick out a copy on a market book-stall in which case it should be grabbed before another eagle eye spots it.