FOUNDING OF THE GAA:HE MAY not have been quite airbrushed out of the official history in the way Trotsky was in Stalin's Russia, but a founding member of the GAA, Thomas St George McCarthy, was for many years the forgotten man of the historic meeting at Hayes Hotel in Thurles in 1884.
But now McCarthy, a district inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), is to be honoured by the GAA when, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations to rededicate the graves of all the founders, a memorial will be erected at his grave in Deansgrange Cemetery in Dublin today.
How a RIC man came to help found the GAA and how the GAA have now come to honour him are intriguing stories, and central to the decision to pay tribute to Bansha-born McCarthy is former Armagh footballer Jarlath Burns.
"I was part of the Eames Bradley consultative group in the North, and as part of that we visited the RUC memorial garden, where Jim McDonald asked me had I ever heard of Thomas St George McCarthy. And I told him that I hadn't," said Burns.
"Jim told me McCarthy was a founding member of the GAA and that he served in the RIC, but that had never been acknowledged by the GAA despite various attempts by the RUC to get the GAA to recognise him. So I said I would do something about that."
The opportunity for Burns to deliver on his word came in February 2008, when then GAA president Nicky Brennan and director general Pádraig Duffy asked him to head the committee charged with commemorating the founding of the GAA.
According to a historian of the RIC, Jim Herlihy, McCarthy, who was born in 1862, became friendly with Michael Cusack when he attended a "grinds" school run by Cusack in Dublin for men wishing to sit entry exams for Trinity, the professions, the police and Army.
McCarthy, who joined the RIC in 1882 (the same year he played rugby for Ireland against Wales), was stationed at Templemore in Co Tipperary in 1884, and it was his friendship with Cusack which brought him to Hayes Hotel in Thurles for the historic meeting.
According to Burns, some have suggested McCarthy went as an RIC spy, but he strongly disagrees. And he sees today's ceremony as an important acknowledgement of the diversity in the GAA.
"It's all easy to pigeonhole people in the GAA, and for me, coming from a strongly republican area of south Armagh, this ceremony is about extending the hand of reconciliation to those in the RUC with whom the GAA have had a very poor relationship."
