David McWilliams on hurling's invasion of middle class Dublin

Started by Bord na Mona man, March 24, 2017, 02:43:46 PM

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Bord na Mona man

Comment: How sliotar replaced the rugby ball for middle-class

David McWilliams
March 18 2017 2:30 AM

My first memory of going to a "big match" in a proper stadium is St Patrick's Day 1976. I went with thousands of locals from around Dun Laoghaire to see CBC Monkstown in the Schools' Senior Cup at Lansdowne Road.
CBC, the local school, was not a posh school but it was a rugby school. Back then, the "known world" to my nine-year-old self was the coastal stretch from Blackrock baths as far as the ramparts in Dalkey. It was a rugby and football place. By football I mean soccer, not GAA. And nobody played hurling here.

Had you told us that a Dalkey team would be All Ireland hurling champions, we'd have laughed at you.
For us, hurling was a dangerous game played by fellas from the country. It was the foreign game. Football was our first love and rugby came second. While some of us may have played GAA in national school, GAA's roots were not deep here. Sure it was always played here, but for us, the FA Cup was a much bigger day than the All Ireland football final. Whatever about football, hurling never figured. Even most national schools, run by GAA-mad teachers, didn't attempt hurling with only a tiny minority daring to champion the game. These lads were usually the sons of hurling obsessives who brought hurling up to Dublin when they left home to find work in the capital.

In fact, you could say that back then sport was genetic. You played what your dad played. The only devotee of GAA on our road was one Des Cahill who tried repeatedly to convert us from soccer and rugby to GAA with no success. Des' father was the principal of the local national school.

In the early 1950s, my dad co-founded Dalkey United, and so my sport was soccer. Both cultures lived in harmony side by side but soccer was king.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dalkey United shared its ground with a small GAA club called Cuala. Dalkey United was the senior partner in the shared ground. In fact, Dalkey - the soccer club - actually "gave" Cuala the extra pitch beside it out of sympathy for the GAA club, which in the 1960s didn't have a permanent pitch.

Fast-forward to today and Cuala, the small GAA club of my memory, is ubiquitous in this former rugby and soccer stronghold. There are Cuala red and white flags everywhere from Monkstown to Dalkey. Cuala is the first Dublin club to reach the All Ireland hurling club final and what's more, Cuala are now champions! There is a real buzz around the club getting into the final. People who wouldn't know one end of a sliothar from the other are talking hurling. It's a brilliant success story. And guess who is a big wig at the Cuala GAA club? Well, the very same Des Cahill, RTE's ballroom dancer, who failed to convert us to GAA in the '80s.

But how did this happen? How did hurling get a toehold in deepest south Dublin? How did the national school I went to, Johnstown National School, which didn't have a hurling team in the 1970s and 80s, end up providing seven of the first XV for the Cuala team that played in Croke park yesterday?

More interestingly, from a cultural perspective, how did the middle class in this neck of the woods end up having to make a choice between the RDS Stadium and Croke Park on St Patrick's Day?

Yesterday's choice was between the Rugby Schools' Senior Cup, the traditional middle class St Patrick's game in this part of the world - Blackrock versus Belvedere - and the new middle class sport here of hurling and the club final between Dalkey's Cuala and Balyea of Clare.

I am interested in the economic and demographic forces that have played out in coastal south Dublin in the past few decades. These forces have changed the cultural composition of the population and have manifested in the emergence of hurling as a significant cultural force here.

To understand this, we have to understand that the last two or three decades have been a time of enormous social upheaval in middle class Dublin. The main force has been the emergence of a rural professional class that has come to dominate Dublin's professions.

These upwardly socially mobile punters from the country are the major winners in the Irish professional meritocracies of medicine, the higher levels of the civil service, the law, accountancy and banking. The failed bankers of Ireland were dismissed as "not very bright rugby players" in the boom, but if you care to look forensically at the backgrounds of the major players in the banking collapse, you will see far more fingerprints of Christian Brothers' boys on the make, with corporate boxes in Croke Park, then the more-easy-to-lampoon south-side rugby jocks.

So what's going on?

Like all cultural phenomena, the rise in hurling in alien territory has a major economic dimension to it. The main economic factor behind rise in hurling in coastal south Dublin can be traced to the 1960s and free education.

The class that benefitted most from free education in the 1960s and 1970s was not, as you might imagine, the industrial working class, but the small farming class. It is their grandsons now playing hurling in south Dublin.

A few years ago, two economists - Damian Hannan and Patrick Commins - wrote a paper called the 'The Significance of Small Scale Landholders in Ireland's Socio-Economic Transformation'. If anyone wants to understand the economics and the social patchwork that is Ireland today and why south Dublin plays hurling, this paper is invaluable.

The writers chart the extraordinary success of the sons of Ireland's small farmers in the social revolution of the past few decades.

Mr Hannan and Mr Commins found, astonishingly, that the single most important determinant, on a county-by-county basis, of a county's educational achievement in the 1960s and 1970s was the number of small farmers in each county. This is quite extraordinary and unique to this country.

The more small farmers in a county, the better educated the children were and the better they did in their Leaving Cert. They even found that the single most successful subsection of the Irish population was the children of small farmers in East Galway, the home of hurling in Connacht.

Compared to their urban, working-class counterparts, 30pc more children of small farmers did the Leaving Cert and 50pc more went on to third-level education.

They turned into the teacher aristocracy, bringing with them to Dublin a love of the GAA, squeezeboxes and Farah slacks. Their success in education also catapulted them into the public service in great numbers. Now they are retiring as the best-paid public servants in Europe. Their kids have gone up a notch on the social hierarchy to become doctors and lawyers. Some of them have adopted rugby, the sport of the old hierarchy, but they have also kept their allegiance to the GAA.

So as they bought houses in the coastal parts of south Dublin, they joined GAA clubs, not rugby or soccer clubs, leading to an explosion of GAA in this part of the world. As is so often the case in economics, the law of unintended consequences plays out. The unintended consequence of free education and related upward mobility is that Dalkey are All-Ireland champions. There won't be a cow milked in Dalkey tonight...

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/david-mcwilliams/comment-how-sliotar-replaced-the-rugby-ball-for-middleclass-35542860.html

seafoid

Population growth is also a part of it. SCD has 4 or 5 times the population it had in the 60s and those extra people came from GAA land
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Bord na Mona man

McWilliams makes some good points, however I think he is over attributing the civil service/free education thing.
This has gone on since the 60s, hurling has only caught on more recently. Retiring civil servants would be almost the grand parents rather than the parents of the young people who have taken up the game.

He could have mentioned that a lots of middle class parents are getting cold feet on rugby due to the concussion problems and potential for brain damage and spinal injuries.

A lot of people playing GAA in South Dublin don't come from GAA backgrounds. The beauty of some of the clubs around these parts is how they are able to get parents and volunteers involved who never experienced gaelic games. I think many rural GAA clubs are closed shops and aren't great at getting people outside the genepool involved.

What has helped hurling in middle class Dublin has been the cultural revival of the last 2 decades. Post Riverdance, IRA ceasefire, there is a lot less cultural cringe and disdain for native culture.
Hurling has become more acceptable to the yummy mummies. The Croke Park redevelopment, the more slick and corporate GAA has been a helped in changing the perception of the GAA which had previously been seen as too rural to be touched.

Now it seems that hurling is as South Dublin as sending your kid to a gaelscoil and naming them the most obscure word you can find in an Irish text book from the middle ages.


Aaron Boone

It's not all a hurling story though, they play football in Cuala too.


seafoid

"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

shark

Quote from: Aaron Boone on March 24, 2017, 04:02:47 PM
It's not all a hurling story though, they play football in Cuala too.

And I wouldn't bet against them winning a Dublin SFC in the near future. Say 5/6 years.

Ball Hopper

Quote from: seafoid on March 24, 2017, 04:12:18 PM
Where does the name Cuala come from?

This wikipedia knows just about everything!!!

As referenced in the book A dictionary of Celtic mythology by James MacKillop, "Cuala was the name of the former territory in Leinster from the river Liffey to Arklow, roughly coextensive with modern County Wicklow, including the celebrated monastic centre of Glendalough. The area takes its name from the Cualainn, an early people who were there in Ptolemy's time (2nd century AD). Crích Cualann is the district of Cualu. Slí Chualann is the way or the road to Cualu."

seafoid

Quote from: Ball Hopper on March 24, 2017, 04:31:23 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 24, 2017, 04:12:18 PM
Where does the name Cuala come from?

This wikipedia knows just about everything!!!

As referenced in the book A dictionary of Celtic mythology by James MacKillop, "Cuala was the name of the former territory in Leinster from the river Liffey to Arklow, roughly coextensive with modern County Wicklow, including the celebrated monastic centre of Glendalough. The area takes its name from the Cualainn, an early people who were there in Ptolemy's time (2nd century AD). Crích Cualann is the district of Cualu. Slí Chualann is the way or the road to Cualu."
Very sophisticated name for a GAA club.
Sure beats St Mary's
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Ball Hopper

Quote from: seafoid on March 24, 2017, 05:09:23 PM
Quote from: Ball Hopper on March 24, 2017, 04:31:23 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 24, 2017, 04:12:18 PM
Where does the name Cuala come from?

This wikipedia knows just about everything!!!

As referenced in the book A dictionary of Celtic mythology by James MacKillop, "Cuala was the name of the former territory in Leinster from the river Liffey to Arklow, roughly coextensive with modern County Wicklow, including the celebrated monastic centre of Glendalough. The area takes its name from the Cualainn, an early people who were there in Ptolemy's time (2nd century AD). Crích Cualann is the district of Cualu. Slí Chualann is the way or the road to Cualu."
Very sophisticated name for a GAA club.
Sure beats St Mary's

Teacher influence rather than parish priest I presume.


manfromdelmonte

Colaiste Eoin and the Gaelscoils also contributed a lot to it

vallankumous

I think McWilliams has a little bit of licence here as he's from Dalky. I don't think there is anything unique about Cuala or hurling for that matter.
You could pick any number of clubs or codes and have a crack at explaining why they succeed or fail and there's only one real factor linking them all.
The people involved. Not their social or professional standing but their skills in running clubs and their determination.

ashman

Cuala have a massive area to pick from .  The last 2 all Ireland clubs are now won by urban clubs with huge areas to pick from .  That said hurling is a minority sport of sorts on both areas  .  At this stage the Urban clubs with big picks who sometimes can add a few players are starting to dominate .   

manfromdelmonte

he sure likes to give everything a root cause

maybe its just because a lot of people in the club worked very hard, organised themselves properly with backing from the DCB and got more kids playing and more people involved in the club and then developed their facilities

Bord na Mona man

Quote from: vallankumous on March 25, 2017, 08:44:46 AM
I think McWilliams has a little bit of licence here as he's from Dalky. I don't think there is anything unique about Cuala or hurling for that matter.
Yeah, to a great extent he will have much better insight than most.
However, a rugby playing Blackrock old boy like McWilliams might not be a neutral observer either on sporting choices.
For storters, he'd be hanging around with a lot of old money types who wouldn't be overly fond of the 'free education boys', as they'd put it. The people who have risen to the top of the professions without paying their dues in fee paying 2nd level institutions.

His style of economics is to try and simplify it and break it done into convenient labels; 'breakfast roll man' and the like.
Here, he hasn't quite said it, but he is attributing a lot to cabbage head, Easht Galway culchies, buoyed by some Pol-pot in reverse  government scheme spreading their rural customs into urban territory. When in reality the reasons are more varied and less stark than this.


Avondhu star

From Leeson st to the Wicklow border, a massively populated area for years there were   two clubs to the east of the Stillorgan rd N11. Cuala and Clan na Gael. Shankill have started at juvenile level but have a lot of work to do. Rugby will maintain its prominence
Lee Harvey Oswald , your country needs you