Landmark Erection at Trinity
Talking Balls Comments
The Gaelic posts at College Park will allow the playing of gaelic games in the City Centre for the first time in Trinity’s 418 year history.
Previously the only gaelic games played in Dublin City Centre were when a bunch of drunken langers or mucksavages up for a match from their hovels outside Dublin, engaged in an impromptu tussle using an empty beer can or half eaten Kebabra. These shenanigans would of course have been frowned upon by the good people of Trinity, more suited to shopping in Brown Thomas, a good day’s rugger over in D4 or a bit of riding down at Ballsbridge no less.
Speaking of riding, a young student couple made the news a few years back when they decided to do it in the middle of Croke Park, no doubt over-enamoured of the significance of the historic sod. And losing the run of themselves and their clothes they decided to mount their own pitch invasion, a brassiere and a pair of underpants hanging from the goals posts gave them away to the grumpy English groundsman we think, such was their haste to swap jerseys and whatever else they could. No doubt at the Annual Trinity ball, this newer GAA pitch in the capital may attract similar on-field action. If you hear of it, let us know. If you do it, even better.
Anyway, for the uninitiated, here’s some interesting snippets about Gaelic Games at Trinity:
In 1879 the first meeting of the Irish Hurling union was held in House 17 of Botany Bay in Trinity College. Edward Carson played in a game in 1877, but that was before he became bitter. Contemporaneous reports suggest he would never surrender a lead and was adept at mustering additional players and procuring additional hurling sticks from dubious sources.
The GAA did not take root in Trinity until the 1950s. The GAA’s strong association with the Catholic Church, its ban of foreign games and the Catholic church barring their members attending Trinity because they might have sex there, all inhibited the development of Gaelic games. Ironically, the Church was happy to go about dishing out these pointless bans for attending Trinity, whilst its own house was falling down around it as we now know of course.
When Trinity hosted the Sigerson Cup in 1990, disgraceful scenes of drunkeness and debauchery at the Trinity Boathouse led to the abandonment of the traditional weekend format for a the next few years. Eyewitness accounts tell us that early in the evening the barman had to be excused from his duties such was the state of inebriation he full into, leading in turn to a rapid decline in behaviour and sobriety all around. Thereafter, visiting teams, many from Ulster who should have known better, helped themselves to the unattended bar. The evening of vandalism and bacchanalian revelry culminated in a series of well-known GAA players floating off down the Liffey stocious, in a boat made from the wood originally used to construct the Officers toilet at the Battle of Waterloo, where a Trinity Alumni Regiment served with distinction. The players subsequently turned up beached on a sand bar near Booterstown badly hungover, clinically dehydrated and stung with remorse. Our legal team have prevented us revealing their identities, but they probably know who they are.
