Officials turnout to Hayes' Hotel for 140th anniversary event for the founding of the GAA

The GAA celebrated its 140th anniversary with a special event at Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles last Friday.

It was in the upstairs billiards room of Hayes’s Commercial and Family Hotel on Saturday, November 1, 1884, that the GAA was founded – when a group of 13 people, predominantly from Tipperary, gathered to elect Maurice Davin as President and Michael Cusack, John McKay and John Wyse-Power as its first secretaries.

The GAA’s History and Commemorations Committee gathered in the historic setting last Friday on the calendar anniversary of the formation date for a special lunch and then adjourned to the billiards room for a meeting.

Ger Ryan, Munster Chairman, and GAA Vice President attended along with Tipperary’s Central Council delegate John Doyle and Premier County CEO Murtagh Brennan.

Also present was former Tipperary hurler Hugh Maloney who is a great-grandson of Frank R Maloney from Nenagh who was heavily involved in the growth of the GAA in its earliest years and was its first Vice President.

On Friday, the GAA presented a specially commissioned commemorative hurley to current Hayes’s Hotel owner Jack Halley and then later adjourned upstairs for a meeting where in attendance was Patrick McKay and his son Simon – the oldest surviving direct descendants of the original GAA founders.

Patrick’s great grandfather John McKay was from Down and worked as a journalist with the Cork Examiner, and was heavily involved in athletics, which led to him being a part of the group that was assembled by Michael Cusack in 1884.

The McKay family link had been lost until they were tracked down by GAA historian Dónal McAnallen and the family made a historic trip to Croke Park earlier this year where they met GAA President Jarlath Burns.

McAnallen and fellow committee member John Arnold have also worked on verifying long-held accounts in Tipperary of there being at least 13 people at the meeting in Hayes’s Hotel and not seven as is usually referenced.

As well as Davin, Cusack, McKay, and Wyse-Power, there were JK Bracken, JP Ryan and Thomas St George McCarthy. In addition, there was John Butler, Michael Cantwell, Charles Culhane, William Delahunty, T.K. Dwyer and William Foley.

Damian White, Chair of the GAA’s History Committee said: “It was important that on the 140th anniversary of our foundation that there was an official GAA presence in Hayes’s Hotel. It was an honour and privilege to be there in the hotel and especially to be able to meet in the billiards room upstairs.,

One of our group, Dr Tom Hunt called it the most important room in the history of Irish sport – and he is right.

“When you think of all that has happened in the history of Ireland and how many people have had their lives and their communities shaped by the GAA, we owe so much to those few people who gathered with their vision in 1884 in Thurles.

“The study of the GAA in its earliest years is now a part of the Leaving Cert curriculum and hopefully a new generation will learn about the debt we owe to those men and the dream they set forth from Thurles on a Saturday afternoon 140 years ago.”