*Ronan Taaffe of Tubber. Photograph: Burren Eye Photography
A COMMEMORATIVE hurling match takes place in Tubber this May Bank Holiday weekend to mark 140 years since the North Clare club was registered.
It is 140 year since Tubber GAA registered as a club with Clare GAA and to mark the occasion a free family-fun event takes place this Sunday.
In November 1885, Tubber partook in a tournament hosted by Adrahan and attended by thousands.
Hurling experienced a sharp decline with emigration and evictions rampant at the time so many clubs disbanded. As hurling faded, football went from strength to strength even in traditional hurling areas. The Clare Journal at the time reported a football match in May 1887, played under Gaelic rules at Tubber between Kilkeedy and Beagh.
This weekend commemorates a hurling match that took place between Tubber and Gort, both teams will line up against each other in several matches this Sunday (May 4th).
An U11 hurling game between the clubs takes place at 2pm with Tubber’s U8 camogie team facing St Coleman’s (Gort Camogie) at the same time. Then at 3pm, the main event sees Tubber’s intermediate hurlers face Gort’s senior hurlers, the respective first team of each club. At half time, the U9 boys and U8 girls will be in action.
Rory O’Connor who is a committee member with Tubber GAA explained, “We are celebrating having first registered as a club 140 years ago with Clare GAA. As there is reference to a match between ourselves and Gort in 1885, we have invited them out to play us in a few games. We neighbour Michael Cusack’s original club in Carron and we have players from Carron, New Quay, Ballvaughan and Fanore who play their hurling with us at all levels currently”.
Cups will be presented to the winning team of the 3pm game where past members of Tubber and Gort will be honoured. “This will be The Leo O’ Donoghue & Paddy Fahy Perpetual trophy. Leo being a former member of Tubber GAA & Camogie club who has passed away recently and Paddy Fahy being a former member and president of Gort GAA who also passed away in the last year,” Rory outlined.
He added, “This all stemmed from a club development plan a few years ago. We were looking at the club, the history of it, the whole lot. We are referenced in a lot of places, there is reference to this match that we are replaying, a match between ourselves and Gort, referenced by Michael Cusack in his newspaper column, and Paul Rouse, then referenced it in his book The Hurlers recently. There was also talk of other historic games in the parish, we as a club decided it would be great to commemorate that, not so much the match, but the club being around and first registered 140 years ago”.
