*Michael Cusack Centre. Photograph: Eamon Ward
CARRON enjoyed a recent spell in the limelight in the first episode of RTÉ’s new GAA series ‘Hell for Leather’.
The series, which charts the history and importance of Gaelic Football in Irish culture, paid a visit to the Michael Cusack Centre in Carron and explored the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884.
The karst landscape of the Burren was shown to viewers across Ireland in the first episode of the series in a segment entitled “The Prairie Fire”. The episode showed footage of primary school students from Cusack’s namesake Gaelscoil Mhíchíl Cíosóg in Ennis listening attentively to a talk on the life of the GAA founder and playing Gaelic football amongst each other at the centre.
Hell for Leather has been well received so far and features interviews with legendary GAA figures from across Ireland as well as historians. It serves as a companion piece to RTÉ’s 2018 landmark series ‘The Game’ which detailed the history of hurling and featured appearances from several former Clare hurlers.
We learn from the series that Michael Cusack had been a keen rugby player and cricketer in the past but turned his back on foreign games and founded the Gaelic Athletic Association with Maurice Davin in Hayes’ Hotel Thurles in 1884. Cusack was born in Carron, North Clare in 1847, the worst year of the Irish famine.
He worked as a civil servant, journalist and teacher and is described in the documentary by historian Donal McAnallen as a “fiery creative genius”, for his foundation of the largest amateur sporting organisation in the world. Cusack helped to organise the first official football game in Kilkenny’s Callan. Teams of 21 men aside played out a scoreless draw.
The Michael Cusack Centre was built in 2006, designed to commemorate the centenary of the Carron man’s death. Former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, was recently named an honorary patron of the centre. Long serving Clare GAA sponsor and Crusheen native Pat O’Donnell was one of the centre’s founding patrons when it was first set up.
