Gaelic Athletic Association facts for kids

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Gaelic Athletic Association
Cumann Lúthchleas Gael

Formation	1 November 1884; 140 years ago (1884-11-01) in Thurles, Tipperary, Ireland
Type	Sports association
Purpose	The management and promotion of Gaelic games, and promotion of Irish culture and language
Headquarters	Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland
Region served	Worldwide
Membership (2014)	500,000+
Official language	Irish
President	Jarlath Burns
Staff	Limited full-time staff
Website	gaa.ie

The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is a big Irish sports and culture group. It helps to promote traditional Irish sports like hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, Gaelic handball and rounders. The GAA also supports Irish music, dance, and the Irish language. It even has a "Green Clubs" plan to help the environment.

By 2014, the GAA had over 500,000 members all around the world. In 2022, they made €96.1 million. The GAA's Competitions Control Committee (CCC) plans all the games for each GAA county and region.

Gaelic football and hurling are the most popular sports the GAA promotes. They are also the most watched sports in the Republic of Ireland. In Northern Ireland, Gaelic football is the second most popular sport to play. Girls' versions of these games, ladies' Gaelic football and camogie, are run by other groups. These groups, the Ladies' Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association of Ireland, work closely with the GAA. GAA Handball looks after handball, and the GAA Rounders National Council manages rounders.

Since it started in 1884, the GAA has become very important in Irish sports and culture. It reaches many communities in Ireland and among Irish people living abroad.

How the GAA Started
GAA Competitions
Cultural Activities
GAA Stadiums
- Croke Park: The Main Stadium
- Other Big Stadiums
GAA and Community
GAA Around the World
Winter Training Break
See also

How the GAA Started

The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded on November 1, 1884. A group of Irishmen met in Hayes' Hotel in Thurles. They wanted to create a group to protect and promote Ireland's special games and sports.

Hayes' Hotel in Thurles, where the GAA began.

The main people who started the GAA were Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin. Maurice Davin became the first president. They also asked important people like Archbishop Croke to support the new group. In 1922, the GAA handed over the job of promoting other sports like running and cycling to a different group.

GAA Competitions

The GAA organizes many sports events. These happen at different levels:

Local club games
County games
Regional (provincial) games
National (All-Ireland) games

For example, the best club teams from each county play in a provincial competition. Then, the winners from each province go on to play in national finals.

Cultural Activities

The GAA has always worked to promote Irish culture. It has a special part called Scór (which means "score" in Irish). Scór runs competitions in:

Irish music
Singing
Dancing
Storytelling

The GAA's official rules say:

The Association shall actively support the Irish language, traditional Irish dancing, music, song, and other aspects of Irish culture. It shall foster an awareness and love of the national ideals in the people of Ireland, and assist in promoting a community spirit through its clubs.

Scór officially started in 1969. It is promoted through GAA clubs all over Ireland and in some clubs outside Ireland too.

GAA Stadiums

The GAA has many stadiums across Ireland and in other countries. Almost every county and club has its own grounds. These grounds have different sizes and facilities for playing home games.

Áras Mhic Eiteagáin clubhouse in Gweedore, County Donegal. This is a typical club in rural Ireland.

Clubs usually play early championship games at their own grounds. Later rounds, like quarter-finals and finals, are often held at a county ground. This is where inter-county games are played.

Provincial championship finals are usually played at the same place each year. But sometimes, like in Ulster in 2004 and 2005, the finals were moved to Croke Park. This happened because so many people were expected to attend that the usual venue, St Tiernach's Park, was too small.

Croke Park: The Main Stadium

Croke Park stadium in Dublin, Ireland. It's used for Gaelic football, hurling, and camogie. It can hold 82,300 people.

Croke Park is the GAA's most important stadium. People often call it Croker or Headquarters because it's also where the GAA's main offices are. It can hold 82,300 people, making it one of the biggest stadiums in Europe. It was greatly improved during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Every September, Croke Park hosts the All-Ireland Hurling and Football Finals. These are the biggest games of the summer championships. Croke Park also holds the All-Ireland club finals for football and hurling. The stadium is named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, who was a supporter of the GAA when it started in 1884.

The Croke Park area also has the National Handball Centre. This new centre is where GAA Handball is based and where All-Ireland Gaelic Handball finals are played.

Other Big Stadiums

The next three largest stadiums are all in the province of Munster:

Semple Stadium in Thurles, County Tipperary, holds 53,000 people.
The Gaelic Grounds in Limerick holds 50,000 people.
Páirc Uí Chaoimh in County Cork can hold 45,000 people.

Other stadiums that can hold more than 25,000 people include:

Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney (43,180 capacity)
MacHale Park, Castlebar (42,000 capacity)
St Tiernach's Park, Clones, County Monaghan (36,000 capacity)
Kingspan Breffni Park, Cavan Town, County Cavan (32,000 capacity)
Casement Park, Belfast (32,600 capacity)
Nowlan Park, Kilkenny (27,800 capacity)
O'Moore Park, Portlaoise, County Laois (27,000 capacity)
Healy Park, Omagh, County Tyrone (26,500 capacity)
Pearse Stadium, Galway (26,197 capacity)

In 2016, a map was published showing 1,748 GAA grounds in Ireland. This shows how many places there are to play GAA games!

GAA and Community

The GAA has always been connected to Irish nationalism. In Northern Ireland, most players are from the Catholic community. Some people from the Protestant community feel left out because of the GAA's history.

Some GAA grounds, clubs, and competitions are named after important Irish nationalist figures. One rule, called Rule 42, used to stop other sports (sometimes called "foreign sports") from being played on GAA grounds. Because of this, the GAA was sometimes targeted during a difficult time in Northern Ireland called the Troubles. There were attacks on GAA clubs. As Gaelic football became more popular in Ulster, there were more attacks on Gaelic clubs in Northern Ireland.

Rule 42 and Other Sports

Rule 42 (now Rule 5.1) used to say that GAA grounds could only be used for GAA games. However, sports that are not seen as "in conflict" with the GAA have been allowed.

On April 16, 2005, the GAA decided to temporarily change Rule 42. This allowed international soccer and rugby games to be played at Croke Park. This happened while another stadium, Lansdowne Road, was being rebuilt. The first soccer and rugby games at Croke Park were in 2007.

Sometimes, local GAA clubs want to rent out their facilities to other sports groups to earn money. This goes against Rule 42. It's a bit of a debate because Croke Park can earn money by renting its stadium, but smaller local clubs cannot.

Old Rules No Longer Used

The GAA used to have some rules that are not in place anymore:

Rule 21: This rule, from 1897, stopped members of the British forces from joining the GAA. It was removed in 2001.
Rule 27 (The Ban): This rule, from 1901, stopped GAA members from playing or even watching non-Gaelic games. For example, Douglas Hyde, who was a GAA supporter and later President of Ireland, was removed from the GAA for watching a soccer game. This rule was removed in 1971.

Working with All Communities

The GAA points out that people from all backgrounds have been members throughout its history. For example, Jack Boothman, a Protestant, was president of the GAA from 1993 to 1997.

To help include everyone, especially in Northern Ireland, the GAA's Ulster Council has started programs to make Gaelic games more open to Protestants. In 2008, they started a "Community Development Unit" to help with "Diversity and Community Outreach."

The Cúchulainn Initiative is one such program. It creates teams of Catholic and Protestant schoolchildren who have never played Gaelic games before. These teams have even played in the USA. Similar teams have started in other areas like Armagh and Fermanagh.

Another program, "Game of three-halves," started in 2006 in Belfast. GAA coaches work with soccer and rugby coaches to teach primary school children at summer camps. The Ulster Council also works with groups like the Ulster-Scots Agency and the Church of Ireland.

Other Community Work

In 2011, the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, launched the "GAA Social Initiative." This project helps older people in rural areas who might feel lonely or cut off from their community. It later teamed up with the Irish Farmers Association to get more volunteers involved.

GAA Around the World

Clubs Outside Ireland

Many Irish people who live outside Ireland have started GAA clubs. You can find GAA clubs in places like:

United States
Australia
Britain
Canada
China
Europe

The GAA World Games started in Abu Dhabi in 2015. The next games were in Dublin in 2016. These games are now held in Ireland every three years. The 2019 games were in Waterford, and the next ones in Derry were moved to 2023 because of the Covid pandemic.

International Games

While some GAA clubs outside Ireland play in Irish competitions, the GAA doesn't usually organize regular international games for Gaelic football or hurling. However, the first international match between France and Italy was played in 2014.

The GAA has also agreed to special rules for games with two similar sports:

Hurling and Shinty: Hurlers play a yearly game against a national shinty team from Scotland.
International Rules Football: An Irish team of Gaelic footballers plays against an Australian team of Australian Rules footballers. These games switch between Ireland and Australia. In 2006, the series was stopped for a while because of too much rough play, but it started again in 2008. In 2015, Ireland won the Cormac McAnallen Cup at Croke Park.

Handball Internationals

Gaelic handball is played all over the world. There's a World Championship tournament, a European Tour, and a US Semi-Professional Tour. The World Handball Council organizes the World Handball Championships. Handball is played in Ireland, the US, Canada, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Winter Training Break

In 2007, the GAA made a rule to help players avoid getting too tired or "burned out." This rule said that inter-county players could not have team training for two months every winter. However, it has been hard to make sure everyone follows this rule. Coaches sometimes find ways around it, like organizing informal "athletic clubs" to keep players fit without calling it official GAA training.