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“Croke Park Goes Plumb Crazy”: Pathé Newsreels And Gaelic Games, 1920-1939, Seán Crosson Dr., Dónal Mcanallen Dr.

Seán Crosson

(Co-written with Dónal McAnallen) From the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, and over the next two decades, arose great efforts in Ireland to augment political independence from Britain with enhanced cultural separation. During this period the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) enjoyed a boom in numbers of players and supporters, thus confirming hurling and Gaelic football as the definitively Irish national games and the association itself as the most popular mass movement for the expression of independent Irish identity. Yet paradoxically, given the popular association of Gaelic games with Irish independence, nearly all footage of these games from …