Introduction. Early in January 1885, Cusack commented on Archbishop Croke’s acceptance of the invitation to become a patron of the GAA. He praises the bishop for his foresight and stresses the important influence of the bishop in encouraging the promotion of the games in parishes countrywide. He encourages those with a love of all things Irish to get wholeheartedly behind the organisation to ensure its future success.

Source. United Ireland. 3 January 1885.

The place of meeting, as subsequent events show, was singularly well chosen. It is within view of the residence of the spiritual ruler, not only of the great archdiocese of Cashel, but of the millions of scattered children of the Gael. …

In accepting the patronage of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Most Rev. Dr. Croke speaks with startling clearness of the present condition and future prospects of our national pastimes. Herein we may see the secret of his marvellous influence over the Irish race. He not only knows what every Irish priest must know about his people, but he knows too what suits them best in a ball alley, on the roads, on the hurling, field, by their firesides, and on the hills on bonfire night. And knowing all this; seeing his people being driven like famished rats back to their wretched cabins by the administrations of an infamous Curfew law, he cries out indignantly against the vile thing which is creeping over us and threatening our chief racial characteristics with destruction. But his speech is that of a man who knows that we can keep bask the demoralising and prostrating tide that is rushing through the ill-concealed sewers which are the homes of the vile and treacherous things that work during the night. He knows that it is not yet too late to build up a ball-alley in every village and school in Ireland, that it is not too late to put a ‘slidher’ into every townland where a man can be found who ever handled a ‘camán’; and that it is not too late to teach the people to go back to the amusement of flashing fire-signals on St. John’s Eve from house to house, from village to village, and from hill to hill, until Ireland is wrapped in a blaze. He knows the unparalleled nerve-strength and power of endurance which is developed by the system of political culture and amusements handed down to us by our fathers; and he is desirous that we should hand that precious inheritance uninjured and unsullied to the next generation.

Seeing that the movement so quietly and so unostentatiously inaugurated a few weeks ago has, in the face of the freezing neglect of the Press, been so successful as to meet the warmest approval of the leaders of the Irish people, we would advise every man who loves his country to fall into the Association immediately and give such practical assistance as will leave the Cusacks and Davins no longer what they have been––the powerless and grieving spectators of ‘the rotting of a noble race’.

Tomás O’Riordan