Cusack Lectures in Ó Fiaich Library

As part of the build-up to next weekend’s All-Ireland Football final, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich Library and Archive, Armagh, will be commemorating, ‘Michael Cusack: GAA Pioneer & Propagandist’, on Wednesday 17 September. The event, which is part of the Library’s Heritage Lottery Fund supported outreach programme, will begin at 7.30 pm, will feature two short lectures about the GAA founder.

The first lecture, by Dr Paul Rouse (UCD), is entitled, ‘Cusack: Sportsman and Journalist’. It will detail how, as well as his career as a teacher and a wide-ranging sportsman, Cusack spent over 25 years in the newspaper business, as a reporter, columnist, editor, owner and letter-writer.

Dónal  McAnallen’s of the library’ education staff will give the second lecture entitled ‘Michael Cusack and the evangelising of Ulster’, which will begin by outlining Cusack’s Ulster connections, through teaching at St. Colman’s College, Newry, in the 1870s, and marrying Dromore (Co. Down) native, Margaret Woods, and trying to get the GAA established in Ulster.

Dónal’s talk will focus on three visits Cusack made to Belfast as an unofficial GAA ambassador during the last decade of his life – when he no longer held high office – and he helped to stir a revival of the association in the north. The first of these visits, in 1898 was particularly controversial, encountering condemnation from sabbatarian clerics and the unionist press in the city, and resulting in the Irish Football Association beginning to ban the use of its grounds for Sunday games – something which is only now being overturned.

The evening is free of charge and everyone is welcome.
Further information from Roddy or Dónal at the Cardinal Ó Fiaich Library, 15 Moy Road, Armagh, 028 3752 2981.