An image of Croke Park a century ago.
By Cian Murphy
In a week when Coldplay have more than 300,000 fans rocking at Croke Park concerts, it is worth remembering an event at the same venue 100 years ago this week, no less spectacular and certainly wild and wonderful as cowboys and cowgirls reigned supreme on Jones’ Road.
The Croke Park Rodeo which ran for a week in August 1924 was just the latest extravaganza to be staged at GAA HQ and came hot on the heels of the hugely successful staging of the Tailteann Games which was a Celtic Olympics for the Irish diaspora the previous month.
A near century before Garth Brooks made Stetsons a fashion must have in Dublin 3, the Texas Rodeo staged at Croke Park saw the Irish public fall in love with everything country and western and in particular the thrills and spills of rodeo.
Such was the demand for action that there were twice daily shows and special trains put on to ferry intrigued onlookers to Croke Park from all over the country.
The below newspaper excerpt from the Cork Examiner on August 20, 1924, illustrates the interest and the adulation which existed for the phenomenon.
“Again this afternoon, a very large crown, numbering 15,000 to 20,000 persons, crowded into Croke Park to see the wonderful exhibition of bareback bronk riding, fancy roping, calf roping, steer wrestling, and the various other sports which come under the crisp title of ‘Rodeo’. The gathering was representative of all classes in the country and the excursions brought large contingents from distant parts.”
People loved the thrill and also the potential for dangerous spills too.
It was announced in a report that Cowgirl celebrity Miss Vera McGinnis, injured in a previous show, would be unable to appear but would be back at future shows.
Other stars were not so fortunate. Newspaper reports detail pictures and details of injuries to star Cowboy Rube Roberts who broke a rib while wrestling a steer and Charles Aldridge who fell from “a lively bronk” and broke his leg and had to be stretchered away by the St John’s Ambulance.
The roping skills of world champion Tommy Kirwan was much celebrated, so too, the skills of Bud Cordell and Gordon Jones.
Locals, incredibly, were able to get in on the act. An amateur rider from the Curragh called T Regan Jnr was praised for his appearance in the amateur bronk riding competition and he “kept astride the bucking steed while he completed a course of half the field. The Curragh boy kept his seat on the broncho for over 30 seconds and won £5. He made two rounds of the field on the animal.”
Historian Conor Heffernan has researched the Rodeo visit in detail and his piece is complete with Pathé newsreel footage which aside from showing the action and the stars, also gives a rare and fascinating view of what Croke Park looked like 100 hears ago with Hill 16 no more than a rolling grass bank and a terrace section where the Cusack Stand would eventually exist in 1937.
For Heffernan, the Rodeo seared a connection into the psyche of the Irish people which made the wild west, frontier romance and the icon of the cowboy making a lasting impression. You can view it here via https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0822/1430873-croke-park-rodeo-1924-tex-austin-vera-mcginnis/#:~:text=Austin's%20rodeo%20was%20hosted%20at,rodeo%20skill%20and%20Irish%20ancestry.
For the GAA, the staging of the Rodeo at Croke Park was part of a hectic year. The games returned to centre stage that September with the 1923 All-Ireland finals played in September of 1924. In fact, the Association would get back on calendar year track when they had the 1924 All-Ireland finals played that December. They are historic for the GAA annals as they featured the great Mick Gill, a winner in hurling with Galway in September and then eligible and playing for Dublin when they won the hurling title in December and so became a winner of two senior All-Ireland titles with two different counties in the one year.
The popularity of the Rodeo, like the Tailteann Games before it, was also driven by the ability of an Irish people free to live again after what had been more than a decade of hardship. Starting with the Great Lock Out of 1913, the Great War, the Rising, the War of Independence and then Civil War, this summer of 1924 marks a period when people are for the first in a long time are not under a cloud and clearly relish the opportunity that these shows and a new normal offer.
It’s no coincidence that the GAA Championships also capture the public imagination in this period with record crowds repeatedly set in the mid to late 1920s and into the early 30s- fueled by great teams, star players and fantastic rivalries – it is in this period that the GAA Championship summer is really fixed into Irish life