Thomas St George McCarthy (1862–1943) was an Ireland rugby union international and founder member of the Gaelic Athletic Association, being present at Hayes Hotel, Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland at the Association's inaugural meeting on 1 November 1884. [1] He was born at Bansha, Tipperary. His father, George McCarthy (1832–1902), Lieutenant of the Revenue Police, County Inspector of the RIC and Resident Magistrate, was from County Kerry.
The Ireland national rugby union team represents the island of Ireland in rugby union. They are ranked second in the world by World Rugby as of 19 November 2018. The team competes annually in the current Six Nations Championship, which they have won fourteen times outright and shared nine times in its various formats. The team also competes every four years in the Rugby World Cup, where they reached the quarter-final stage in all but two competitions. Ireland is also one of the four unions that make up the British and Irish Lions – players eligible to play for Ireland are also eligible for the Lions.
Rugby union, commonly known in most of the world simply as rugby, is a contact team sport which originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is between two teams of 15 players using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field with H-shaped goalposts on each try line.
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, Gaelic handball and rounders. The association also promotes Irish music and dance, and the Irish language.
At the foundation of the GAA, McCarthy was a District Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary based at Templemore, County Tipperary. He moved to Dublin in 1877 and became a friend of Michael Cusack, who had a cramming school. He was coached by Cusack for an RIC cadetship examination in 1882, in which he took first place. In 1881, he joined Dublin University Football Club and was capped against Wales in 1882. Later in 1882, he was a member of the Dublin University team which won the Leinster Senior Cup, the inaugural year of this competition. He also played soccer for Limavady FC when he was stationed in the town in 1888, and captained both the town's football and cricket clubs. He was a double winner of the County Derry senior cup in football and the inaugural County Londonderry Senior cricket cup final in 1888. He rose to become vice-president of the North West of Ireland Football Association and captain of the County Londonderry representative cricket side that played against the Northern Cricket Union.
The Royal Irish Constabulary was the police force in Ireland from the early nineteenth century until 1922. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police, controlled the capital, and the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later had special divisions within the RIC. About 75% of the RIC were Roman Catholic and about 25% were of various Protestant denominations.
Templemore is a town in County Tipperary, Ireland. It is a civil parish in the historical barony of Eliogarty. It is part of the parish of Templemore, Clonmore and Killea in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly.
County Tipperary is a county in Ireland. It is located in the province of Munster. The county is named after the town of Tipperary, and was established in the early thirteenth century, shortly after the Norman invasion of Ireland. The population of the county was 159,553 at the 2016 census. The largest towns are Clonmel, Nenagh and Thurles.
He had a great love of the game of hurling, [2] which he witnessed being played in his native village by the local enthusiasts who were later to form the Galtee Rovers GAA Hurling and Football club. He was a regular attender at matches in Croke Park to where he travelled from his home at Oakley Road in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. He died in 1943 and was buried without fanfare in an unmarked grave in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin, though there is a family plot in the old graveyard at Bansha village, where his sister, Kathleen McCarthy, is interred. [2] Unlike, the other six founding members of the GAA, very little has been done to commemorate McCarthy. GAA authorities have erected a commemorative gravestone at Deansgrange where it was unveiled on Wednesday, 18 November 2009, as part of the "Re-dedication of Founder's Graves" programme to mark the 125th Anniversary of the founding of the GAA, and there have also been calls for more recognition of his contribution to the GAA. [2]
Hurling is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic and Irish origin. It is administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). The game has prehistoric origins, and has been played for 4,000 years. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of players, and much terminology. There is a similar game for women called camogie. It shares a common Gaelic root with the sport of shinty, which is played predominantly in Scotland.
Galtee Rovers GAA is a Gaelic Athletic Association club located in the village of Bansha on the National Primary Route N24 in the shadow of the Galtee Mountains in west County Tipperary, Ireland. The club, founded in 1885, represents the parish of Bansha & Kilmoyler and enters gaelic football and hurling teams in the West Tipperary and Tipperary championships. The Club grounds - Canon Hayes Park - are named in honour of the founder of Muntir na Tíre, Very Rev. John Canon Hayes, Parish Priest of Bansha & Kilmoyler (1946–57), who was patron of the Club during his pastorship. The Club pavilion is named 'The McGrath Centre' in honour of two club members, the late John & Geraldine McGrath who died on New Year's Day, 1 January 2000. John Moloney, famous referee of six All-Ireland Senior Finals, was President of the Galtee Rovers Club at the time of his death on 6 October 2006. In addition to his lasting achievements at national level in the Gaelic Athletic Association, his greatest legacy at club level was his nurturing of the juvenile and under-age players whom he coached and organised for nearly 50 years.
Croke Park is a Gaelic Athletic Association stadium located in Dublin, Ireland. Named in honour of Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is often called Croker by some GAA fans and locals. It serves both as the principal stadium and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).
The Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland have honoured McCarthy by presenting the Thomas St George McCarthy Cup for competition by members of the Garda GAA (Garda Thirds [2] ) and the Police Service of Northern Ireland [3]
Garda is a Gaelic Athletic Association club based in Dublin, Ireland, founded in 1922. Garda have won the Dublin Senior Football Championship on six occasions in 1927, 1929, 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1948. Garda won the Dublin Intermediate Football Championship on one occasion in 1986, bringing them back to senior status. Garda have also had success as a hurling side, having also won the Dublin Senior Hurling Championship on six occasions in 1931, 1929, 1928, 1927, 1926 and 1925.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland ; is the police force that serves Northern Ireland. It is the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary after it was reformed and renamed in 2001 on the recommendation of the Patten Report.
