In the spring and early summer of 2020, the playing of organised sporting competitions in Ireland and across most of the world was effectively suspended. During those months – between March and June 2020 – Prof. Paul Rouse of the School of History in University College Dublin recorded the weekly lecturers of his long running ‘Sport and Ireland: A History’ module. The recordings were undertaken as a series of interviews with Joe Molloy, the award-winning presenter of ‘Off the Ball’ on Newstalk FM and were broadcast live on radio.
The recordings are available here now courtesy of ‘Off the Ball’. Thank you to Joe Molloy and Ger Gilroy for facilitating this series and for making it available on History Hub.
You can subscribe to the series on Spotify, Apple, and Soundcloud.
Series
Individual Episodes:
Episode 1: Sport in Ireland: An historical introduction
Episode 3: Cockfighting, bullbaiting and the death of traditional sports
Episode 4: The history of football games and the myth of William Webb Ellis
Episode 5: Sport as imperialism | Teaching nationalism | Ireland and England’s intertwining
Episode 6: The Origins and Importance of the GAA
Episode 7: The Commercialisation of Sport through History
Episode 8: ‘Denounced, belittled, trivialised’ – Women’s presence in sport
Episode 9: Sport, Politics and War.
Episode 10: Sport in Ireland after Partition.
Episode 11: Sport and the Troubles | How TV brought GAA into homes
Image: Ford Model Y Junior Sport Cabriolet (ZA- Dublin license plate) hill climbing the Sweep Hilclimb 1933, Dungarvan, Ireland, driver Mrs P A Sheehan aka Ní Shíocháin née Marjorie Griffin, in the Ladies Trophy Class.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
