Qualla: Croke Park

Croke Park: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jcmurphy at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the afternoon of 21 November 1920, a Tipperary footballer named Michael Hogan was running the line at a Gaelic football match in north Dublin when men in dark uniforms broke through the turnstiles and opened fire on the crowd. Within ninety seconds, Hogan and thirteen spectators were dead or dying. The youngest victim was ten. Eighty-seven years later, in February 2007, an English rugby team stood on the same field while a Dublin choir sang 'God Save the Queen' and 82,000 Irish citizens listened in silence. Croke Park is many things -- the fourth-largest stadium in Europe, the cathedral of hurling, the place Westlife sold out in under five minutes -- but at heart it is the patch of grass where Ireland argues with its own history.

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Image: Jcmurphy at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Croke Park: Butterly's Field

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the stands and the floodlights, this was a horse-racing meadow on Jones' Road owned by a man named Maurice Butterly. The Bohemian Football Club kicked a leather ball around it in the 1890s, and the Gaelic Athletic Association rented it for athletics meets, but the ground m...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Croke Park: Bloody Sunday

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The morning of 21 November 1920 belonged to Michael Collins. His hand-picked assassins, the Squad, fanned out across Dublin and shot dead fourteen men associated with the Cairo Gang, a network of British intelligence officers. That afternoon belonged to the Auxiliary Division of ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Croke Park: Hill 16 and the Cathedral of Gaelic Games

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photograph by John H. Nolan; original uploader was Hetch at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The GAA expanded the ground decade by decade -- the first Cusack Stand in 1927, the double-deck version in 1936, the cantilevered New Hogan Stand for the 75th anniversary in 1959. By the time the modern redevelopment began in 1991, Croke Park already meant something specific to I...

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Image: Photograph by John H. Nolan; original uploader was Hetch at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Croke Park: Rule 42

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. For most of the 20th century, the GAA's Rule 42 forbade 'foreign games' -- meaning rugby, soccer and cricket -- from being played on its grounds. The ban was older than the Free State and as much about identity as sport. When Lansdowne Road closed for rebuilding in the mid-2000s,...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Croke Park: Concerts, Popes and the NFL

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kristian Strobech profile, CC BY 2.0. Croke Park's modern life has been gloriously promiscuous. Muhammad Ali fought Al Lewis here in July 1972, a tunnel beneath the Davin Stand is named for him. Pope John Paul II said Mass to a crowd in 1979; Pope Benedict XVI addressed the 50th Eucharistic Congress by video link in ...

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Image: Kristian Strobech profile | CC BY 2.0