LAST UPDATE | 2 Sep 2020
THE GAA HAS launched a major initiative to remember the victims of the Bloody Sunday attack at Croke Park in 1920 — including plans for a centenary commemoration ceremony before the Leinster senior football final on Saturday, 21 November.
If Covid-19 restrictions allow, “it will be preceded by a ceremonial ‘finishing of the match’ involving ‘Dublin’ and ‘Tipperary’ teams featuring either available county or club players.”
Almost 100 years ago, 14 people were killed at GAA HQ when members of the Crown Forces opened fire during the football meeting of Dublin and the Premier county.
November’s main commemoration event will also feature a special narration that focuses on the memory of each of the lives lost — the 14 people who went to a match and never came home — a torch-lighting ceremony, a wreath-laying and a musical performance.
The B100dy Sunday, the GAA Remembers series will also see new videos, a website, a podcast and a short film launched to focus on the victims, and to tell the story of the GAA’s darkest day in a new way.
14-year-old Jack Galvin will play the role of William Robinson in the film, while Barry John Kinsella plays Michael Hogan.
“Behind the history and the headlines of the Crown Forces attack on Croke Park in 1920 is a human story and a human tragedy,” Uachtarán CLG John Horan said.
“The appalling events of that Bloody Sunday changed the GAA and forever altered our relationship with the pitch at Jones’s Road.
“How a place envisaged to be a home of unconfined joy was turned into a scene of carnage and horror is a tragedy that will never be forgotten. To honour those who went to a match and never came home we need to remember them, to pay our respects, and that is what we intend to do.”
Read more about the full programme of content to come here.
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