Centenary of John McKay

Wednesday 20th December 2023

Centenary of John McKay - The Down man who was a co-founder of the GAA

To mark the centenary of the death of John McKay, RGU Downpatrick and Down GAA recently hosted a talk by the renowned historian Dr Dónal McAnallen at the Russell Gaelic Union Club in Downpatrick.

John McKay was the only Ulster man among the seven founders of the GAA who met in Hayes' Hotel in Thurles on 1 November 1884. He was also one of the first three General Secretaries along with Michael Cusack and John Wyse Power.

McKay was born in the townland of Cargagh, Downpatrick in 1852 and died in London on 2 December 1923. The story of his life, from humble beginnings to his travels in Ireland and London, and the tales of the fortunes and misfortunes of his sons, is an intriguing one that was brought to life in Dónal’s talk. Dónal’s work is a fine example of genealogical research and tenacity to uncover the life story of one of the GAA’s principal founders.

Until 2009, McKay’s background was a mystery, other than that he worked as a journalist in Belfast and Cork and wrote an extensive account of the first GAA meeting in 1884 for the Cork Examiner. Research then and since has uncovered much of his and his family’s intriguing story. He was baptised at St Malachy’s Church in Ballykilbeg and was educated at the local Bonecastle School. By the 1870s, John had moved to the city and taken up a job with the Belfast Morning News, and over the next decades, he moved between Cork, Belfast, Dublin and London.

Little did McKay realise that simply by going to a meeting at Hayes’ Hotel, Thurles, on 1 November, and helping to form the Gaelic Athletic Association, he would carve a special place for his name in a nation’s sporting history. For a couple of years thereafter, McKay was a vigorous promoter of the GAA, through his secretarial work, press reports and the timekeeping tasks that he performed at numerous athletics events around the country.

John McKay remained an official of Cork AAC up to the early 1890s, both as a committee member and a timekeeper at annual sports. In May 1889, he gave evidence before the Parnell Commission at the Royal Courts of Justice, London. He did not return to any higher office in the GAA thereafter, though he appears to have stood in as a Cork delegate at the 1902 Congress in Dublin.

He eventually moved to London, where he died in 1923. He is buried in St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green. When their resting-place was located by our research project in 2009, the GAA paid for the erection of a family gravestone. A small ceremony took place at his graveside on 2 December 2023