Championship set for Titanic year

Aogan Farrell addresses the audience at the launch of the Championship

AS HE stood on the middle of the showpiece replica Titanic staircase, Ulster GAA President Aogan Farrell could not resist the temptation to get just a little bit nostalgic and take a walk down through the path of history.

The GAA made its entry to Titanic Belfast for the first time, the latest in a series of landmark buildings where their Ulster Championships have been launched.

For Farrell, the dreams of those who climbed that original flight of stairs as they set sail for New York remain as relevant today as they did a century ago.

“I think tonight’s setting is extremely appropriate. In a setting like this, there is a sense of the past, and the 1912 which inspired this fantastic building. It does no harm to remember that the people who stood on the original Titanic staircase, they had hopes and visions and they had dreams too, and that’s what we have in the GAA and what we are still built on.

“2012 is about dreams, the hopes in our little parish for our counties. We see our players in their own little localities, but they dream that they will be the heroes come championship day.

“My own county Cavan, Donegal, Monaghan… it doesn’t matter which county it is, we all still dream. Only the most cynical of people would say, ‘We haven’t a hope.’”

The full story is in the current issue of Gaelic Life, published Thursday May 3. Buy your copy now, in your local newsagent or online, by clicking the subscribe button on this page