THE REMEMBERED
B100dy Sunday
The Story
Croke Park - 21 November 1920
No one could imagine what was coming, even those who expected the worst. There had been talk of the city being burned by gangs of Auxiliaries and Black and Tans
B100DY SUNDAY
The GAA Remembers
We remember the 14 people who went to a match but never came home
09:00
IRA cells launch attacks across Dublin on the homes and lodging houses of alleged British spies and agents, killing 14 people.
10:00-11:00
News of the killings has reached the British administration at Dublin Castle. Plans are made to perform a search operation at Croke Park during the Dublin-Tipperary football game taking place that afternoon
11:30
The first game of the day at Croke Park begins, a replay of the Dublin intermediate football final between Erins Hope and Dunleary Commercials. Dunleary win their first ever title
12.05
Joseph Traynor leaves home in Ballymount, outside Dublin, cycling to Croke Park. He is later shot twice in the back at Croke Park
14:00
Tom Ryan leaves home in Stoneybatter for Croke Park. He dies whispering a prayer to the dying Tipperary player, Michael Hogan. James Burke leaves Windy Arbour for Croke Park. He is crushed in the stampede
14:30
James Teehan, bar owner, leaves Green Street in the city centre for Croke Park. He is crushed in the crowd trying to escape. Daniel Carroll leaves the pub in Drumcondra where he works. He is shot in the leg as he leaves the ground and dies two days later
14:45
The game between Tipperary and Dublin is delayed by 30 minutes due to the huge crowd still entering Croke Park. The attendance numbers around 15,000
15:15
The game begins. Soldiers arrive from Collinstown Aerodrome and take positions along Clonliffe Road to control the crowd as they exit the ground after the police searches inside Croke Park. An airplane overhead circles the pitch and fires off a flare
15:25
Over a dozen trucks containing RIC, Black and Tans and Auxiliary police arrive on the canal bridge outside Croke Park
15:26
The firing starts from the canal bridge. Eleven-year-old William Robinson, sitting in a tree watching the game, is the first victim. The shooting lasts 90 seconds and claims 14 lives.
17:00-17:30
The last spectators are searched and the Tipperary team corralled against the Railway wall at the Hill 60 end of the ground, are released by Major EL Mills, commanding officer of the Auxiliary force.
The Graves Project
Ensuring the lives lost are never forgotten
For over 90 years, eight victims lay in unmarked graves
The Archive
An expanding collection from 1920
The match ticket, the ball, the whistle, portraits of those lost
1912
11 April - Home Rule Bill introduced in the House of Commons
1913
31 January - Ulster Volunteers established
1913
25 November - Irish Volunteers established
1914
4 August - United Kingdom declared war on Germany
1916
24 April - Easter Rising began in Dublin
1917
3 February - Count Plunkett won the Roscommon North by-election, the first of a series of such victories for radical nationalist candidates
1917
25 September - Thomas Ashe died on hunger strike at Mountjoy prison
1917
26 October - Sinn Féin Ard Fheis took place in Dublin
1917
27 October - Irish Volunteer national convention took place at Croke Park, Dublin
1918
23 April - Nationalist opposition to the threat of conscription culminated in a general strike
1918
4 August - Gaelic Sunday: the GAA organised a successful mass protest against a new legal obligation to acquire a permit to hold a match
1918
14 December - The general election took place (in Ireland, Sinn Féin won 73 seats; Unionists 26; Irish Party 6)
1919
21 January - First public meeting of Dáil Éireann took place at the Mansion House, Dublin; two RIC constables shot dead by the Irish Volunteers at Soloheadbeg, Tipperary
1919
1 April - Eamon de Valera elected President of Dáil Éireann (this followed his escape from prison in February)
1919
30 July - Detective Patrick Smyth of the DMP, G Division, ambushed by the IRA in Drumcondra (the first in a pattern of such shootings).
1919
September - Dáil Loan appeal was launched by Michael Collins’s Department of Finance
1919
12 September - Dáil Éireann was proclaimed as illegal
1919
19 December - IRA attempted to assassinate Lord French, Lord Lieutenant
1919
27 December - The recruitment of a new cohort of RIC constables was authorised: the origin of the ‘Black and Tans’
1920
20 March - Tomás MacCurtain, Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, was shot by police
1920
3-4 April - IRA destroyed RIC barracks across Ireland in a co-ordinated attack, marking an escalation in the conflict
1920
14-16 April - 90 Irish Volunteer prisoners released from Mountjoy prison following a hunger strike (supported by a general strike)
1920
9 August - The Restoration of Order in Ireland Act became law
1920
20 September - Balbriggan, Co. Dublin, was sacked by crown forces following the killing of a local policeman (this was one of a growing number of such ‘reprisals’)
1920
25 October - Terence MacSwiney died on hunger strike at Brixton prison (during the same month, Michael Fitzgerald and Joseph Murphy died on a parallel strike at Cork prison)