In his examination of the history of Irish sport, Paul Rouse referred to the surprising sporting ecumenism that prevailed within the ranks of the Irish volunteers between 1916 and 1923.
Look at 1916, Eamon De Valera was a rugby man, look at 1920, what did Kevin Barry play? You look through the bureau of military history and you find those soccer players and golfers who repeatedly were involved in IRA activity and you look at the numbers of GAA people. Of course, there were GAA people. And more GAA people, not to state that is wrong.
To these, we can add the noble sport of roller-skating.
Five years before marching into the GPO, Joseph Plunkett was out in Algiers showing the natives how roller-skating was done back in the old country.
Yes, according to Professor Declan Kiberd, Joe Plunkett was a 'roller-skating champion' in Algeria in 1911.
He was out in Algeria seeking, what Frank McNally termed, 'warm weather respite' for his tuberculosis. Between 1910 and 1912, he spent a great deal of time in Italy, Algeria and Egypt.
The roller-skating craze swept Dublin in the early part of the 20th century. Plunkett himself was born in a wealthy part of the city and was big into the sport.
McNally has consulted Plunkett's diary entries from the period. We know that on October 20th, he went out for a spot of roller-skating at a local rink.
“Went to a rink in evening and skated. Just like Dublin! (IDT!)” - 'IDT' was apparently an acronym for 'I don't think', a kind of early 20th-century version of 'LOL'.
According to historian Honor O'Brolochain, he was even asked would he taken over the management of the Algerian rink because the previous manager had run off with the owner's wife.
Plunkett declined the offer.
The divergent paths people take... Instead of being a signatory of the proclamation and a leader of the Easter Rising, he could have been managing a roller skating rink in Algeria.
Plunkett, whose tuberculosis was destined to foreshorten his life even had a British firing squad not intervened, had an operation on a gland in his neck days before the Rising but he was determined to take his place in the GPO. As everyone knows, he married his fiance Grace Gifford moments before his execution. At the age of 28, he was thought to have only weeks to live had he not been executed.
Other sporting figures influential in the Rising were Oscar Traynor, who commanded the rebel garrison at the Metropole Hotel on O'Connell Street and had been an Irish League level goalkeeper with Belfast Celtic between 1910 and 1912, and Eamon De Valera, who came mighty close to earning an Ireland rugby cap in the opening years of the century.
