Bigger and better Aonach Tailteann deferred until August 1924

Dublin, 18 August 1923 - The Aonach Tailteann, originally planned for last year, will now take place in the first fortnight of August 1924.

The General Council of Aonach Tailteann met last night in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel to decide unanimously on the postponement of the festival until late summer next year and to agree to an extended programme which will now include wrestling, gymnastics, literature and motor car racing. The music section is also to be extended.

These added items were apparently ‘unavoidably omitted’ from the programme last year. The decision to postpone followed a long discussion on the political, social and economic condition of the country which concluded with the adoption of a motion proposed by Mr. J.J. Keane which highlighted the potential of the games to act as a force for unity and greater political cohesion.

British Pathé footage Athletic trials for the Tailteann Games, held in Terenure in 1922

The General Council of Aonach Tailteann, ‘while deploring the antagonisms and barriers that have temporarily thrown their shadow across the nation’s path, realises that as in olden times the Games of Tailteann may well be invoked during the forthcoming August as a medium to dispel those differences and recreate that harmony so essential to the national weal. It is, nevertheless, the considered view of the Council that the successful launching of so far-reaching a programme needs a better atmosphere that the present time provides, quite apart from the longer breathing space essential to the development of our home athletic material and reorganisation of hotel and rail accommodation, and otherwise to make the rebirth of the historic and ancient Games of Tara a fitting memorial to the present and the past. We, therefore, feel reluctantly obliged to defer the Games to the first fortnight of August, 1924. ’

A sense of the scale of the Aonach undertaking can be gauged from the breath of activities/departments which were represented at yesterday’s meeting.
These include:
Athletics and Cycling
Hurling and Football
Camogie
Handball
Musical
Swimming
Yachting
Rowing
Motor Cycling
Shooting and Clay pigeon
Golf
Ambulance
Lawn Tennis
Literary
Ceremonial
Transport
Finance
Publicity
Catering
And, finally, General, the representatives of which were Messrs P.D. Mehigan, M. Fitzgerald, and J. Dobbyn. 

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]