Again returning to the pages of the newspaper honesty, in the late 1920s an interesting column by the writer ‘Vigilant’ called ‘Around and about the Gaelic athletic arena’, in August 1930 the column featured a report on all things Gaelic in county Waterford.

According to the writer teams such as Ferrybank, the Commercials in Waterford, the volunteers, the Home Rulers; Killgoblet, Windgap, Thomas Francis Meaghers and John John Mitchell's were the clubs that blazed the trail for Waterford in the Gaelic athletic arena before our time and the ‘bully acre’ was the venue where many of them played . This was the great venue for Waterford City and for east Watford, and east and West often clashed in friendly but vigorous contests. There were teams too from Kilkenny who made the trip to the ‘Bullys Acre’ including Slieverue, Mooncoin and Kilmacow. These accounts by ‘Vigilant’ and others are often the only accounts we have of the early years of the Gaelic Athletic Association. On this occasion the writer remembered that coming out onto the Cork road just above the cemetery. I looked at an old field known in other years as the ‘bully acre’.  It  had always a fascination for me because of its past. I cannot claim to know it in the days of the past, for which I revere it, but I know all about it from older men who were present at the big gatherings from far and near when the ‘bully acre’ was the cradle of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Waterford. Hurling and football matches intercounty and interprovincial were decided there, but the writer could never discover how such a large tract of land, as the old field then was should be called an acre or how it got the prefix bully. In later years he saw many fine matches played there. However, it had the unfortunate disadvantage of being a bit distant from the city and the railway stations but they enthusiasts of the cradle days at the GAA in Waterford and their surrounding districts did not seem to mind. Are there other accounts of the ‘Bully’s Acre’ in the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive?

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Download :  Honesty 1915-1931, Saturday, August 16, 1930, page 12 ( Click page date under image )