GAA president Larry McCarthy to unveil plaque at Frongoch in Wales

GAA president Larry McCarthy will travel to Wales this weekend to unveil a commemorative plaque at Frongoch, the scene of internment for many Irish during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Frongoch in north Wales is a fluent Welsh speaking rural area of rolling farmland and was taken over in 1914 and used as a POW camp for German prisoners.

After the Easter Rising in Dublin there were masses of men sent to internment and the largest number of 1,800 ended up in Frongoch from June to December 1916.

While in the camp the Irish prisoners arranged games for themselves.

"They kept sport going in their own way," McCarthy said.

"On one level it goes to show the ability of the GAA to keep doing things under the most onerous of circumstances.

"We will unveil a plaque to commemorate the Wolfe Tone final at Frongoch in 1916 where hundreds of Irish were interred during the Easter rebellion.

"There were so many GAA people and personnel there that they organised an All-Ireland final between Louth and Kerry."

"We commemorated the event with a game in 2016 and now the plaque will be unveiled in Welsh, English and Irish. The British provincial council have been driving this commemoration, particularly Noel O'Sullivan, to ensure we honour the landmark appropriately. The unveiling of the plaque will mark the occasion and it’s appropriate that we do it."

During their internment the Irish staged athletics meetings and Gaelic football matches on a field near one of the camps that they christened Croke Park.

There were so many inter-county players in Frongoch that it was possible to play the final of the Wolfe Tone Cup which was peppered with the best of Gaelic talent.

A Kerry team with 12 inter-county men on it defeated a Louth team with nine inter-county players