To celebrate a century and a quarter of our national games, the Sunday Tribune compiles the ultimate list of key figures, from players to administrators and beyond, who have helped to mould the association into what it is today

1. Michael Cusack, Founding Father

He was born, like so many people of his time, in humble surroundings; a small cottage in a small village called Carron on the fringe of the Burren, one of six children to a shepherd and his wife. He went on to become qualified as a national teacher, teaching all over the country, including in Blackrock College, St Colman's College Newry, St John's Kilkenny and Clongowes before establishing his own renowned and indeed lucrative Civil Service academy in Dublin's Gardiner Street for students preparing for entrance exams into the British civil service. By some accounts, it was there, in the current site of the Dergvale Hotel, that he imagined and conceived what would become the Gaelic Athletic Association.

It was borne out of his frustration as much as imagination. A good athlete in his own right and a national shot-putt champion after winning an event staged in Lansdowne Road, it irked Cusack that sport in Ireland was run by and for the benefit of the Anglo-Irish ruling class. There was no place or sport for the labourer, artisan, mechanic. The Protestant ethos did not allow for any play on a Sunday, the traditional holiday of rural Catholic Ireland. While he quite liked rugby and even played it, he criticised the elitist manner in which it was run and suggested that it and athletics should allow for a "strip of green across their colours". Instead, all sport in Ireland was being anglicised.

Cusack was also a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, and as he would write in the United Irishman, "In order to be a Fenian, I had to be a hurler." Though the game had been virtually wiped out during the Famine, he would recall playing it in his youth "with the goalposts a mile apart" and "more than 60 of us locked in deadly combat". To revive the game, he founded the Dublin Hurling Club and began campaigning for a new association devoted to "the preservation and cultivation of our national pastimes and for providing national amusements for the Irish people during their leisure hours".

He was heavily involved in promoting the Irish language – which was his only tongue until he was 11 – and was editor of the weekly newspaper United Ireland in which he contended any nation seeking independence needed to revive, promote and cherish its own indigenous games. And so he called a meeting of interested parties for the billiard room at Hayes' Commercial Hotel, Thurles on Saturday 1 November, 1884.

There, Cusack, at the age of 37, was elected inaugural secretary, a job for which he felt uniquely qualified. "I believed that no man should fight the enemies of national pastimes but a secretary," he wrote, "and I knew no man able or willing to do this but myself."

He lasted just 20 months in the position, a spectacularly brief period during which, as he put it himself, the initiative "spread like prairie fire throughout the country". In his first year in office, he'd brought his own boundless energy and manic organisational skills to bear. Athletics meetings were convened at short notice to give instant and headline-grabbing evidence the new body was a legitimate prospect. High-profile Gaelic football and hurling matches followed soon after as standardised rules were established for both games and, by 1886, clubs from different counties were competing against each other.

A famously truculent and outspoken character immortalised as The Citizen in James Joyce's Ulysses ('Citizen' was a regular term by which he greeted people by), Cusack was voted out of office that year in a squabble about his bureaucratic shortcomings. Too many letters had gone unanswered. Too many accounts had not been kept up to date. He had to go.

Though no longer part of the administration, he then established Celtic Times, a short-lived newspaper devoted to diligently covering the association. Never again near the reins of power, he remained a committed member until his death and the brevity of his tenure doesn't diminish the most salient fact of all.

Without Cusack, the GAA would not have happened.

There is nobody else about whom we can say that. (1847-1906)

2. MicheÁl O'Hehir, Voice of the Gods

It began in Mullingar on 14 August 1938 when a Dublin teenager was given the Radio Éireann microphone to commentate on the All Ireland football semi-final between Galway and Monaghan. It continued for 99 All Ireland finals and nearly 50 years. O'Hehir, the voice of the GAA, was not so much a commentator as a phenomenon, spreading and popularising the games to an unprecedented degree by creating spells with his words and magically transporting his listeners from their sitting rooms to Croke Park and Semple Stadium.

If he viewed himself as part of the establishment and was not averse to a neat euphemism ("a right schemozzle," etc), that was both understandable and, for the era, acceptable, albeit not to Breandán Ó hEithir, who in his wonderful memoir Over The Bar decried his namesake's "folksy technique which seemed to be aimed at providing entertainment for hospital patients rather than giving a complete picture of what was happening". Demonstrated his versatility by commentating – superbly – on JFK's funeral in 1963, his tenacity in securing those extra five minutes on a US broadlength so the whole of Ireland could find out who won the 1947 Polo Grounds All Ireland, his finest moment in a commentary box occurred not at Croke Park but at Aintree for Foinavon's Grand National.

O'Hehir will be with us for as long as many of the great GAA moments of the second half of the 20th century – Jimmy Barry-Murphy in the 1973 All Ireland ("And Jimmy with the ball, what's he going to do?") Bernard Brogan in the 1977 All Ireland semi-final, Mikey Sheehy in 1978 ("the greatest freak of all time!"), Seamus Darby in 1982 ("and there was a goal!") – are recalled. And that will be forever. (1920-1996)

3. Frank Brazil Dineen, The Greatest Gift

Once the fastest sprinter in Ireland, Limerick-born Dineen might just be the most under-acknowledged figure in association history. The only man to serve as President and General Secretary (1895-1901), this ambitious visionary paid £3,250 out of his own pocket for the existing sports grounds on Jones's Road in 1908, years after he had ceased to be either president or secretary. As the writer Pádraig O'Toole observed, "his motivation was not to make profit but to hold the place for the GAA. By purchasing the site himself, the GAA could afford the luxury of planning future games for the stadium happy in the knowledge it would always be available to them when required".

He went into debt to do so after failing to persuade the GAA authorities it was a sound investment. Five years later, having had to sell parts of the land to the Jesuits in the meantime in order to stave off his debtors, Dineen handed the title to what would become Croke Park to the GAA for no charge. Repeat. No charge. He also had the pitch rolled and levelled, and had new facilities and stands installed for spectators.

He could sometimes be a contentious, confrontational figure. He was the main instigator in the removal of Blake as secretary, to the point Blake's book How the GAA was grabbed was initially entitled How Frank Dineen grabbed the GAA.

A journalist by occupation, Dineen edited and published the first GAA Annual and County Directory on the request of Luke O'Toole to promote the sports at a time when they received scant media coverage. In fact, when Dineen died on Good Friday, 1916, he was working at his desk as Gaelic games' editor of Sport. Right to the end, he was giving to the GAA, the man who gave the GAA Croke Park. (1862-1916)

4. Christy Ring, The Greatest

The Arkle, the Pele, the Bradman, the Jordan of his sport. Over 50 years after appearing in his last All Ireland final he remains the yardstick by which the best hurlers are judged – and by which even the very best of them in the meantime have been found wanting. Had star appeal and amazing longevity to complement his talent; the Railway Cups, indeed, have never recovered from his retirement. No player in either code in the history of the association has cast a longer shadow. Be sure the comment will be passed on to every promising youngster for the next 50 years: "He's good – but he's no Christy Ring." (1920-1979)

5. Maurice Davin, The First President

An all-round athlete of international renown due to his extensive achievements as a hammer-thrower and high jumper, he was the first man to reply publicly to Cusack's newspaper article promulgating the need for a new assocation in 1884. At the subsequent founding meeting in Hayes' Hotel, he took the chair and was duly elected inaugural President of the Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of National Pastimes. The perfect amalgam of sporting celebrity and moderate nationalist, Davin appealed to all sections of the population and lent instant prestige and credibility to the new enterprise.

In 1886, he took on the mammoth task of drafting the first set of rules for football and had significant input to the revised constitution which was adopted a year later. The only man to serve two terms as president, he also resigned twice during power struggles with members more aligned with the physical force movement. He led the American Invasion of 1888, an ambitious trip involving over 50 hurlers, Gaelic footballers and athletes, it garnered plenty of publicity but failed in its intention to raise funds for the revival of the Tailteann Games. From wealthy farming stock, Davin allowed significant fixtures to take place on his land in Carrick-on-Suir, including Kilkenny's victory over Cork in the 1904 All Ireland hurling final. (1841-1927)

6. Luke O'Toole, Mr Stability

Before O'Toole's appointment, the GAA had gone through six general secretaries in 12 years. With O'Toole they'd have one for the following 29 years. His full-time appointment in 1901 marked the start of a revitalisation of a GAA that had been perilously close to extinction. A native of Wicklow, he overhauled the troublesome finances and began transforming the movement into a cohesive and truly national organisation, replete with provincial councils. Croke Park was massively updated and enhanced, a spell that also included the introduction of the Tailteann Games. He also famously led and planned Gaelic Sunday, when over 100,000 members collectively engaged in civil disobedience by playing and attending games without a police permit. (1873-1929)

7Pádraig Ó Caoimh, 'Architect Of Modern GAA'

Described as such by president Alf Murray, this War of Independence veteran became secretary of the Cork County Board at 21, and he began a 35-year stint as General-Secretary of the GAA barely a decade later. Under his diligent direction between 1929 and 1964, campaigns were fought to improve and expand media coverage, to assist and educate clubs about the purchasing of their own grounds, and to enhance the marketing and advertising of the sports. During a relentlessly progressive stewardship, the membership numbers doubled, and Croke Park – where he lived with his family – was impressively rebuilt with almost treble the capacity of when he took over. Páirc Uí Chaoimh is named in his honour. (1897-1964)

8. Archbishop Dr Croke, The Letter Writer

His written response to Cusack's invitation to become the first patron was equal parts stirring manifesto, urgent call-to-arms and enduring mission statement. So succinctly had he captured the reasons why the GAA was being established that the first edition of the rule book recommended Croke's letter be read aloud at every annual meeting thereafter, just to remind everybody what this was about. The letter remains in every Official Guide every year. He also purchased prizes for early tournaments from his own funds, requested games not start until 2pm on Sundays to allow time for Mass, and played a vital conciliatory role in holding the association together after the Fenians hijacked the 1887 Convention. (1823-1902)

9. Mick O'Dwyer, The Neverending Story

If he never stood on a single sideline as a manager, O'Dwyer would still have left a legacy on the game as he was one of the greatest of all Kerry footballers. It was that pre-eminence that allowed him to command such respect when he took over as a young manager to a young Kerry team in 1975. From there, he built a team that will be talked about for as long as football is talked about, famously working as hard on their minds as he did on their bodies. And he worked hard on their bodies.

It's his second life in the game that copperfastens his immortality. Apart from the obvious local effect of his successes with Kildare, Laois and Wicklow, he established a model for the missionary manager. And as often as Pat Spillane says that you could write O'Dwyer's tactics on a postage stamp, it was his Kildare team of 1998 that were the first mainstream exponents of the blanket defence. That he never managed an International Rules team is an enduring stain on the association. (1936-)

10. Richard Blake, 'Soft Nationalist' and saviour

The GAA's first great reformer. As general secretary in the late 1890s the Meath man lifted the ban on foreign games and the security forces, and following the damage caused by the Parnell split, explicitly declared the GAA was non-political and non-sectarian. He brought the All Ireland finals to Jones's Road for the first time. Feeling football was "crude and imperfect and unworthy of the GAA", he instigated a series of reforms including the use of a standard size ball; linesmen to assist referees, a square around either goalmouth and the radical notion that any player ordered off should not return to the action.

Blake's reforms made football safer, hugely popular and arrested the decline of the entire association. But he had a rather haughty, authoritarian manner which alienated people. His non-political stance didn't even win back the church because he was openly agnostic. Cork and Limerick, in the figures of Deering and Frank Dineen, were particularly hostile to him because of his non-political views and his misfortunate officiating of the 1894 Dublin-Cork All Ireland football final. At 1898 Congress Dineen lambasted his financial management and he was duly sacked. As Marcus de Burca would conclude though, Blake was dismissed not so much because of any faults of his administration but because he was "soft on nationalism". (1857-1937)

11. Liam Mulvihill, Wise Árd-Stiúrthoir

By any standards, the GAA were exceptionally farsighted when appointing the schools' inspector from Longford as Seán Ó Siocháin's successor in 1979. Mulvihill provided a prudent pair of hands at the tiller as the GAA went through more and greater changes over the course of the next three decades (more fixtures, more competitions, much increased media coverage, sponsorship, the Croke Park redevelopment) than it had in the previous nine. Bonus points for his deft handling of the fallout from the 1981 hunger strikes too. (1946-)

12. Kevin Heffernan, Heffo's Army, Heffo's Children

That a healthy GAA needs a healthy Dublin is a given these days, mostly because there was a time when it looked like the games in the city would wither to irrelevance. When the 1974 All Ireland semi-final between Cork and Dublin clashed with the last day of the Dublin Horse Show, RTÉ's cameras opted for Ballsbridge. What Heffernan began that year changed things forever. The Dubs and their rivalry with Kerry was the making of the GAA. If David McWilliams was to write on the phenomenon of 75,000 watching the Dubs play Westmeath in a Leinster quarter-final, he'd call it Heffo's Children. (1929-)

13. Dick Fitzgerald, 'King In A Kingdom Of Kings'

He was the standout player in those epic 1903 Kerry-Kildare games, pointing one late free only yards from the corner flag. He was the first man to captain back-to-back All Irelands and win five Celtic Crosses before he was interned with Michael Collins in Wales. He rubber-stamped the decision that Kerry should wear green and gold, refereed a couple of All Irelands, coached Clare to one in 1917, set up street leagues, wrote the GAA's first-ever instruction book – How to Play Gaelic Football which Seán Purcell would call 'more or less The Koran'. Fifty years before the birth of the national broadcaster, he was recognised throughout the country, football's first superstar.

The Friday before the 1930 All Ireland final featuring a Kerry side to whom Fitzgerald was a selector, he fell off a roof in his native Killarney, only a year after his wife Kitty had passed away. On the Sunday thousands kneeled outside the church of his commemorative mass, Kerry would beat Monaghan by 18 points and years later the county would build a 50,000-capacity stadium in his honour, yet Kerry still feels indebted to Dickeen Fitzgerald. (1882-1930)

14. Michael Hogan, They Shot Him Dead

What the posters advertised as a "Great Challenge Match" between the footballers of Dublin and Tipperary was just minutes old when British soldiers began firing. After the shooting had ended, two Tipp players lay prone on the field at Croke Park. Though splattered with blood, Jim Egan got up and walked towards a priest in the crowd, asking him to perform the last rites for Mick Hogan. The full-back from Grangemockler was already dead by the time the priest reached him. Thirteen others, some of them children, were gunned down that November afternoon in 1920 but as the only player to be killed, Hogan's death resonated that bit more. The most-celebrated stand in the whole GAA is named after him but his enduring legacy may have been that his murder reinforced the opposition to deleting Rules 21, 27 and 42 for decades after. (1896-1920)

15. Msgr Michael Hamilton, Clare and Cavan's good friend

The most influential cleric in the GAA since Archbishop Croke. Just as Croke's famous letter had to be included in the Official Guide, for years no Congress was complete without an address from Hamilton; even when he couldn't attend, his dispatch would be read out. One year Congress was pushed out until four o'clock so Hamilton could get up after saying a mass back in Clare.

He was a major confidante of secretary-general Pádraig Ó Caoimh, and would be one of the most ardent and articulate defenders of the Ban after initially opposing it.

In 1937, as the last man to commentate an All Ireland final before the advent of Micheál O'Hehir, he made the mistake of declaring to the nation Cavan had won when it had actually been a draw, leaving a convoy of Cavan supporters bemused by all the bonfires which greeted them home. Ten years later he would make it up to Cavan by being the strongest advocate that the All Ireland football final be held in New York to mark the 100th anniversary of Black '47. He was the main instigator behind the Clare board buying Cusack Park and the staging of the first All Ireland colleges hurling final, between his alma mater St Flannan's and St Kieran's. Only right that the Clare hurling championship is named after him, a trophy currently held by his native Clonlara. (1895-1969)

16. Fr Tommy Maher, Modern Hurling Coaching

When he took over as coach in 1957, Kilkenny had won one All Ireland since 1939; they proceeded to win seven in the 21 years he spent with them, while each of the county's 11 September successes since his retirement has been managed by a former protégé of the Gowran man. His credo emphasised mastery of the basics, retention of the ball and an awareness of space. A prime mover in the Gormanston courses of the 1960s he was the surrogate father of Offaly's success, for Offaly made the breakthrough under his disciple, Diarmuid Healy. (1922-)

17. PD Mehigan, 'Carbery'

A veteran of two All Ireland hurling finals himself, Mehigan's radio commentary on the 1926 semi-final between Galway and Kilkenny was the first live broadcast of a sports event in Europe. Using a nom de plume garnered from the West Cork barony where he grew up, his "Carbery's Comments" column was a staple of the Cork Weekly Examiner for half a century while Irish Times' readers cherished him as Pat O, the paper's first GAA correspondent. A prolific chronicler of rural and sporting life in poetry, prose and books, his Carbery Annual was a fixture in households nationwide between 1939 and 1964. (1884-1965)

18. Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan, A Man Before His Time

Between 1924 and 1964, he trained Kerry to eight All Ireland titles. He was the master of collective training. His book, The Art and Science of Gaelic football, was for decades the bible of football, detailing the history and skills of the game, how to build up team spirit, have your team fit and fresh for the big day, and most famously, why every player should remain confined to his own area of the field; Down would expose that notion as outdated but he would remain a key influence on Mick O'Dwyer. A psychiatrist by profession, he was the driving force behind Fitzgerald Stadium, with his own patients in St Finian's Hospital helping to build it. (1897-1966)

19. King John, Behind The County System

It was the 1210 visit of the English monarch to Ireland that spawned the delineation of the island into proper counties and bequeathed us the teams we live and die for today. So that his administration might get a better handle on the territory, Dublin, Louth, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Kerry were declared counties. Meath, Kilkenny, Wexford, Carlow, Kildare and Ulster were considered liberties. The process continued in a piecemeal fashion for centuries until there were 32. Spare us the accusations of sacrilege and treason. The inter-county system is the gift of King John, sometime enemy of Robin Hood, and, by the BBC's reckoning, the 13th Century's worst Briton. He'd be chuffed with this ranking so. (1167-1216)

20. Thomas F O'Sullivan, Established Kerry And Ban

In 1899 the Kerry county board was virtually non-existent with no county championships. The following year O'Sullivan was appointed county secretary and by 1904 there were over 25 clubs in the county and Kerry had won their first All Ireland, never to look back again. The Listowel man would then serve on Central Council where his IRB leanings held great sway. Along with Pat Nash of Dublin he pushed Congress in 1903 and 1905 to adopt the ban on foreign sports and the participation of RIC and army members. A journalist by trade, he was effectively finished with the GAA by 1907 though he would write its first history in 1916. (1874-1950)

21. Maurice Hayes, The Master Behind Down

When Hayes assumed the position of Down county secretary in 1956, the county had never won an Ulster title. He set the goal of winning an All Ireland within five years. The East Down/South Down divide was overcome by running all-county leagues. Instead of the whole county board picking the team, it would be the remit of just four men. The team would have the first football tracksuits and wear black togs. They would beat Kerry by their constant off-the-ball movement, exposing and exploiting Dr Eamonn's gospel of zonal football. And in 1960, they would bring Sam over the border for the first but not the last time. When Hayes was surprisingly overlooked as GAA secretary general in 1964, he focused on his career as a public servant but his football legacy lives on too. (1927-)

22. Mick Mackey, Hurling's Laughing Cavalier

Limerick's finest, king of the solo run, the man who hit five goals in the 1936 Munster final. Give him a ball and 50 yards of grass and away he went, men and ash plants bouncing off him. While his reputation as the greatest hurler after Ring is overdue a reappraisal, he showed generations of Munster hurlers the province didn't have to be just a Cork-Tipp thing. (1912-1982)

23. Harry Boland, The Revolutionary

One of the most influential revolutionaries of the period, played for the Dublin hurlers in the 1908 All Ireland final, refereed the 1911 hurling and 1914 football deciders, and used his chairmanship of the Dublin County Board to push an IRB agenda. Also found time to work at the 1913 Congress and push for the wearing of county colours, and the establishment of 15-a-side games. Re-elected to office even while imprisoned by the British, he championed the expulsion from the association of civil servants who had sworn allegiance to the crown. (1887-1922)

24. Ger Loughnane, 'We Are Going To Do It'

Another who both galvanised and nearly split the GAA. "The most electrifying hurling figure since Ring," claimed his biographer and his biographer was correct. Ended famines, made monsters out of men and served as ringmaster of the circus – and what a circus – for the latter half of the 1990s. For a couple of months in the summer of 1998 he was the leading figure in the nation's consciousness. (1953-)

25. Charles Stewart Parnell, Unite And Divide

Holds the unique honour of both helping with the formation of the association and then almost shattering it beyond repair. By accepting the invitation to become a patron, he conferred instant credibility on the new body via his status as the latest "uncrowned king of Ireland".

However, his subsequent fall from grace did serious collateral damage to the sporting organisation. Already struggling, the GAA, despite maintaining official support for their man, lost more members and clubs during the dispute. Still, at Parnell's funeral, 2,000 GAA members marched, carrying hurleys draped in black, holding them as if they were rifles. (1846-1891)

With Thanks To...

The works of Brendan Fullam, Eoghan Corry, Raymond Smith, Joe Mahon, Marcus de Burca, Seamus King, Donal McAnallen, Seamus McRory, Jim Cronin, Jo Jo Barrett, Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin and Brendan Ó hEithir were invaluable in compiling this list.

Photos are courtesy of Inpho, The Irish Examiner, The Belfast Telegraph, the Croke Park Museum.

Illustration of Michael Cusack by Colm MacAthlaoich