Cork's First Football All-Ireland, 1894 Medal: G.A.A. Cork ...

Hammer

€5,000

Cork's First Football All-Ireland, 1894

Medal: G.A.A. Cork 1894, An attractive shield shaped 9ct gold Medal, the obverse with central overlay bearing the Cork Coat of Arms surrounded by the Provincial Coats of Arms connected with shamrocks, the reverse inscribed "G.A.A. All-Ireland Football Championship, won by Nils 1894," hallmarked. Extremely Scarce. (1)

Provenance:  Jack O'Sullivan, Nils Desperandum, by direct family descent. 

** The 1894 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was the seventh All-Ireland Final and the deciding match of the 1894 All Ireland Senior Football Championship.
The first game was a draw, 0-6 to 1-1 (at the time, a goal equalled five points) and so a replay was played. With ten minutes remaining, and Cork leading by 1-2 to 0-5 (seven points to five), several Dublin players were attacked by Cork supporters. Dublin refused to play on and the GAA) Central Council awarded them the championship.[1]
The Cork County Board never accepted this finding and four months later a ceremony was held to award gold medals to the victorious Nils Desperandum players (in those days each county was represented by the previous years' county champions). At the ceremony the Lord Mayor of Cork said that he "was positively certain that the Dublin Gaels always recognised the merits of the Nils, and now hailed them as winners of the Football Championship for '94."
The final went into the record books however as Dublin's third All-Ireland football title of the 1890s. The Rebels still stood their ground on the result.