“Buy your programme of the game. Programme of the game, programme,” hoarsely shouts the fat, purple-faced man on the pavement. He holds out the sheaf of flimsy programmes like a snare to catch some of the eager spectators streaming towards the field of play.

“Is that the official programme?” asks a thin, bony-faced man, suspiciously. He wears a Fáinne-cum-Pioneer badge on his lapel. His narrowed eyes look at the drink-inflamed face of the programme seller with some disapproval.
“It’s better than it – and cheaper too,” replies the man in a rough-toned Dublin accent
“Are the names in Irish as well as English?
“All you have to do is put an O or a Mac in front of the name and you’re right”

Such scenes of deception, distrust and verbal jousting are a thing of the past. The era of the unofficial programme is just about over. The modern-day GAA programme, well designed and laid out, full of colour and informative content has spelt the decline if not the end of its unauthentic rival. At one time the production and sale of unofficial programmes was a flourishing back-lane industry. It came into being because at that time the programmes produced by the GAA were very basic and sometimes poorly printed.

One of the most fondly-remembered outfits who thumbed their noses at the GAA for several decades had a printing shed in a cobbled lane near Foley Street, in the north inner city centre of Dublin. It was an industrious location; on one side was a panel- beating operation and on the other an enterprise that specialised in cannibalising stolen cars. A grimy iron printing machine stood on the bare concrete floor in a corner of the filthy, littered place. While working, it made a tremendous racket and the whole place shook. On Saturday nights before big games this museum piece came into its own with a great clattering. The paper being fed into it was not of high quality; it had been salvaged in the dead of night from a skip for sub-standard paper in the yard of one of the major printers.

The scene was straight out of The Sorcerers Apprentice. The illicit programme vendors stood by, smelling of stout, their hands smudged with printing ink. They gave vent to the foulest language whenever the machine broke down, which it frequently did. There was another problem; the paper guillotine was somewhat defective, with the result that the edges of some programmes slanted noticeably.

There was often a problem with the names of the teams. They were copied from one of the daily newspapers. If somebody, whether county secretary, sports reporter, newspaper printer or anyone else in the line of information got a name of a player or his position wrong, the mistake was faithfully reproduced on the programme.

On one famous occasion the unauthorised programme contained many mistakes; the sellers had to put up with a good deal of abuse from angry purchasers. Enraged, one of the harassed group accosted the much-revered, elderly GAA correspondent of The Irish Press at the back of the stand in Limerick and shouted at him truculently, “Would you for Jaysus’ sake try to get the names right and where they’re playing. What kind of a shit-house do you work for?”

Over a period of time a determined rivalry grew up between the sellers of the unofficial and the official programmes. The GAA was anxious to make some money from programme selling and took a very poor view of those piggybacking on the games. They had a somewhat hostile attitude towards these inner city Dubliners, regarding them as soccer fans who had no affinity whatsoever with hurling and Gaelic football.

The Association took to making announcements over the loudspeaker systems exhorting patrons to only buy the official programme, usually sold in the vicinity. As a result, the Unofficials worked the pavements much further out and often in the streets of Limerick, Cork and Thurles. To counter this, the GAA then sent its sellers further and further afield. For example, at Thurles the official programme sellers met people coming off the trains at the station. Because of this, the Unofficials ended up trying to flog their bogus wares while the train was on its way from Dublin.

The GAA began to put more emphasis on a well-defined replica of their Celtic cross logo on the cover. As a further cachet of authenticity they put the provincial secretary’s name in Gaelic script over the word “Rúnaí”.
As a result, the Unofficials felt bound to produce a good imitation of the real thing. It was this necessity that offered a career opportunity to a young man of exceptional artistic talent, Labhrás McEntaggart. The Foley Street crowd employed this red-haired fellow to produce an almost-exact replica of the GAA Celtic-cross insignia. They feared prosecution if the Runaí’s name was forged, but the resourceful McEntaggart produced a look-alike name in Celtic script that was hard to decipher over the title “Rooney” in elaborately impressive lettering.

Eventually however, the match-going patrons of the GAA came to expect more and more from match programmes. They had become too sophisticated for the bare-bones unofficial programme. It spelt the end of the road for the Unofficials.
One interesting postscript to this bit of sporting and printing history. Labhrás McEntaggart went on to develop his talents in a very notable manner. His forgeries of All Ireland tickets for both Cusack and Hogan stands were among the very best, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. He later produced one of the most exemplary forgeries of the £10 note that bore the likeness of James Joyce. The country was flooded with these masterpieces. A good deal of illicit money was made before an ophthalmic optician with a special interest in the design of banknotes pointed out that Joyce’s right eye had a squint that was not in the genuine £10 note. By the time the Gardai uncovered the elaborate printing and engraving plant the master craftsman had fled.

Over a year ago a female Gárda on a charity run in Rio de Janiero spotted Labhrás playing a robust if not lascivious form of ‘tig’ on the Copacobana beach with several nubile young women wearing miniscule bathing attire. Apparently wealthy, he lived in a mansion in an exclusive suburb. Some months later, after expertly-forged Brazilian 1000 cruzeiro notes began to circulate in that country, Mc Entaggart again disappeared.

His name now figures prominently on an Interpol list of those ‘wanted for questioning’ and his photograph can be seen on many of the police websites round the world. From his humble beginnings, helping to create unofficial GAA programmes in Foley Street, this artist has now achieved an international reputation.