Initially, the GAA was a mixture of wildfire progress where the games themselves were concerned, but controversy was equally quick to rear its head. Rules for the games were drawn up and rigidly enforced, the first versions being published in The United Irishman in February 1885. Although in the first year the primary concentration was on athletics, it was hurling which caught the public imagination.

The game spread rapidly in the south of the country as the traditional heartlands embraced the first coded structure of the game they had known. Elsewhere, Ballyconnell in Cavan was the first club formed in Ulster, followed quickly by Magherafelt in Derry.

But an early directive from the GAA's leadership brought it into immediate conflict with the country's other sporting bodies. Cusack's view was that existing organised sports such as soccer, cricket, hockey and rugby were a threat to the development of the "national pastimes". He engineered a directive in March 1885 to the effect that members of the GAA who participated, or actively promoted "foreign games" would be suspended from the Association.

The move brought outrage from the other bodies and caused immediate suspicion as to the true motives behind the GAA. Cusack had some heated and very public exchanges with the Irish Amateur Athletic Association, which angered Archbishop Croke to the extent that he considered withdrawing his patronage. Cusack relented and the ban was done away with through compromise - individual counties were allowed to decide whether or not to enforce it. But it was nowhere near the last to be heard on the subject. After being reinstated in 1903 it was to survive an incredible 58 years before finally being dropped in 1971.