Some Points For Discussion re. Last Saturday etc.

It's the match that won't die. So, never being one to set the sports discussion agenda when we can slavishly follow the prattle of the masses, here are a few more points for rumination regarding last Saturday.

Would God Save the Queen have been so respectfully observed by 'the soccer crowd'?
Sorry to go on about this, really; just one more question, ma'am - my wife is such a big fan of yours.

One of the Proven Facts established last Saturday is that the Irish people are mature,well-rounded humanists, for whom respect for an opponent's national anthem is a natural part of decent manners. To a man.

Anyone who has spent an evening at Lansdowne Road watching the Irish soccer team, however, will know that the patrons of those occasions like a boo. They'd boo anyone given half a chance. Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy; Peter Lovenkrands and Shota Arveladze (the poor Rangers players who were booed by the naughty Provos on the terraces); Taoisigh, Lord Mayors, councillors, FAI honchos, UEFA dignitaries, overzealous stewards. I've even heard a schoolboy international, part of a team who'd won some tournament or other, get booed because he plied his trade at Manchester United.

Generally, fuelled by gargle and a sense of mischief, the Irish soccer fan sees the opportunity of a good boo as part of the matchday experience. Its a similar subclass of popular culture to that in which pantomime resides, a place where cheering and booing represent a satisfying survey of the gamut of human experience.

So, Mr.Mature and Well-Rounded Irishman, are we to believe that, with the first parpings of the God Save the Queen at an Irish soccer match, respectful silence would be observed?

Is there some sort of magic fairy dust sprinkled on the spot from whence O'Gara launched that cross-kick?
Twice in recent years has a moment of play in Croke Park stolen the breath away. On Saturday, when Ronan O'Gara dinked that cross-kick toward a spot of thin air where he had calculated in a millisecond that Shane Horgan's outstretched arms would soon be.

The other time was in August of 2005, in the drawn All-Ireland Senior Football championship quarter-final between Tyrone and Dublin, when Owen Mulligan caught a long ball around the 45 into his midriff, then turned and set off on a shimmying, jinking run that ended up with the ball exploding off his boot and into the Dublin goal.

Both of these moments had their genesis at around the same spot on the Croke Park turf, give or take a few yards. Was this the former site of a fairy ring? Did druids once meet to sacrifice goats on this turf? Did Vikings offer praise to Thor and Odin at this precise point a millenium ago?

Maybe Buddha once napped there on his way to transcendence. Certainly the two players involved achieved a Zen state of high sporting grace, that place where everything around them slows down and the surroundings bend to their will.

Will Croker 2007 be the new G.P.O 1916?
Gore Vidal, the American author and witty type, once said "every time a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies." Circumstances prevented TSA from being able to join the scavenge for tickets for last Saturday, so every friend or acquaintance that informed me that they had secured a prized brief unknowingly stuck a metaphorical dagger in my jealous heart.

And then the occasion goes on to be this big watershed moment in Irish history blah-de-blah and a bloody good game too. So now its one of these "were you there?" things, and your children will come running home from school because their friends are slagging them because their Dad's such a loser that he wasn't even at the Ireland v England match at Croke Park.

Then in later years your grandchildren will slink sullenly from your knee when you tell them you weren't there unlike bloody Zyborg next door (its the future, people will have names like that then. Well, was anyone called Darren in the1950s?) whose granddad was in the Cusack Stand that day. The incontinent old bastard.

Ireland Harness History to Trample England

As chance would have it, I happened to be travelling on a flight from London Stansted (although 'Sheffield Stansted' would be almost as appropriate a name for it given its location) to Dublin on Saturday morning. Accompanying me were several hundred members of the English rugby fraternity; their pie-and-ale countenances and Barbour jackets gave them away, if their earthy banter hadn't already.

Even as they read their morning papers, which attempted to set the scene for Saturday evening's thunderous events, they can't have known what they were walking into. On the other side of the Irish Sea a nation had been contextualising itself to a standstill, binding itself up in cultural analysis and historical deconstruction.

The country that flight FR296 landed in had been gazing so intently at its navel that it barely remembered that their visitors were looking to watch a game of rugby, not hear a history lesson.
I'm sure England's travelling supporters' eyes glanced through the think-pieces on what this game meant to the Irish and why they weren't going to rackety old Lansdowne Road this time round. But they probably spent more time worrying about whether the green shoots of their team's recovery under Brian Ashton were about to be trampled by the highly-rated Irish team.

They probably fancied that their pack would do alright, possibly dominate the scrum, but feared that they would struggle to translate their ball into points. They probably hoped for a tight game and that Wilko's boot might edge for England.

By the time half past five ticked round, however, these thoughts were lost in the noise of an occasion that inevitably transcended rugby.

For all that, as we found out against France a fortnight ago, the only satisfactory ending to these epic tales comes on the park. Where that day the volume of the preliminaries seemed like so much pointless hot air when Vincent Clerc crossed to deny Ireland the win, yesterday, pace Seamus Heaney, hope and history rhymed.

It was a good day for rugby, the sport associating itself with so much that was positive. Given that our national sport is currently neither hurling nor gaelic football, but rather Discussing Ourselves And, In Particular, How Far We've Come As A Nation, rugby's association with such a good news day will generate decades of goodwill for the sport.

But back to the 15 against 15 business. The English rugby team has long seemed diminished, especially so in comparison to the last time they attracted so much attention during pre-match pleasantries in Dublin: 2003, and Martin Johnson's eyeballing of Mary McAleese across the red carpet.

Ireland have tougher warriors on their side now, while England have never recovered from the Leicester man's retirement. Jonny Wilkinson, Lancelot to Johnson's Arthur, is back. But the outhalf now resembles one of those rock legends of the 1960s still touring even though all his old bandmates are either dead or vegetarian. When he turns around to jam now, all he sees are plodding session players.

But we're not talking about history, or rock and roll, just rugby. That's what this Irish team are all about; that's why the policy of giving it a lash - especially against the English - has long been jettisoned in favour of ruthless pragmatism. And that's what must have made the loss to France so maddening: that an occasion, or rather the peripherals thereof, usurped the careful planning and finely-tuned psychology that made them sure of their ability to win a grand slam.

The intensity and emotion on the faces of the Irish players as their own anthem played suggested that the peculiar endorphins of the day were flooding their systems dangerously and uncontrollably. Thankfully, the players harnessed them in the most clinical manner possible, turning the crude ore of raw emotion into the gold of a devastatingly convincing performance, England's worst points-against tally in Five or Six Nations history.

The Englishmen on flight FR296 had no idea what was coming.

God Save All Of Us From This Nonsense

TSA is off for a few days R & R, but would be absconding our duties not to mention the events of Saturday coming at Croke Park. I'm afraid we're one of those people for whom the occasion has been deflated a little by the defeat against France. Beating England in the Six Nations is getting a little old now, especially without the greater motivation of a grand slam.

I'm also afraid we are a little too much of a modern-Tiger-cub-urban-sophisticate to get up for the prospect of 'beating d'English at Croker'. Sure, there will be disappointment if we lose, but only in pure rugby terms: we are a better team at the moment.

I'm all for tasty sporting rivalry with our former rulers, and enjoy that little bit of edge that remains from 800 years of oppression and all that, but those for whom Jonny Wilkinson and Jason Robinson represent the grandsons of the Black and Tans are living in a derangement that is utterly unfair to the sporting traditions between the two countries that have developed since our independence. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Anyway, any rugby person will tell you that the English rugby side were the first international sporting team to come to these shores after the outbreak of the troubles, when even some of our kindred Celtic neighbours would not.

As for God Save the Queen: the only sensibilties it should offend are those of music-lovers.

Grand Slam Slips Away On An Epic Day

Amid the portentious fanfare and endless talk of history that greeted the first ever rugby international at Croke Park, it became clear by Saturday evening that the Ireland v France had another lesser, but unquestionable significance: that of a decider for this year's Six Nations championship, and possibly, the Grand Slam.

It was fitting then, with so much at stake, that it was, as Eddie O'Sullivan put it, "the bounce of a ball" that decided the game in the end.

The particular bounce O'Sullivan had in mind was the one which took the French restart (after Ronan O'Gara's seemingly victory-fastening penalty) back into Gallic hands and eventually over the line in Vincent Clerc's piercing dart.

Saturday's fixtures had shown the deficiencies of the other combatants to a degree that ratcheted up the Croke Park intense-ometer several unnecessary notches. Italy matched England up front and only lost due to greater indiscipline. Both sides were uninspired in possession, and the boot of Jonny Wilkinson will not contribute enough points to compensate for their lack of backline firepower.

Scotland and Wales played a harem-scarem 80 minutes which, if engaging, was not in the same the same caste of quality as yesterday's match. Scotland played like Scotland should, rucking ferociously and recycling more enthusiastically than a Tory politician looking for green kudos. Much like England, however, they lack the line-breaking devilment in the backs to capitalise on good work up front.

So, yesterday the bounce of a ball decided the Six Nations.

Did it? Or did Ireland just run out of luck? The team that robbed poor old Italy at Lansdowne last year through Tommy Bowe's try that never touched the ground; that squeezed past poor old England at Twickenham a few weeks later through an improbable late try; that got to burnish its reputation in the Autumn against depleted Australian and South African outfits; that did a Jedi mind trick on the referee in Cardiff last week ("I am going to foul incessantly in the ruck and get away with it". "Yes, you are".) - was the ball due to bounce the other way for once?

Ireland have, of course, made their own luck. They've been good enough to take advantage of fate's loose morals and it has often got them out of jail. Not yesterday, however. Going into the plush Croke Park dressing rooms at half time only two points down certainly seemed like an escape from death row. France had dominated and around the time Rafael Ibanez touched down for the first try in the Greatest Stadium on Earth And No Mistake, our paté-wolfing friends were playing with that bristling momentum that has destroyed us so often in the past.

But Ireland were almost good enough again to turn fortune their way. Good enough to heave the seemingly unstoppable flow of the match the other way. Good enough to concoct a move that showcased both their ability to bludgeon back the initative and also the capacity for improvisation at the crucial moment. O'Gara's dummy, Hickie's vision, Horgan's line, Wallace's hands and O'Gara's foresight to have seen it all before it happened - all manifestations of the brilliant rugby minds this Irish team possesses.

Having survived near-capitulation in the first half, the second period provided the game that the occasion deserved. It was ceaseless, enthralling and, by the time Ireland's spectacular maul won them that late penalty to go four points clear, it must have been deathly exhausting. France's restart bounced beyond Ireland's tired grasp, as did Clerc through John Hayes fingers.

It was a day for the epic, cacophonous and historic. It drew the Herculean from the game, the players' endeavours rising to the level of the decibels that the crowd generated. Ireland gave everything, but couldn't turn fortune their way again.

On such days, God is often in the details. Like the bounce of a ball.

The Very Rough Guide to the Croke Park Area

Travelling to the northside for the first time? Worried about the trip? Fear not - TSA brings you all you need to know about navigating one of the world's last great wildernesses. Follow our cut-out-and-keep guide to the Croke Park area and who knows, you might even even enjoy yourself!

Getting There and Away
Avoid using the specially laid on buses provided by some of the more avaricious southside pubs: these will only make you stand out and arouse unwanted attention from locals. Instead, take the number 10 bus. Though passing Kiely's and making its way through such fine avenues as Waterloo Road and Morehampton Road, this incredible route eventually winds up traversing the rubble-strewn inner-north-city. The closest thing in this country to the Orient Express.

Handy Hint! If taking the DART, do not walk from Connolly Station to Croke Park without an armed guide!

Getting Around
Once north, the more adventurous traveller might wish to access the ground from the more 'authentic' Summerhill/Ballybough quarter. Sample the local culture by 'putting a bet on' in one of the many 'bookies' in the area, or taste the delights of a single fish or batter burger in a typical 'chipper'. Take care not to carry valuables (shoes, trousers etc.)

Those with young families or travelling with the infirm might wish to reach the Clonliffe Road from Drumcondra, an area which was civilised several years ago, now even boasting a number of estate agents.

Handy hint! Listen out for a Munster accent: rugby fans from the south-west have a long history of missionary work in this area, and may be able to help with directions, or in a fight.

Dining: With the proliferation of the aforementioned 'chippers', those seeking some semblance of basic gourmet fare would be well served packing a lunch. However, this needn't be a source of embarassment. A traditional repast in these parts is the Ham Sandwich Eaten While Sitting on the Bonnet of the Car: a little imagination can transform it into Serrano on Ciabatta Taken While Locked in the SUV.

Handy hint! Eschew the omnipresent Centra roll for the hearty delights of Paul's Delicatessen on Dorset St., an outpost of fresh food amidst the tyranny of the snack-box.

Bars: Again, the intrepid explorer can steel his nerve and delve into the Dorset St. fleshpots like the Big Tree, the Findlater, McGrath's and, for only the most fearless, Quinn's. The latter is believed to be the site of the original Barbarian settlement here several thousand years ago. It remains a sacred place for northsiders: they believe that the spirit of Ant-Oh, the god said to have created the tracksuit, resides therein.

For the less adventurous, Fagan's in Drumcondra will provide some of the comforts of home. In a strange quirk of the political system, an Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, frequents this famous watering hole.

In actual fact, rather than popping in regularly as a token reinforcement of his man-of-the-people image, Bertie actually hangs out here all the time, rather like Norm from Cheers. In fact he often takes part in the pub's efforts to put one over on nearby Enda's Olde Tyme Tavern, leading to hilarious practical jokes and misunderstandings.

HANDY HINT! If visiting a northside pub's toilet facilities, you may be cornered by a foul-smelling inebriate, ranting incomprehensibly. To extricate yourself from this situation simply recite the following words, very loudly: The ould triangle went jingle-jangle, all along the banks of the Royal Canal. You will be allowed on your way with the heartiest approbation.

Things to do: Well, go to the rugby match, obviously. Unlike Lansdowne Road, picturesque and charmingly appointed, the local Croke Park stadium is something of a soulless montrosity. Boasting endless perfect sightlines, spacious and comfortable seating facilities and a terrace unlikely to collapse at any moment, the stadium will seem at first rather strange.

Locals are inordinately proud of the arena, however, so complement them profusely. Don't worry about seeming patronising: they secretly long for the Victorian poise of the West Stand at Lansdowne.

HANDY HINT! If you become the subject of physical aggression from a native, grab a nearby Frenchman and suggest that he is 'over here taking our jobs'. The ire towards you will soon be directed towards the Gallic usurper.

TSA Report: Stadium of Light

So you organise a few tickets for some friends for the Dublin v Tyrone match. You figure the occasion of the turning on the Croke Park floodlights to be one worthy of a bit of a night, maybe a few pints to end the January season of temperate introspection.

Also, like quite a few of the almost 82,000 teeming into Dublin 3, several of your party are not regulars around these parts. Not that they're Pale-embedded-what's that, bogball?-Gaelbashers or anything. No, just members of that part of the population who have never shuffled hurriedly down Clonliffe Road on a summer Sunday; who were as likely to line out on a hurling or Gaelic football field as they were to head down to their local dojo for a spot of sumo.

In other words, the people who have been drawn in by the GAA's great glasnost of recent years. The people hitherto without a context for the organisation, except maybe a second-hand scepticism about cultural oppression and being in cahoots with Fianna Fáil and the Church and that lot, but who instead are curious now.

Invited in by the majestic buttresses of the new Croke Park. Drawn to investigate the commotion of an incendiary Championship afternoon. Charmed by the technicolour passions of the supporting factions. Hooked by the association's smart marketing and blue riband sponsors. These people might never have gone to Croke Park in any other generation. But they were coming to this game.

Or at least they said they were. But 7pm came and went on Saturday evening and you're standing on Dorset Street, in the cold as even the beeriest Dubs (the ones who'd started their supping with the Merseyside derby at 12.45 and seen the day through) have made their way into the ground, and you're waiting for some taxis to grind through the traffic with their cargo of interlopers. Grrrr.

Still, even glasnost had its teething problems.

Despite missing the Great Ceremony of the Flicking of the Switch and the Saw Doctors and the frickin' Dublin Gospel Choir and the bloody Artane Boys' Band and - goddamnit - the points that went to make the score Dublin 0-5 Tyrone 0-1, there was amply sufficient time on arrival to pause in wonder and awe (Awwwww!) and the sight of the place.

It was like seeing the fresh-faced girl from school on her debs night, transplendent in radiant evening wear.

The mind started to wander. Will this ever happen again? Or are most of these people day trippers like my tardy friends? Or seekers of a novelty Saturday evening diversion? Or moth/human mutant crossbreeds involuntarily attracted to bright lights?

But I mean, isn't it fantastic? This fantasmagorical stadium, fuller in its glory than it had ever been, the pitch framed like a stage in a glamourous wash of light.

But the only time that a crowd like this might gather again - once the novelty of oooh-sooo-bright! is gone - in this uniquely atmospheric setting would be for the Championship. Which happens in summer. When the evenings are long and lazy and full of promise but do not lend themselves to the use of floodlights.

Shame. Still, maybe down the line when inter-county GAA's exponential development has turned its Championship into a longer-spanning affair, we might see these nights regularly. For now the next time the arena will dazzle like this will be two weeks on Saturday, when England attempt to deflower the rugby-virginal Jones' Road venue.

There was a game to enjoy as well, Tyrone eventually showing their class against a Dublin team who have become specialists in letting winning positions slip. The quality of the match just about befitted the occasion. Dublin played confidently and with Championship intensity in the first half, while Tyrone were as limp and unimpressive as the first half streaker's chilled appendage.

The roles were reversed in the second period, the northerners overturning Darren Magee and Declan O'Mahony's midfield dominance and bringing on the influential Kieran Hughes to match-turning effect. Hughes dovetailed with Owen Mulligan and Sean Cavanagh to master the half-forward line and Dublin shrank in that familiar way.

So before the new tenants move in the householders got to throw a fabulous party for all their friends, and a few new ones. Like my dawdling pals, or the kids from 18 different nations who played a Cumann na mBunscoil game at half time, which quickly turned into the first soccer match played in Croke Park. I couldn't quite hear the múinteoir shout "pick it up, boy, pick it up", but I could picture it.

Thin end of the wedge, I'm telling ya.

This House Ain't Big Enough For The Both of Them

Sometimes a landlord just doesn't like the cut of a tenant.

"That fella, I don't trust him. Shifty lookin'. Comes in late at night, sleeps all day. Has strange folk around at all hours. Not like that nice professional I have in the other place. Well-mannered, accountant I think, or something in the legal profession. Keeps the place tidy, everything just so in there...."

The GAA and the FAI never did get along. Maybe landlord and tenant is the wrong analogy. Two diametrically differing brothers, maybe that's better.

You know those sworn sibling rivalries: one is into sports, drinks pints down the local with his mates (they talk work and football, make mildly racist jokes, no harm), solid job, steady girl, makes the old man proud.

The other: wears only black, and that extends to eye make-up. Spends all day in his room on his computer; reads endlessly - William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, bit of Romantic poetry - his Mammy's favourite, though it breaks her heart.

Their differences are irreconcilable, though they are as stubborn as each other.

The FAI wanted to use Croke Park for a training session before heading for San Marino in February. Were they asking just to rise the GAA? We may be short on adequate sporting facilities in this country, but surely there are other fields somewhere on this island on which some cones could be arrayed for an afternoon?

You can see why the GAA were peeved at the request. But then you get Munster Council Chairman Sean Fogarty harrumphing:

"Ever since permission (to play soccer in Croke Park) was given to the FAI, there has been a lot of talk, a lot of photo opportunities at Croke Park.

"There's an air of triumphalism about the whole thing. Let them not forget than they are on our patch."

Triumphalism. There you have it. This man feels that the GAA's decision to allow the garrison games into Croker was a defeat - not a mature, considered response to a peculiar situation- and any expression of pleasure from "the soccer people" at the undeniably exciting prospect of playing in the magnificient arena is akin to dancing on Michael Cusack's grave.

The "soccer people" ("them") should come in, heads bowed in reverence, play their insiduous womanly sport, then get the hell out, leaving as little damage as possible in their wake.

Honestly, I don't know what we're going to do with the two of them.