Croke Park is no place for ticket touts or bawling babies

PEOPLE have become particularly conscious of the rip-offs in Irish life since the Eddie Hobbs series on television.

Last week, the Irish Examiner had an editorial calling on the Government to respond to Eddie’s allegations with facts, not smear tactics or empty rhetoric.

“If it cannot respond with factual arguments,” the editorial continued, “then it should face reality and recognise the existence of the rip-off culture and do something positive to rectify the situation.”

That night on RTÉ’s Questions & Answers, Seamus Brennan, Minister for Social and Family Affairs, was challenged about the Hobbs allegations. He made no effort to engage in any kind of spin. Instead, he came straight out and admitted that the statistics cited by Hobbs were accurate and the Government should tackle the problem, not try to smear the messenger. It was a breath of fresh air to hear a current Fianna Fáil minister answer a question candidly.

The stock answer is usually a public denial, and then they ask themselves if it is true. If the Government does not tackle the national rip-off culture, the opposition parties will exploit it. That could have repercussions at the polls because there are so many areas in which a rip off could be exploited.

Jimmy Deenihan, the Fine Gael spokesman for the Arts and Sport, was on radio during the week outlining a bill that he plans to introduce to outlaw ticket touting when the Dáil reconvenes next month. If enacted, the bill would make it a crime to sell a tickets at more than face value - not just an all-Ireland ticket, but any ticket for a sporting, musical, or cultural event.

There is similar already legislation in the United States. It has not prevented tickets being sold above the listed price, but it does stop the more open abuse, such as newspaper ads of black market tickets for sale. When tickets for a big game go on sale in America, people will queue up for hours, even days.

Some people pay college students to stand in line to purchase tickets for them, which is considered perfectly legal.

The GAA distributes its All-Ireland final tickets through its clubs, so it is possible for headquarters to trace its tickets. If a ticket given to any club turns up on the black market, the GAA could suspend that club’s allocation for two or three years and that might prompt the club to ensure that its tickets do not get into the wrong hands.

A teacher told me that one of his pupils told him that he has a ticket for tomorrow’s match. The pupil said he intends to go, unless somebody offers him €200 for the ticket. There is talk of over €1,000 being offered for tickets. Who could really blame a kid for selling his ticket for that kind of money? Maybe there should be a distinction between somebody who actively seeks to sell a ticket and somebody who merely gives up the ticket, because he or she had been made an offer that they cannot refuse.

Ideally, both the seller and the purchaser should be prosecuted, but in that case the law would become practically unenforceable, because neither would be prepared to testify. Hence the Deenihan bill will only be aimed at sellers.

Being from Kerry on the day of the All-Ireland football final was usually something special. I was lifted over the turnstiles to see my first three all-Ireland finals - in 1953, 1954, and 1955. I think it is a great pity that the GAA has stopped that practice, but the change was apparently necessitated by security concerns and insurance restrictions, which are the result of our litigation culture.

From the security standpoint, the Kerry-Armagh All-Ireland final of 1953 was a nightmare - possibly the most dangerous final ever. There was massive over-crowding. Other than the enormous roar that greeted an Armagh goal that day, my one abiding memory of the game was seeing the fence at the railway end collapse as people were forced on to the field.

It was estimated that there were more than 92,000 people in Croke Park that day. The paid attendance was a record 85,177, but a further 7,000 were estimated to have forced their way into the grounds, while thousands more were locked out.

THE large gate at the Canal End was forced and, as the crowd pushed in, they forced people at the front onto the field. Hundred of people were allowed to remain behind the end line during the game. When one thinks of the 96 people killed at Hillsborough in 1989, it must rank as a kind of miracle that nobody was killed in Croke Park that Sunday. The only person hospitalised was an elderly man who fainted.

I cannot ever remember being more homesick than I was on All-Ireland final day in 1964. Kerry were playing Galway and I was in Texas. There was no way of seeing the match then, as it was not televised abroad. It was probably relayed on Radio Brazzaville, but it was not possible to pick that up in Texas during the daytime.

I still remember walking in the sunshine that afternoon thinking of the game and visualising the occasion. Of course, with the time difference, the match was long over by then. Kerry had been defeated, but it was a few days before I learned what happened.

People here probably do not realise how much it can mean to Irish people abroad to see the game live. Of course, in the era before television, it probably meant even more to hardened followers who were unable to get an All-Ireland final ticket after supporting the team throughout the year.

The late Denis Conroy, former stalwart of the Cork County Board, once complained in a television interview that, as soon as he got into his seat at one All-Ireland final, a woman sitting next to him asked him who was playing.

He was still irate years later in recalling the incident for the camera. Dedicated GAA followers were unable to get a ticket for that final, he complained.

One suspects that the woman involved probably got that particular ticket on condition that she asked Denis the question, just to see if he would take off into orbit.

Denis would probably be immensely proud of the modernised Croke Park, but one can only imagine how he would react to this week’s controversy over the woman who complained about needing an extra ticket to bring her nine-month-old daughter to the game, even though there are no facilities in the stadium for her to breastfeed the child.

The GAA spent hundreds of millions renovating the place but they omitted breastfeeding facilities! “It’s a joke the way they are treating us,” the mother complained. “If we get her a ticket then there is no place for me to breastfeed her.”

Let’s face it, the real joke was that anyone would contemplate bringing a baby to the final.

Can you just imagine Denis Conroy in Croke Park with a bawling baby beside him? That would be worse than having the Tans back!