Paul Rouse: The 40 things I'll miss on All-Ireland Hurling final day

Like all great sporting occasions, All-Ireland hurling final day carries a social and cultural significance that passes far beyond the playing field, the two teams, the result

FINAL FEVER: Little beats the thrill of winding through the crowds down the North Circular Road, past the smell of frying onions and the people with signs looking for tickets for the All-Ireland final. Picture: Barry Cregg/Sportsfile

There’s no day in Dublin quite like the Sunday of the All-Ireland hurling final. It is, of course, a day centred on a match, but it is not defined by that match.

Like all great sporting occasions, it carries a social and cultural significance that passes far beyond the playing field, the two teams, the result. This year, Covid has stripped away almost all of the things that have grown around the match, all the personal experiences that shape the meaning of sport. 

So this is the list of the things that I’ll miss Sunday...

1

Waking up and remembering what it was like when Offaly were playing on All-Ireland final day. Blessed to have lived those days.

2

The pan hopping, people around the kitchen table talking hurling, abusing each other, in that easy slide back to the way things were when there was less grey on view.

3

Trying to hide the burn on the sausages, again. It says a lot that the table would be full of lads happy that their own breakfast was being burned in front of them just so they could sneer.

4

Eating brown bread from the recipe given to me by my mother. Never quite managing to get it the same.

5

Putting a ticket for an All-Ireland final into the pocket and walking out the front door. The pure privilege of being able to do that is undeniable.

6

Seeing country cars parked all around my road, people eating sandwiches from the boot, full of hope and excitement and nerves, rearing to go.

7

Winding through the crowds down the North Circular Road, past the smell of frying onions and the people with signs looking for tickets.

8

Checking the pocket to make sure the ticket is still there since the last check. And then checking again.

9

Russell Street and Jones’s Road. The music of the buskers. The hum of the gathering day. The clank of the turnstile. That lovely slow climb up the steps into the stands.

10

Trying to work out which minor is going to be back as a senior.

11

The roar when the senior teams come out on the field, one after the next. There’s a deep thunder to that roar — and a visceral emotion when a team is in a final for the first time in many years.

12

Trying to see if there is something in the warm-ups that can be lifted and used with an underage team.

13

The Artane Band and the parade. Making ridiculous decisions about who looks nervous and who doesn’t.

14

Watching the referees and the linesmen warming up, and wondering how they measure the success of their day.

15

The throw-in, especially if there’s a bit of wildness. Nothing like the throw-in to suggest what sort of a game might be coming.

16

Watching the game settle into its rhythms.

17

The half-time entertainment that never really quite works, especially the bit where someone is shouting into a microphone in the pursuit of compulsory fun.

18

Getting lost in a glorious match. Michael Cusack once wrote that a good hurling match was ‘like a city on fire, where the crackling of burning timber and the hissing of the flames swell into the roar of conflagration.’ Another final is a day further along a continuum Cusack started and which stretches out into an unknowable future.

19

Feeling the reactions of a crowd as the match reaches its climax, the hiss and crackle filling the air.

20

The final whistle. Especially when victory is taken by a county who have walked in from the margins and who have not become accustomed to success.

21

Lamenting the loss of the pitch invasion. We loved a good pitch invasion down in Offaly. Sometimes we didn’t even wait for the final — or even for a final whistle.

22

Remembering my mother bringing me to my first All-Ireland hurling final in 1980 and being almost able to touch Joe Connolly when he walked through the madness to lift the Liam MacCarthy.

23

Trying to decide whether to brave the beer in Croke Park — or head straight to Gills.

24

Squeezing into a corner outside Gill’s pub and watching the streets (and the glasses) empty for a few hours.

25

The Leahy sandwiches. Real ham. Plenty of mustard. Although wrapped in distressing levels of Tipperaryness, a reminder that everything has a cost.

26

A Wicklow man with a baseball cap flying in from London, looking after lads with tickets, drinking cider and trying to squeeze as much out of the day as possible before the taxi back to the airport can wait no longer.

27

Meeting my brothers.

28

Standing with the same people who have been coming to this little corner for years — and hoping they sing the same songs as they always sing. (And hoping not to be made to sing myself. A hope that is, in fairness, shared by more than a few who have suffered across the years).

29

Spending another All-Ireland Sunday trying to explain hurling to a lad from Ballinagar. He was a tasty corner back in football; it would not have been wise to have allowed him hurl.

30

The Duck. Some man.

31

The tall fella from Dundrum reciting a poem, a man to improve any evening.

32

Listening to Martin Walsh from Ballycastle singing The Broad Majestic Shannon. And if he knows one, he knows a second. How did that guitar get here? Fergus and Nollaig are singing too. And the Wexford crowd.

33

Meeting Gerry Pemberton. Played a bit of hurling himself when he was younger. Wasn’t too bad, apparently.

34

Lads taking out their own medals any minute.

35

And would you look at who just arrived!

36

Watching the team buses head away from Croke Park, the classic contrast of agony and ecstasy when they invariably stop at the traffic lights at Gills. Rarely is the meaning of defeat and of success so vividly captured as the reckoning with reality in those hours after the game.

37

Trying to find my jumper. And badly needing chips.

38

Walking back up the North Circular, through Phibsboro and on towards home, feeling melancholy that the year has now turned.

39

One in The Hut, or more chips? Or both?

40

Hoping that next year happens. Really hoping.