What our sporting playgrounds say about us
History pupils travel through the years using battles, elections and political movements as signposts and milestones along the road. But for some, the places where we play games or watch matches say as much about where we came from.
Mike Cronin — a director of Boston College — earned his stripes in the academic world pulling the thread of history from the Blueshirts. Now, however, he and Roisín Higgins have attempted to reveal a little more about Ireland’s past by taking us on a guided journey through pieces of real estate like Croke Park, Thomond Park and Lansdowne Road.
But as well as these well-known national arenas, their new book, Places We Play, features off-Broadway gems like the fishing estate in Ballynahinch, Co Galway developed by a record-breaking cricketer called Ranji. The racecourse at Royal Co Down where the “winning horse in 1690 went on to serve the Williamites in the Battle of the Boyne”. And pop-up venues like the beach at Laytown.
“What we’re really arguing in the Irish context is what’s important the value of the places and what’s gone on there rather than their architectural significance,” says Cronin.
“Though really it’s how do these things end up where they are. So if you look at golf clubs for example — the first 10 founded in Ireland — nine of them were founded by the British army.
“You can’t separate the history of sport from the history of the British Army, being in Ireland. Likewise, if you look at all the racecourses they’re built next to all the railway lines.
“It’s really trying to accept the history is not beautiful — it’s often dysfunctional — but it’s important just in terms of understanding Ireland’s social history.”
The book stitches together the intricate detail of the places we pass every day. The Listowel and Ballybunion Railway? The world’s first commercial monorail. When the Irish Free State beat Germany 5-2 in 1936 at Dalymount Park the programme had a swastika on the cover. Belvedere Lodge was owned by ‘Wicked Earl’ Robert Rochfort who kept his wife under house arrest for 31 years. And then there’s Col Charles Kenneth Howard Bury, an explorer who introduced the concept of the yeti to Europe.
So in short — it’s the colourful stories that played out in these places rather than the bricks and mortar.
“Thomond Park is now linked in with the Munster mythology, beating the All Blacks, and all that,” he continues. “Clearly what stands there now is this 21st-century, functional, very big, very beautiful shiny stadium.
“That has no relation to where the All Blacks played and lost. So the importance of things for people when things walk in and sit in a seat... it’s the importance of the stadium as a place.
“So you think, Thomond Park. Lansdowne, Croke Park, — if you talk to the architects, their expected shelf life is three to four decades. Which means, I’m in my early 40s — I don’t know how old you are — but in my lifetime I would expect to see every one of those three stadia knocked down and rebuilt.
“Because there’s going to come a time when the Aviva, for example, starts to look dated and old; technology will move on, our demands will move on, therefore it will be torn down and replaced. So, you will see an argument not about rebuilding the stadium but it will be about the space.
“If the Munster rugby people said we’re going to move the stadium down to Cork, all hell would be let loose. Because the tradition and heritage is centred on space. But if they said we’re going to build another stadium in 2050 people would accept that.”
If we can piece together so much about our ancestors and their world by completing this intriguing jigsaw, then, what will our stadiums say about us long after the Lansdowne roar has dimmed?
“The Aviva... how can I describe it?” Cronin ponders, “I think pound-for-pound it worked out as the most expensive structure in the history of the state. Now, if they’d missed the boat a few years ago and tried to do it now it never would have been as expensive as it was. Simply because they wouldn’t have tried to do something as innovative and grandiose.
“Without over-reading it, the Aviva is a shining example of everything the Celtic Tiger gave us. Rightly or wrongly. You do look back on that sense of the stadiums being architectural symbols of where we were.
“Or where we were.”
*Places We Play is published by Collins Press.
- adrianjrussell@gmail.com Twitter: @adrianrussell
