Less would be more as Croker loses its lustre

Last Sunday was one of those days when Croke Park began to look its age. The bucket seats on the Lower Cusack Stand sat a faded shade of bluey gray and the concrete holding up any sporting edifice takes on a gloomy hue when the sky spits and coats the walls with damp.

To sit there and watch the Leinster football semi double header last weekend was to be reminded that the stand, the first to be built when the stadium was reimagined in the 1990s, is a quarter of a century old. It’s still one of Europe’s biggest stadiums, but you could argue about Croker’s place in the roll call of ‘finest’.