Little boy blue

Soccer correspondent Liam Mackey on Hill 16, GAA tactics and Dublin humour.

SO here I am, a speck of grey in a hill of blue, a stranger in a familiar land, a Dub in Croker who might as well be from Laois.

Or Laos. The mistake can be easily made. Con Houlihan tells the story about the day his father misread a headline in the paper. "Riots in Laos," it said. Houlihan senior wasn't surprised. "That crowd above in Laois are always causing trouble," he remarked.

As it happens, GAA HQ is about as distant from my life as is a country in Asia. Which is ironic, considering that the Cusack Stand almost literally darkens my door on Dublin's northside. The thing is, I've hardly ever bothered to return the favour.

Don't get me wrong: as a city boy born and bred, I do of course remember Dublin in the rare old times, days when the holy ground would be full to the rafters for visits to the capital by the great powers of Cork and Waterford. But that's enough about Glenmalure Park...

As for Croker, until Sunday I'd only ever been inside the place on four occasions. Two were for concerts by the popular beat combo U2 and one for a press conference ahead of an American Football game.

The other time was so far back in the mists that I can't recall much about it, other than that it was a big hurling game and that I mortified my Clare-born da by shouting for a corner inside the first five minutes. I think that was the point at which he realised that he had lost his son to soccer, despite valiant attempts to get me hurling from the moment I could walk. Apparently, I was quite nifty with stick and ball but the only thing which endures to this day from that failed indoctrination is a hurley-grip in golf a sport at which no-one has ever accused me of being nifty.

That's just the way things went. GAA was over here and I went over there, fatally ensnared by the holy trinity of George Best in '68, Pele in '70 and, in between, Shamrock Rovers completing their famous six-in-a-row.

I never really crossed the line again, although plenty of others did. When Dublin started flying in the 1970s, the ranks of Heffo's Army were swelled by defectors from Milltown and Dalymount, and a lot of them never bothered to come back. It's an over-simplification, I know the advent of Sunday soccer on ITV was the real culprit in terms of declining crowds in the League of Ireland but the sense lingered that a lot of the defectors were in Croker for no other reason than to better recreate the Stretford End.

Like the Murphys, I'm not bitter, but to this day, this is one Dub who always takes a certain amount of quiet pleasure when the Dubs are beaten.

Not that I'm about to reveal this shameful truth right now, standing, as I am, in intimate, sweaty communion with my fellow Dubs on Hill 16, minutes before kick-off oops, sorry, throw-in at the Leinster Final. And the first thing to say, is that it's good to stand.

After Hillsborough, the soccer authorities deemed it prudent to scrap the terraces. You could understand their motives, but the cure was over-zealous. The fact is that no-one ever died from standing on a terrace; they died as a result of hooliganism (Heysel) or over-crowding (Hillsborough). An enlightened approach to design and crowd control might have saved the unique atmosphere of the terrace as a feature at big games, but it wasn't to be. The result, clearly evident at Lansdowne Road and throughout the Premiership, is that what football gained in terms of creature comforts, it lost in raw atmosphere.

The same cannot be said of Croker. The stadium may be sufficiently state of the art to induce slack-jawed admiration whilst placating even the prawn sandwich brigade but, on the Hill, it must be the same as it ever was all shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity and enough sustained volume to leave a ringing in the ears. (For the safety record, however, it should be pointed out that the aisle on my right, almost directly behind the goal, was a solid mass of humanity by the time the game got under way).

There's a good deal of sportsmanship on the Hill too. A couple of Laois fans are spotted in the throng, but the chant of "Hill 16 is Dublin only" is sung with good humour rather than any sense of threat. Similarly, when the lap of honour of the Laois minors reaches the Hill, the initial knee-jerk booing is quickly drowned out by generous applause.

And when the main event gets under way, there's nothing in the first half to spoil the party mood of the boys and girls in blue. All the action is way down at the Canal End, as the Dublin forwards rack up the points.

Fleeting visits to the Hill by Laois are greeted with a chorus of "Who are ya? Who are ya?" And even when the visitors get clean through, Dublin 'keeper Stephen Cluxton is there to foil Chris Conway with a terrific point-blank save. It's one of those moments when you feel in your gut that it's bound to be the Dubs' day. Except, of course, that Dublin have a reputation for doing it the hard way if they do it all. And so the second-half unfolds as a mirror image of the first. Again, all the action is at the Canal End, but this time it's Laois who are suddenly exchanging swift passes and ripping the Dubs' defence to shreds.

As they haul themselves back to level terms and then, with six minutes of normal time left, get their noses in front, it's clear even to this inexpert eye that the endlessly mobile Ross Munnelly, all pace and swerve, is a cut above the rest betcha he's a handy soccer player.

The soaring stands around three sides of Croker now appear to be inhabited exclusively by Laois people, all of them in that state of unhinged spiritual ecstasy familiar to the born-again. By contrast, the mood on the Hill has turned ugly. Dublin players who were gods in the first half are now worse than useless. The language is as blue as the Arnott's jerseys. Even the vile "c.u." word is heard yes, Laois men are now being roundly abused as "culchies."

But, for Dubs, it all comes right again at the death. In a thrilling finale but one which visits a cruel and unusual punishment on Mick O' Dwyer's men Tomás Quinn takes a leaf out of the rugby book by stepping up to kick an injury-time 45 between the posts. The Hill erupts, and I hang on for dear life to the crush-barrier, as people bounce and hug and roar and punch the air. Then comes the final whistle, and a blue avalanche flows down the Hill, over the hoardings, under the netting and out onto the pitch.

It's been a week of personal sporting contrasts, from being one of 2,500 at the Oval last week for a Champions' League tie between Glentoran and Shelbourne, to Croke Park on Sunday, and a crowd of 81,024. And me. For sure, the Irish soccer fan can't but be envious of this special thing the GAA has. Even dear old Lansdowne Road on a great day would struggle to match the atmosphere in Croker on a championship Sunday. Then again, Dublin won't get to go to a World Cup. (Ah, but will Ireland? As they say, that's a question for another day).

Meantime, a final question for the foot-soldiers on the Hill: is there any chance you might add to your limited range of battle hymns? On Sunday, there was one half-hearted rendition of Molly Malone and one perfunctory blast of the Rare Old Times. Otherwise, it was one version of 'C'mon you boys in blue' after another, until I lost count not to mention my hearing. To put it in the vernacular of my brothers and sisters on the Hill: In the name of jayzes, can yez not learn another bleedin' song? Tanks.