Hello to the Hill
Earlier this year, therefore, when sent to cover their first clash with Meath in the Leinster championship, I racked my brains trying to think of the last time I saw the men in sky blue in the flesh.
It was quite a jolt when I realised it was the 1983 All-Ireland semi-final replay against Cork in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. For reasons that are legally obvious I don’t count one or two unverifiable sightings since then in Copper Face Jack’s.
Some random memories of that game in 1983 include the elderly man sitting next to me shouting “Cork, Cork, Cork” over and over again with no appreciable tune or rhythm; Barney Rock trotting stealthily into the corner-forward slot, where he was followed by Cork’s best player in the first game, Jimmy Kerrigan — thus removing Kerrigan’s half-back platform for surging upfield; and Joe McNally’s deft finish into the City End goal, or Hill 17, as the Dubs renamed it for the day.
Something else that stuck with me since then was the genuine sense of trepidation in Cork ahead of the Dublin hordes. The incipient arrival of thousands of men anywhere would cause a little nervousness — I was used to fear stalking the streets of Cork ahead of the annual choral festival, for instance — but while female children weren’t being sent to stay with country cousins and shop-fronts weren’t exactly boarded up, even then the nervousness seemed a little excessive to me.
Anyway. There were no significant incidents that I can recall. The Dubs came south and won, and then the caravan rolled north again. Like Attila and his forces, though with more sky-blue tops than the yak-skins favoured by the fashion-conscious Hun.
Your average GAA crowd, even on the biggest days in the calendar, wasn’t the kaleidoscope of colour then that it is now, mind you. Looking at old footage of GAA games, the crowds in attendance can sometimes resemble a convention of tweed enthusiasts, with the occasional sunstroke victim/crazy non-conformist sporting a scarf or paper hat in his county’s colours.
The reason I bring this up is that at the Dublin-Meath clash earlier this summer the weather didn’t play its part — quelle surprise — and the capacity crowd in Croke Park that afternoon obviously decided a sensible rain jacket was preferable to getting soaked though their Arnott’s or Menolly top.
The overall effect was to bring me back to 1983: vast crowds of people in dark clothing, roaring and swaying in the peculiarly dull daylight you can get in Croke Park on a sunless day. Normal service has since been resumed, with the Hill its usual blue self for big games.
However — and this is by way of being my actual point — whether dark or bright, the intimidating effect of the Hill in full cry has to be seen, heard, and experienced through most of the senses available, to be fully appreciated.
AFTER the Meath game I wrote that I felt some sympathy for Graham Geraghty, who was the target of the Hill that day. To say the abuse rained down on Geraghty that day would be a gross understatement, and while obviously it’s a compliment to be feared, etc, you had to hand it to the Meath player, given the circumstances.
People point out that Dublin have an advantage in playing all their big games in Croke Park and that their contribution to the GAA’s coffers gets them preferential treatment, as seen in delaying the throw-in for big games — a far bigger problem than just inconveniencing tv viewers, by the way; teams running on a tight warm-up routine are discommoded by this. The frequently-aired criticism that many Dubs fans are seen as non-genuine GAA people, though, you can put in the bin; you’d swear every other county had pure-blooded Gaels following them.
Despite all of that, you wouldn’t be without them. What else would unite everybody else?
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