Leaving Lansdowne with mixed memories

AT a press conference on Tuesday, I asked Robbie Keane if he could recall the first time he’d attended a match at Lansdowne Road as a supporter.

He admitted that he couldn’t, which at first seemed a bit odd when you think of how much an occasion like should mean to a young football fan.

Then I realised that I too was struggling to remember my introduction to the old venue in Ballsbridge — blame too many years, too many games and, in fairness to myself, a good deal many more of both than even the prolific Mr Keane still has under his belt.

I knew for sure that it was a game against Italy way back in the early 70s, when a family friend brought this wide-eyed young fella along to his first international match.

Up until then I’d fed my growing footie fever on a diet of chaperoned trips to Milltown so an excursion to rugby headquarters was a novel outing in every respect.

Such memories as I have of the day are impressionistic: the vivid blue shirts of Italy, the awareness that there were giants on the pitch I’d seen on telly during the World Cup in Mexico and yet, despite the thrilling scale of it all, a vague lingering sense of a child’s big day out spoiled. Which can only mean that Ireland lost. As, indeed, they did, for this must have a 1-2 European Championship defeat to Italy in 1971, with Jimmy Conway getting the consolation goal.

It was hardly the beginning of a love affair with international football in Dublin 4. Dalymount still seemed to me to be the right and proper home for the Irish team, a throwback to the fresh excitement of merely glimpsing the floodlights towering over Phibsboro for the very first time. And it was in Dalyer too, three years later, that I would first experience an authentically brilliant Irish performance in the flesh, my schoolboy ticket gaining me admittance to the huge crowd which thrilled to Don Givens hat-trick on a day when a long-haired Liam Brady made his debut alongside Johnny Giles – he was never plain ‘John’ back then – as Ireland demolished the Soviet Union 3-0.

But it was Lansdowne Road which would eventually provide the springboard for Irish football to make the great leap forward from too many setbacks and too few highs, to something closer to sustained success in qualifying for the finals of the major tournaments.

The Italia ‘90 campaign stands out both for the winning performances and the electric atmosphere in which the games were played. Looking back, it’s easy to be glib about the ‘Ole, Ole’ years, but they were unprecedented at the time and, with the terraces positively heaving in the days before the dreaded bucket seats, made for a series of spine-tingling occasions, not least on the day when Michel put through his own goal and the resulting 1-0 victory over Spain put Ireland well on the road to World Cup qualification for the first time.

There were plenty of other highs, of course. A personal favourite was being part of the lucky few to see Ireland beat Brazil in a badly attended friendly in 1987, Liam Brady wrong-footing the entire defence with a typically inventive goal. Unfortunately, I missed the 1-0 win over Holland in 2001 but am happy to take the word of players, press and supporters alike, that you just had to be there to fully appreciate the buzz. And there was almost a throwback to the glory days in the recent clash against the Czech Republic when the aftershock of the Cyprus humiliation saw both team and supporters rally to the cause to generate another of those edge-of-the-seat nights.

Lows? The scoreless draw against the Swiss which marked the end of Brian Kerr’s reign was a recent one, and down all the years there were too many other dispiriting days and nights to mention. But the Lansdowne riot, which brought an abrupt end to what was shaping up to be a cracking friendly against England in 1995, belongs to its own realm of infamy, the terrified faces of parents and kids putting disappointments on the field of play into perspective.

So, in the end, I bid farewell to the old Lansdowne with the inevitable mixed feelings, though I’m glad that, all going according to plan, Irish football won’t actually have to move home.

A football ground accessible by foot from the centre of town seems to me to be far preferable to something, however space-age, looming in isolation on the outskirts of the city.

But, of course, what ultimately makes for a great theatre of football is not the setting itself but the interaction between the stage and the audience.

After all the eventful years, it’s all those players, supporters and staff, past and present, who have really taken the final bow at the old ground.