Despite win, fans not yet at home in Castle Croker

FROM Fortress Lansdowne to Castle Croker, Ireland’s first home and away soccer match was as much a voyage of discovery for the fans as the footballers.

There was a mental map of how things should look — a spectacular stadium, twice the usual number of supporters, no injury worries — all the features of an afternoon’s easy conquest.

But there were also dire warnings etched deep in the mind. Here be dragons, the potentially fiery Welsh who would like nothing better than to dispatch the Irish to the dungeon of defeat. And here be demons, the memories of San Marino that haunted and taunted every green-shirted crusader.

The voyage began far from Croke Park’s turnstiles, starting on Dublin’s O’Connell Street where a band of singing Welsh supporters met a crowd of Irish all making their way on foot to the stadium.

After vigorous attempts to out-decibel one another, they united in a chorus of “If the English aren’t your favourite team, clap your hands”, or rather more robust words to that effect.

The good-humoured rivalry continued inside Croker and never was the national anthem of an opposing side greeted so enthusiastically as when winsome Welsh warbler, Katherine Jenkins, a mezzosoprano mixture of Maria Callas and Britney Spears, stepped forward to sing for her countrymen.

So far, so good, but the real test was whether the 70,000-plus fans would hold their nerve once the starting whistle blew. The sound check went well, the first bars of the customary chants booming impressively around the arena, but the visuals were a bit lacking.

The seamstresses union will need to agree to some hurried overtime if sufficient banners are to be stitched together for Wed-nesday to supplement the sparse array that did the job in homely Lansdowne but got lost in colossal Croker.

Some work needs to be done on the choral coordination too for sound clearly travels slower around a bigger stadium and the stands were sluggish in picking up the strains of each new chant.

A full 66 minutes went by before anyone got up the nerve to attempt a Mexican wave and that too could do with practice as it appears harder to work up the same degree of giddy daftness in a stadium the size of, well, Mexico.

Altogether it was not a bad first performance by the Irish fans considering the unsettling influence of unfamiliar territory, and the fact that Stephen Ireland took up where he left off in San Marino helped banish some of the demons along with the dragons.

However, the castle will be under siege again on Wednesday when Slovakia trundle into town. For fan and footballer alike the question is whether they can keep the drawbridge raised on their new away home venue once more.