A site for sore eyes

IT was the call I’d been waiting for since about the age of eight.

“Liam, what’s your boot size — you’re needed at Lansdowne Road.”

Sadly, my dreams of glory in the green shirt were about to be rudely shattered. Again.

“And you’ll need to wear a hard hat as well.”

Pardon? Sure an ‘oul bandage was all Kevin Moran ever needed even when the boots were flying thick and fast. Then again, I don’t recall the great warrior Dub ever actually having to cope with a pair of steel-toe-capped wellies. Not to mention hi-vis bib, goggles, gloves and the aforementioned hard-hat.

By the time myself and my journalistic colleagues were fully suited and booted yesterday, we looked more like rejects from a Village People tribute band than men about to strut their stuff at the home of Irish football.

The final indignity, of course, is that it’s not even Lansdowne Road any more. According to the FAI and the stadium designers, it’s now called, rather coyly, the New Stadium — and so it will remain until the naming rights are sold to one of two companies believed to be in the running..

The conventional wisdom is that it’s harder to sell naming rights for a new venue built on the site of an old one than for a venue put up from scratch on a greenfield site. Or at least harder to sell the idea to the public.

But while it might take time for people to get used to the idea of international rugby or football being played at a Lansdowne Road which is no longer Lansdowne Road, the experience of the new stadium itself should make the transition a whole lot easier to handle.

Because, to put it simply, all will be changed, changed utterly.

So speedy is the on-going construction work, that our tour of the site yesterday left little to the imagination. The signature swooping roof might not even be in place yet but the distinctive horse-shoe shape of the ground is clearly evident and, at seven levels high, the view from the upper reaches already encourages visions of boys in green in action down below.

Right now though, the main players on the “pitch” are the 500 workmen and women who are helping to make concrete reality of the dream of a new 50,000 all-seater home for Irish football and rugby.

With the work on target to meet its April 2010 opening date, Stadium Director Martin Murphy notes that there is a special atmosphere surrounding a project such as this. After all, it isn’t just another apartment block — it is about building a home fit for heroes.

“People are proud to work on something like this,” he says, “because many of them will be hoping to bring their kids here.”

The finished article will be, as they like to say in this business, state-of-the-art. That’s the big picture. But, yesterday, it was enough for us wide-eyed hacks to be wowed by some random facts ‘n’ figures — from the stadium’s 18 lifts to its 18,000 light bulbs to the news that over 1,000 kegs of beer can be stowed on site. (Funny how we filed that one away).

State-of-the-art also means improved player facilities — with hot and cold hydrotherapy pools in home and away dressing rooms — and an altogether more spectator-friendly experience, including access via a podium over the railway which will mean an end to the old crush of people trying to cross the line on Lansdowne Road itself.

There was even news to make the journos almost weep with joy. In the new press box, there’ll be a tv monitor for every two of us and, presumably, more than enough wriggle room to banish forever the memories of the old Lansdowne press box wherein an entire row of grumbling hacks would have to stand up in order to let one of their number squeeze past just to escape for a loo break. And then all stand up again, with even more grumbling, when he came back.

That said, most of our memories of Lansdowne Road, as was, are good ones but, in truth, those are mainly to do with heroics on the field of play rather than the surroundings in which they took place. (Though, let me say that I don’t think the atmosphere was ever quite the same again, after standing on the terraces was banned).

Sure, there were bad nights — like the time Combat 18 took it upon themselves to do some premature demolition work — but from the time I was brought there as a nipper for what was the venue’s first football match, against Italy, in 1971, the place was like a home from home for me, and for thousands more.

And, whisper it, but the old ground might not have entirely disappeared. Word has it that a gate and a section of wall from beside the Lansdowne pavilion have been preserved — and may yet find a place of privilege somewhere in the gleaming new stadium.