Rebuilding the dream

DARE we speak of the green shoots of recovery?

I’m not talking about the economy, obviously. Okay, I might be the guy who tipped Liverpool for the Premier League but even I’m beginning to have doubts now about that whole soft landing thing.

Nope, I’m talking about recovery from Paris, the Hand of Gaul and all that atonal jazz. I’m talking about something that might give us reason to look beyond the horizon of next summer’s World Cup.

And that something might just be the news that the seeds for the pitch at the new Aviva Stadium – or the ground which used to be called Lansdowne Road, if you prefer – are due to be sown over the St Patrick’s weekend.

This was one of the things we learned on a guided tour of the new home of Irish football and rugby yesterday, an experience which, despite the big freeze, warmed the cockles and was sufficiently impressive to convince all but the most cynical that things really are going to get better.

A few months back, I was brought on a similar tour but, back then, the Aviva was a building site masquerading as a stadium. Now, with its roof in place, some 10,000 green seats already installed, the big screens and floodlights undergoing testing and those signature translucent panels enveloping most of the building, the Aviva is a stadium masquerading as a building site.

With an end of April completion date scheduled, there is obviously still plenty of work to do for the 900-plus employees currently on site but such is the pace of progress that, yesterday, if you squinted hard enough, you could almost make out Duffer and Josh and Drico and Paulie ducking and diving between the yellow cranes.

The swooping, curving roof, already an unmistakable feature of the Dublin skyline, might be what gives the Aviva Stadium its most obvious wow factor but, when you get down into the bowels of the place, the facilities are no less impressive.

And especially where the stars of the show are concerned. Ireland’s rugby and soccer teams will have access in their dressing room area to hot and cold hydrotherapy pools, meaning that rehab can get under way the moment they leave the pitch. For players with more urgent medical needs, dentist, x-ray and full A&E facilities are only a short hobble away while, for those rather more intractable problems, the management will be able to seek recourse to a purpose-built video analysis room.

A tour like this can dazzle you with data but, suffice to say, that the 50,000 people who will fill the Aviva Stadium are unlikely to be disappointed by their new surroundings.

Whether the teams deliver down on the pitch is another matter but, on the morning after the longest, darkest night of the year – or, again, was that Paris? – the new holy ground in Dublin 4 was definitely the place to make you dream of brighter days to come.