Welcome to Croke Park, feel free to make noise.

  In the closing minutes of Chelsea’s recent 2-0 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield in the FA Premiership the Sky Sports cameras panned to Chelsea’s wildly entertaining one man theatre show manager, the indomitable Portuguese Jose Mourinho. 

 As the scouse hoards belted out the traditional end of game chorus of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ you couldn’t help but feel that Mourinho was breathing in the heartbeat of what is one of the last vestiges of real passion is a sports stadium in Britain.  To even see the inside of Stamford Bridge can cost to the top-end of ninety euros.  The working mans game indeed. 

 This weekend the premier stadium of Irish sport, Croke Park, will heave to the rhythm of eighty two thousand souls as Dublin welcome Tyrone to the hallowed sod for the first game under floodlights in the Drumcondra venue.  The pubs around Croker will ring to the sound of true blues and, if they arrive on time, they’ll be treated to the sight of GAA President Nicky Brennan flicking the first switch that starts the meter running on the electricity bill for the floodlights. 

 Ever since Cork entertained Kerry in Pairc Ui Rinn in the first ever National League game played under lights a couple of years back, it has been clear that the way forward for national games in the country was the atmosphere provided by the dawning of the nighttime lights.  There is nothing Irish people love more than to treat a sporting fixture as a social occasion and the sight of Croker at night time should have Mountjoy square buzzing come Saturday evening.

The real stars of the show of course will be the Dublin and Tyrone footballers, sharing together in the historic occasion.  The lads you can bump into on the Sunday while strolling into the shop for your pint of milk.  Real sportsmen, real fans, a real stadium real atmosphere.

It will be interesting to see if the rugby and soccer brethren can match the pounding din from Croker come their international days out.  It has to be said that the atmosphere generated from the old Lansdowne Road was much in keeping with the ramshackle old appearance of the South-side venue over it’s last fading years.  Indeed, eager viewers of RTE’s coverage of these games in the pre-Sky era would have heard the strains of ‘Silent night’ emanating from a few wags in the seats during a game against Israel in the Brian Kerr era.  Even the affable Kerr seem to lose entertainment value within the old concrete bowl. 

The IRFU has decided to charge supporters eighty euro for stand tickets and thirty for terrace tickets for the privilege, while, as well documented in another outstanding piece of PR for the FAI, they raised ticket prices by 32% for the switch over O’ Connell Bridge.  You will now pay between fifty and seventy euro for a ticket to view Stan’s stooges.  Not that there is anything much to complain about, supply and demand and so on.

Yet it puts into perspective the fantastic value that the GAA always provides for its patrons when they visit Croke Park.  For a better product as well.

Now, don’t get the wrong impression, this isn’t a rant through the narrow eyes of grumpy, wait for following posts for that, but consider this.  Stephen Staunton’s latest Irish squad contains professional sportsmen that would come in at the ‘honest but journeyman’ range of the market rather than the colourful characters of the GAA world. 

GAA characters can relate to a Jason Sherlock, a Henry Shefflin, a Diarmuid O’ Sullivan, a Colm Cooper, an Eoin Kelly, a Davy Fitzgerald, a Kieran McGeeney - the list is endless, sportsmen who are masters of their craft, and not only that, in the highly sanitised Sky Sports editions of English football, but also characters of the highest order, they draw adulation and ire in equal amounts depending on the supporters you speak to. 

But for the Irish squad? Stephen Hunt, an honest Waterford boy, but he would draw as much excitement from a crowd as mayonnaise would extract from a limp lettuce leaf.  The list is equally endless.  Wayne Henderson, Nick Colgan, Darren Randolph, Ian Harte, Jonathan Douglas, Alan Quinn, Andy Keogh, Stephen Elliot, distinctly average if honest pros from the backwaters of English football.  These are the men expected to draw noise levels reminiscent of a U2 concert from the stands around Croker.

The rugby troupe might be able to point to superb, truly skilled international sportstars the ilk of Brian ‘ Driscoll, Paul O’ Connell, Ronan O’ Gara and Jerry Flannery when the hot whiskey and steak sandwich brigade hit the Hill, but let them not convince you of the true skill element of rugby when compared to the national games of football and, especially, the ancient craft of hurling. 

One suspects that opening Croke Park to these sports might be the best advertisement it has ever given it’s own games.  For how can Croke Park move to same beat as when the Dubs are in full flow in the thick of summer, or the Rebels or the Cats roll into town at the business end of the hurling championships.  

Most of the supporters at these games have a tradition following Gaelic Games built into their gene pool, with a significant number having played the games competitively at some stage.  There is a true and genuine sense of pride, no genetically modified Sky passion or excitement here, just an honest to goodness sense of identity with the games and the team that represents their home-place.  This is what generates what no amount of millions of TV monies or wealthy Russian benefactors can create within a true sporting stadium, those genuine hair on the back of your neck moments that throw you headlong into the rush of sporting frenzy.  

To the fans that fill Croker for the rugby and soccer games, well, how many of them can lay claim to the same heritage within these games? This isn’t a simplistic criticism of soccer and rugby, I have stood on the terraces at Lansdowne for both codes.  It is the asking of a very simple question.  How many rugby and soccer fans attend their club games on a regular basis?  Munster and Leinster games fall into the representative category of major sporting occasion, as only Heineken Cup games can be described.  

What I’m asking is how many of these fans find their way to Temple Hill, the back pitch at Lansdowne, Terenure, Tolka Park or Flancare Park every second weekend?  Where is the culture of supporting a team, as a true fan does,on a regular basis? Even Maccesfield Town, in the basement positions of the last division of the English football league can count on 2,000 plus hardy souls every second weekend, a figure that many Eircom League or AIL Clubs would only be too happy of.  Surely this non-culture of attending these games must effect the atmosphere when it comes to international fixtures.  

Rest easy residents of Drumcondra, after the Dubs and Tyrone this Saturday night the noise generated from that nearby stadium might yet resemble more The Eagles than U2 in the coming months.  Just brace yourself for the passion and terror of the real games once the summer arrives.