The day Croke Park took on the mantle of the centre of democracy in Europe

There was a time when the centre of democracy in Europe was situated in Ireland. Not at government headquarters off Kildare Street in Dublin, but just north of the Liffey, at GAA headquarters. What was particularly interesting about the claim was the pivotal moment in world history in which it was made.

The 1939 All-Ireland hurling final took place on the day the lights went out across Europe for a second time. Kilkenny squeezed to a one-point victory over Cork on the third day of September in a game marked by a torrential downpour during the second half.

It became known as "The thunder and lightning final", a rather curious way to remember a match that had hardly needed a distinguishing feature – it was, after all, played just hours after Neville Chamberlain declared Britain was at war with Germany.

While future taoiseach Jack Lynch struggled to keep the Rebels in the hurling decider, nations were declaring which side they would fight for on the day the second World War began.

Six years later, on the morning of September 2nd, 1945 – four months after the war ended in Europe – Japan formally surrendered on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, thus ending the second World War.

Strangely, the day also coincided with an All-Ireland hurling final, with Tipperary and Kilkenny players walking on to the Croke Park pitch just a few hours later – serving up an eight-goal thriller. (Kilkenny lost, and remarkably, would also lose to Cork in a 10-goal final the following year).

Considering the hardship of the time, the 1945 match programme was an impressive, advert-full, 26 pages, which included an extraordinary editorial-style piece about Croke Park’s place in the newly emerging world.

It began: “Some there may be who look on Croke Park as just a green field within a city, bordered by streets, a railway and a canal; a place where crowds watch athletics on Sundays and newsboys cry programmes and girls cry the colours – in accents sadly nasal from the forgotten streets – of counties many of them will never hope to see.”

There continued to be pride and confidence in every sentence – along with a timeless chill.

“But those who think Croke Park is just a field have never felt the terrific thrill of an All-Ireland; the all-eradicating joy of just being there, when the bands play the teams around the pitch and whole, vast, colourfully clad crowd stand silently for the Anthem and the terribly tensed up feeling is released in a wild and frantic cheer.”

Quickly, though, the piece veered from sport to social class, and particularly why “the playing fields of the other nations differ indeed from Croke Park.

“There are famous fields where famous games are played, but their clientele is marred by class distinction. A section, perhaps, of the nation watches there.”

What the writer would have thought of an €80 ticket (with no chance of lifting children over the stile) we don’t know – though they would surely have approved this week being bookended by more than 160,000 spectators, from all corners of Ireland and from all walks of society, entering the GAA’s main stadium.

In 1945, almost 70,000 spectators were witnesses to Tipperary’s victory over their neighbours.

“How many places have claimed to be the centres of democracy in Europe! I would say that when you are standing on Hill 16, and the All-Ireland, hurling or football, is at its height, and girls and lads from the two counties in question are excelling each other in the art of healthy repartee, that very step on which you stand can lay the greatest claim to that elusive honour.”