Sinead Jackman is tour co-ordinator at the Aviva Stadium, Dublin
I STARTED IN May when the stadium opened. My youngest child was due to start school and my husband, Bernard, was retiring from professional rugby.
We were wondering how it would be with both of us knocking around the house, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to get a job.
A friend told me about this, so I applied. I had previously worked in tourism in Manchester and my family had the Shannon Oaks Hotel in Portumna for years, so my background is in hospitality.
I work Monday to Thursdays and when events are on. We recently had Michael Buble perform and, of all the staff, I’m his biggest fan.
However, I was at a friend’s wedding on the day the staff got to meet him. They keep taunting me with the photograph they had taken of him with them, but at least I did get to see him in concert.
On a typical day, I get the Dart into work for 9.30am and check e-mails before tours start. They run from 10am to 4pm, but are never repetitive because each group is different and that energises you.
Older people ask about the pitch’s history and schoolkids love to talk about the excitement of match day.
Because we’re a conference venue we get a lot of delegates as well as tourists, and many of them like the engineering and architectural aspects of the stadium.
Tours last an hour and start with a 10-minute film before I take the groups off to see everything. We go to the players’ changing room, to whichever hospitality areas aren’t being used, and out the tunnel onto the pitch before going up to the highest point to get a bird’s eye view.
The wow factor you get walking out under that tunnel onto the pitch is still amazing to me. The other thing that amazes me is just how hard the groundsmen have to work.
There are four of them and it takes two of them four hours each to mow the grass, which they do every second day, fertilising it in between.
They don’t use ride-on mowers because they want to protect the pitch, so they use push mowers like you’d use in your garden.
The pitch itself is unusual in that it is seed sown and not just rolled-out turf you get in a lot of stadiums.
In fact, it’s the old Lansdowne pitch. It was taken up and stored under special conditions in Newlands Cross for three years while the building work was going on at the stadium.
People are always amazed at that, but it shows you how important a good pitch is to good play.
Once the last tour is over I’ll check my e-mails again and call security to make sure everything is locked up before heading home.