Stadium gets universal approval as rugby and football fans say they've arrived home, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
IF YESTERDAY’S opening of the Aviva stadium was an awards ceremony, the Straight-Talker trophy would go to soccer fanatic Davy Keogh of “Davy Keogh Says Hello” banner fame. Here was a man prepared to say out loud what everyone else was thinking:
“We’re back home now. Thank God. No disrespect to the GAA, but Croke Park wasn’t the place for soccer.”
Nor for rugby, to be honest. But the oval ball fraternity settled for a diplomatic, sotto voce, “Welcome back to the home of Irish rugby” and the odd gloating reference to the GAA’s sudden interest this week in offering roof tours of Croker. But the words of the IRFU’s Philip Browne were gracious and truthful: “The GAA showed us the way.”
The words of the FAI’s chief executive, John Delaney, were the most heartfelt, with an almost Boy’s Own quality, as he spoke of the building he likened to a “colosseum”.
“If you didn’t look forward to today, I don’t know what you’d look forward to . . . My best memory forever will be this day.” In that context, the Air Corps’ four-plane flyover seemed utterly appropriate. In truth, only a lifeless soul could fail to be uplifted by the final revelation of that soaring, swirling wave of glass, concrete and steel called – like it or not – the Aviva stadium. A place that for all its bygone heroic, heart-thumping, romantic associations, was once “a monument to grey”, in the words of Keith Wood, “a truly horrible place empty . . . Now it’s a thing of beauty. It’s iconic. Majestic.”
The media’s spine-tingling moment came when operations manager Bill Enright led us through the players’ tunnel and out into the sunlit stadium with its glowing, jewel-like sward, the light pouring through the translucent roof over the Havelock End, the pitch (and imagined gladiators) almost touchable from the ranks of green and white seating (and the imagined roaring crowd).
“It’d put the hairs up on the back of your neck,” said Davy Keogh, as four gardaí took photographs of each other with the pitch in the background.
In the players’ dressingroom, each numbered Irish rugby jersey hung ready in its special alcove, an oval ball casually placed beside them. Former Munster and Irish hooker turned media pundit Frankie Sheahan had high praise for the little drawers and lockers for each player – features outsiders might have taken as a given. To a denizen of the monument to grey, however, these are innovations. He was also mightily taken with the warm-up room – to an outsider, a breeze-block-lined hall with plastic grass; to a player, blessed relief from premature wintry exposure.
Similarly, 15 showers in an open area and hydrotherapy pool (home team only) would hardly seem remarkable to most top international athletes. Here they represent a whole new level of comfort, while the spacious medical room, hospital beds and stretchers at the ready serve as a reminder of what these athletes lay on the line for others’ entertainment.
The functionality contrasts sharply with the comforts of the President’s reception area, flanked with identical soccer and rugby suites for privileged invitees, the glass cabinets already lined with morale-raising silverware, such as the 2004 Triple Crown on the rugby side; nothing, so far, in the soccer suite. The premium level, where the seats outside are padded and the corporate boxes are laid with plush carpets (and yesterday, flowers and champagne awaiting invitees to the Aviva suite), also brings a reminder of the differing fortunes of the two codes.
While the IRFU is believed to have oversold its premium tickets by more than a million euro and the contracts are signed on all but five of the boxes (said to be awaiting signatures), the FAI is said to be struggling to get to the 50 per cent mark on sales of tickets and boxes.
A cast of luminaries from sport, politics and the law showed up to mark the occasion, including Chief Justice John Murray, Attorney General Paul Gallagher (being squired by Pat Fitzgerald, chairman of the IRFU’s marketing committee), Minister for Sport Mary Hanafin, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, Nelson McCausland MLA, Lord Colin Sharman, chairman of Aviva. The star turn was Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who talked of the national morale-raising potential of sport and “the nation’s unbridled joy when Packie Bonner made his famous save and David O’Leary guided his penalty home against Romania, to put Ireland through to the quarter-finals of Italia ’90”.
Or Ronan O’Gara’s winning drop goal in the dying minutes of Ireland’s Grand Slam decider with Wales last year. “Great moments, great occasions, great memories.” He talked with pride of the Government’s €191 million support for the project: “It represents the past and the future, precious memories of moments of great drama and glory and the hope of even greater sporting moments yet to come.”
But in the speeches, mainly a chronicle of gratitude for all who put their backs into the three-year project, which, astonishingly, came in on time and under budget, the man who ran away with the award for Most Thanked/Most Mentioned Name was a beaming John O’Donoghue. And frankly, he was thrilled with all the acknowledgements. “I’m delighted . . . And I’m also responsible for the conference centre, though I don’t want to be accused of boasting. . .”
Ah go on anyway. “Well, I’d want to be boasting I suppose after the couple of months I’ve had. . .” The secret of his success, he said, was timing. “I timed my run when I brought the memorandum to Government that we would construct here at Lansdowne Road and the Government passed it unanimously.” Bertie Ahern got a special mention from Brian Cowen, “for doing so much to bring the funding of sport into the mainstream” of budget funding.
In fact, everyone who lifted a block got a mention, and though nearly everyone had a rueful reference to the “bumps” on the road to yesterday’s undoubted triumph, none mentioned the fact that if Bertie had got his way, they would now be sitting in a place called the Bertie Bowl, over on the northside.
Sitting modestly way down at back and clapping politely was Michael McDowell, the man widely credited (though not a word about it or him here) with scuppering that Ceaucescuesque vision, in favour of Lansdowne Road. So is he proud? “I am proud,” he said with a rueful smile. “This is my baby.”