They do their best at GAA headquarters. But they don’t always get it right…

The AIB club championship finals at Croke Park was a recent case in point. This should have been a great outing. Lovely fine St Patrick’s Day. Spring fully sprung. Very little wind. The sliotar will fly along the dry sod at Croke Park. Now to see those artists of the hurling game, Birr, take on the determined men from Dunloy in Antrim.

The thing is to go early, get a good seat, study the programme, enjoy every minute of the game, no matter how it goes. Then, just as we near Croke Park, comes dismaying news.

“Do you not realise this is an all ticket game?”
“All ticket? Well, we’ll just have to pay in at the turnstiles so.
“O no, my dear fellow. There are just two places selling tickets. One beside a pub to the north of Croke Park and the other in Fitzgibbon Street, near the Garda station.
“Only two outlets? For thousands of people?

We hurry off up the North Circular Road, then turn left up Fitzgibbon Street. Ah, there’s the ticket outlet up ahead. Some people standing about outside it. Should be no bother getting a ticket there. But wait. As we near the small cubby-hole of the Matt Talbot Credit Union offices we realise that the queue stretches right up to the top of the street. OK make haste. Then we reach Mountjoy Square and are totally flummoxed to see the queue stretching back along the pavement for sixty or seventy metres.

We take our places resignedly at the end of the queue. We soon become aware that it is shuffling along at the same pace as the famous Galapagos turtle that takes all day to move a few metres. We look at our watches.

As a sort of diversion there is an informal competition to find out who has travelled furthest to now find themselves in a long, slow moving line of followers. Two girls left Dunloy at the crack of dawn, drove to Belfast to the Central Station and caught the Enterprise Express to Dublin. Now they are shifting from one foot to another in Mountjoy Square.

“Jaysus, I’m after driving all the way from Limerick,” said a man with bloodshot eyes and a smell of stale whiskey off him. There is one fellow who actually comes from a place on the outskirts of Birr, called Crinkle. He looks at his watch peevishly. “I’m very sorry I didn’t stop in 'The Thatch' instead of coming all the way up here to stand here.”

The sun is shining out of a clear blue sky. It is pleasantly warm.
“We’re not used to that kind of sun at all,” said a farming man sullenly. “I’d much prefer it to be dull and we standing here like cattle waiting for feed”

We stand beside the black speared railings and the granite steps outside the elegant Georgian red-brick buildings of the square. This area has been written about so evocatively by James Joyce.

“Ah them buildings are fierce old, “ said a man in a critical tone.“ It would take a mint to keep them heated and painted. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re infested with rats.” He could be right, since he is in the building business himself.

Now it is coming up to the throw in and we are only reaching the corner of Mountjoy Square. It is no consolation to look back and see the long, growing queue of people behind us. We think we hear a faint roar. We look at our watches. The game is on and here we are still inching along. Now comes another faint roar. The Man from Crinkle takes out his mobile phone. He gets on to one of his friends sitting round the lounge of 'The Thatch' watching the game on television.
“Declan Pilkington is after scoring a point” he announces, in a strange mixture of pleasure and frustration.

High above, in a plane tree, one of the most extraordinary feats of building is under way. With infinite care and expertise a magpie builds a nest of twigs. It will be able to withstand the strongest winds that sway the branches back and forward. The bird gives a long crackle of satisfaction at the work in progress.

“If there’s one bird I hate it’s a magpie,” said a middle-aged woman, irritatedly. “ They raid the nests of other bird and steal the eggs and the young.”

Now the Man from Crinkle is on his mobile continuously to his pals sitting comfortably with pint in hand. Simon Whelahan has put a few over the bar he tells us.
“What about Dunloy?” ask the girls from Antrim.
“Elliot is after scoring a point just now,” he tells them consolingly.

In the eaves and gutters of the buildings beside us little sparrows hop about, chirping and chattering constantly . Their urgent repetitive twittering is loud. “It’s hard to hear anything with all them bloody sparrows kicking up such a racket,” says the man from Crinkle, showing great animosity towards these little birds as he presses his mobile to his ear. Annoyance was also directed, perhaps unfairly, at anyone wearing the Maor badge. Anger was beamed at the burly fellows manning the small door of the Credit Union office, as they shouted, “Keep moving, have your money ready”. But vindictiveness if not hatred was flung at those in charge of Croke Park who had managed to spoil the day for so many. Such a contrast between the long queue, the cramped offices of the credit union and the soaring modern stadium.

“Those people couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery,” was one of the least offensive comments heard.

It was half time before The Squinting Eye eventually took his place in a poor seat on the lower deck of the Cusack Stand.