It wasn’t yet nine o’clock on Saturday night and already the Croke Park ground staff were out with their mops and buckets. The grass will next be used this coming Friday and Saturday for the GAA’s latest attempt to fix the ills of Gaelic football and so the surface needed scrubbing. There are quite enough new lines on the pitch in the proposals laid out by Jim Gavin’s football review committee (FRC) – the last thing they need is faint old rugby markings confusing matters further.
Important and all as they are, the interprovincial football matches next weekend won’t come near to matching this as an occasion. Croke Park rocked and rolled all night, even though the game itself was over as a contest almost as soon as the 80,468 crowd had taken their seats. Everyone involved knew that it was no ordinary run-out.
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“It was such an amazing day, as an occasion,” said Leo Cullen afterwards. “We’re very appreciative of the crowd, the turnout. It’s amazing how special that is. The anticipation for the game, you get the sense that people are buying into this as an event. And yet it feels like it’s more than just a round-four URC game, doesn’t it? But I think the players from both teams, they delivered.”
Leinster began as they meant to go on. This applied even to the pregame pleasantries, during which an extremely annoying chap wearing a Viking helmet did that usual rugby thing of wildly overselling an already virtually sold-out event. His inane chatter was brought to an end by a crunching tackle from behind by the guy in the Leo the Lion costume. Whether or not it was all a part of the show, it came as a blessed relief.
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Because a night like this was so clearly its own thing. The last thing it needed was the PT Barnum routine. Think about it – this was an early season game in club rugby’s secondary competition between two teams for whom things will have to go astonishingly arseways for them to end the season next May anywhere other than in the top eight of the table. And yet there were still 80,468 paying guests in the house.
That’s kind of ridiculous, really. In one sense, you could make it out to be a fine tribute to the age-old rivalry between these two. But on the night itself, it felt more like just a grand night out in the city. It was crisp, it was cold, it was dry. Sure what else would you be doing?
For the teams themselves, they did what teams who come to Croker are very careful to do. They praised the place to the skies and fell over themselves to thank everyone involved for letting them in through the door.
“It’s so special, isn’t it?” said Cullen. “Like, even there, just to drive into the stadium across town, it’s just magic now. As I said, that privileged word. We feel so lucky to be able to perform here.
“There were a lot of Munster fans in the ground this year and they made a lot of noise over the course of the warm-up. And it just adds to your occasion, doesn’t it? It was a very, very special occasion.”
That went for the losers as well as the winners. Calvin Nash came in to talk to the media afterwards, bruised as much by the disallowed try in the first half as by anything physical. But for all that losing stung, he gave the place and the occasion its due.
“Yeah, look, obviously we’re all massively excited to come here, especially with the history and everything. We’re just disappointed now, to be honest. Because we feel like probably the start of the game let us down a tiny bit. We were chasing the game for the whole thing after that, which isn’t ideal. But it was a massive occasion and obviously we talked about being massively privileged to be a part of it.”
Occasionally, this stuff can get a little grating. As though visiting teams from other sports are laying it on a little thick when it comes to Croke Park, overdoing the gratitude at being let play in the place because they don’t want to cause offence. But then you listen to someone like Graham Rowntree, as grizzled and unromantic a soul as has ever set foot on the grass here, and all you can do is submit. This was a hell of a night, in a hell of a place.
“We came here to play,” the Munster coach said as he finished up. “We fired shots. We let ourselves down on occasion with our accuracy. But I thought we did the occasion justice. We were ready for this game. It’s a special occasion.
“I’m not sure any of those lads will play in a club game in front of that amount of people in an incredible stadium. I’ve been around the world at stadiums. I’ve not been to this one before. Wow. Yeah – wow. It’s a shame we’re not leaving here with a W.”
