“We had a game out there in the early ‘80s,” says Jerry Grogan, pointing to the pitch as we walk down behind the Canal End goals, “where Niall Quinn was marked by Denis Irwin. They would only have been 10 or 11 at the time. Niall was captain of his school and he told me years later that Denis would always slag him about keeping him scoreless in Croke Park.”
Grogan has been organising games for schoolchildren in Croke Park for the best part of four decades. Heading into his final year as principal of Holy Trinity School in Donaghmede, he’s long been the driving force behind Cumman na mBunscol and organiser of the mini-games at half-time on matchdays. But if you don’t know him for that, you still know him better than you think. For Grogan is the voice of Croke Park, the stadium announcer on big days and small.
“I’m in my 37th year involved in Croke Park in one way or another. Started off organising the mini-sevens, the kids games at half-time and I’m still involved with that. I worked in the press box for 15 years, looking after all the journalists and radio and TV people. I really enjoyed that. And then, when Sean Kelly was president, he asked me to chair his PR and presentation committee in Croke Park and we made a lot of changes to the way games were being presented in Croke Park.
“The fanfare for the teams, reading out the team names, bringing out the cup onto the podium before the final and generally kind of jazzing up the music beforehand and at half-time, that kind of stuff. And then when it came to actually calling out the teams and doing stuff from the sideline, I was asked to do it and I was delighted to. And I’ve been doing it ever since, for about 15 years. I love it.”
Grogan calls himself a Kerry Blue - born and raised in Cahirsiveen, he’s lived in Dublin for 40 years. Principle of Holy Trinity School in Donaghmede in north Dublin, he’s broken the seal on his 37th - and last - year of teaching.
On Sunday, he’ll be one of the first people in the building. More importantly, he’ll have Sam Maguire in tow. On Saturday night, he will sign the canister out and bring it to RTE for Up For The Match (as he did with Liam McCarthy a fortnight ago) and around 8.30 on Sunday morning he’ll bring it in to the little auditorium behind the museum in the Cusack Stand for All-Ireland day mass at nine o’clock. He won’t leave until after teatime.
You’ve heard his voice a hundred times, be it in the stadium or in the background on the TV. There’s no bombast, no circus barking. He’ll raise it an octave or two when calling the teams out of the tunnel but that’s about it. He sits to the right of the Hogan Stand tunnel, microphone in hand, the day’s schedule in front of him. Minute’s silences, dignitaries, guest performers, half-time kids’ teams, referees, subs, blood subs, added time - they all go through him.
“There are times when I have to make an announcement that might be quite difficult to do. We have minute’s silence often for GAA people who have died and very often they can be young people who were killed in accidents. Or they could me more well-known people. I remember Seamus Heaney for example, it was such an honour to do that.
“The day of the Omagh commemoration here was one of the most difficult things I had to do. I organised children on the field in the colours of the 32 counties. And they each read out the name of a person who had been killed.
“It’s very tough. Some of our colleagues here who have worked in Croke Park, two of them in particular I remember having to read out a tribute to them in recent years. Doing that for people you have worked with for 30 or 40 years is extremely difficult. But it’s very important to their family or to people who are living abroad and who are listening in or watching the coverage. That’s the other side of it.”
The gig has made him a minor celebrity, naturally. Or at least it has wedged his voice up into that status. Something as simple as ringing a taxi has sometimes led to excited shrieks of recognition down the phone.
“The funniest experience I ever had was in New York. I was looking for a sports shop to buy a particular American Football shirt and I couldn’t find it. I stopped a New York policeman to ask him. and all of a sudden I heard a voice behind me shouting, ‘Number 19 for Dublin replaces Number eight!’
“And I looked around - and it was Spiderman! A guy from Loughrea in Galway who was dressed as Spiderman doing a gig for some toy shop. And he recognised my voice even though he’d never seen me in his life.”
