CAST OF CHARACTERS
John Hayes, Simon Best, Gordon D'Arcy – Ireland rugby players
Conor O'Shea – by then a former Ireland international
Nickey Brennan – GAA president
Raphael Ibanez – France rugby player
Paddy "Rala" O'Reilly – Ireland squad bag man
Charlie McMickan – Mascot for Ireland v England
William Moloney – father of Daniel Moloney, the mascot for Ireland v England
Miriam Lord – Irish Times journalist
Jerry Grogan – Croke Park staff member
Mark Armstrong – Conductor of the Army No 1 Band
JJ Barrett – Kerryman who withdrew his father's medal collection from the Croke Park museum in protest at the playing of God Save The Queen
Ireland v France February 11th, 2007
Jerry Grogan: The whole thing with Rule 42 was that it was part of the GAA ethos. It was more than just the overturning of a rule. Nobody knew how it would be received.
Raphael Ibanez: As captain I always felt it was important to be aware of the context before a big international game. So, a few days before the game, I remember doing my own research to find out what Croke Park means to Irish people. Once I knew what really happened there I organised a team meeting to briefly explain to everyone that in Ireland there's not a better place than Croke Park to define the link between history and sport.
John Hayes: The Cork and Tipp fellas enjoyed the slagging that week – saying us Limerick fellas won't know how to get to Croke Park. But in my case it was actually true. I'd never been there.
Simon Best: I had been there in the good old Armagh days. We had gone down for the All-Ireland final in '03 and a couple of semis, like the Dublin game in '02. Our part of the world is GAA country. Even one of the coaches back then, Brian Canavan, would have been a Poyntzpass native so there was good history there.
Gordon D'Arcy: Having played hurling in Wexford for most of my childhood, stepping on to Croke Park to represent Ireland wasn't lost on me. It's something GAA players rarely get to do. My idols growing up, Martin Storey or George O'Connor, will never get to represent their country in hurling. I may never get to represent Wexford but I stood on their pitch representing our country.
Jerry Grogan: Seán Kelly [GAA president when Rule 42 was overturned] took a massive risk. A massive risk. He faced a lot of opposition but he has great courage and he stood for his convictions. A lesser man would have been put off his stride but he was determined that this was the best thing for the association.
Nickey Brennan: It was a chance to show the GAA off to the outside world and I was very conscious of that. The amount of interviews I did with foreign press, either on the phone or in person. The interest was huge.
Hayes: The week before the French came we went in for a look around. It was our new home and we weren't familiar with it. We wanted to just get used to it more than the French fellas.
Mark Armstrong: The Artane Band always resided in that slot in Croke Park. But we would have played the occasional Leinster final, smaller matches. I actually had performed on one of those occasions. You know the way the Artane Band marches the teams around in the parade? We had never done that. We had to learn it. But they don't do it in rugby so these matches weren't anything we weren't used to. Except the stadium was bigger, that's all.
Paddy "Rala" O'Reilly: The French game broke my heart a bit.
Hayes: We had a bad start. Ibanez scored a great try. He was a brilliant player.
Geordan Murphy (From The Outsider): The previous week I had been doing tackle drills with Neil Back. "Drop your hips and hit low, Geordie." We did it at least 20 times, like you would teach a six-year-old. Yet when Ibanez went at my inside shoulder, I did an impression of a well-oiled turnstile. Inexcusable.
Ibanez: When you play in the front row you don't have too many opportunities to score a try like that. I didn't cross the whole field with the ball in hand, let's be honest, I didn't have too much to run. But I received a perfect pass from our wing Vincent Clerc, and I went into that space in front of me.
Hayes: France embraced the wide open spaces of the place. That's what you notice when you first get out on the field as a rugby player. The pitch was inside in the middle of the pitch because a hurling field is so much bigger. It was marked smaller for rugby but there was still that feeling of it being massive.
Ibanez: Am I the first rugby player ever to score a try at Croke Park? I wish it would be an Irish player instead.
Murphy: My thought process after it happened was clear and simple: I have to fix this immediately. Get the ball. Attack. The golden opportunity arrived 15 minutes into the second half. Even before Pieter de Villiers threw the pass I knew I would intercept and score a try. We would win the game and all would be forgiven. I was a stride or two off warp-speed when I heard the whistle. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," said Steve Walsh. "I blew a second early. Ireland scrum." People make mistakes. Some are remembered, some aren't.
Hayes: We came back at them, mauled them 25 metres, and eventually went four points ahead – through a Rog [Ronan O'Gara]penalty – with a few minutes to go. Then there was a kick-off and we didn't secure it.
David Wallace (From No Borders): The end game was sickening, absolutely sickening. And it gets more sickening as the years go by.
Clerc try
Hayes: I don't fancy another one-on-one with Clerc. But that was what French teams could do back then, maybe not so much now. They could bust you open and score.
Ibanez: Of course when Vincent Clerc scored that final try it was pure relief. But straight after the final whistle I remember asking my teammates to go back to the changing room to celebrate the win as I thought a lap of honour in that stadium would be very inappropriate. We had to show respect to the place and the people there.
Rala: I was devastated. For the boys, not myself. When you are part of a big group – like, I'm at the bottom of the heap, let's face it, the bag man. You can't measure the heartbreak. You can think about it but you can't measure it because you are not there.
Medals of honour
Writer and former GAA star JJ Barrett is to withdraw his father's medal collection from the Croke Park museum in a protest against the playing of 'God Save the Queen' at next weekend's Ireland versus England rugby match. Mr Barrett, whose father Joe won six All-Ireland medals, has written to the director general of the GAA asking that the 23 medals be sent back to him prior to the game. The move comes as extra measures are being put in place in the run-up to next weekend's match – Irish Independent, February 19th, 2007
Brennan: To be honest, everything was always going to pale into insignificance relative to the England match. That was always going to be the game that generated all the hype and all the talk.
JJ Barrett: I didn't oppose it because it was rugby and I didn't do it because I had my head stuck in the sand. I think rugby is a great game, I think it's a tough game and I would have loved to have played it. But I knew exactly what I was doing. I still think the British national anthem is a terrible thing to have in a context where you are trying to make peace and be of assistance to the world community. It's dreadful.
Grogan: Any incident, no matter how small, would have been blown up into something major. Particularly around the anthems. Everybody feared that even in a massive crowd, it would only take one small shout at the wrong time or one pocket of the crowd to turn the atmosphere sour and undermine the thing.
Brennan: We were dealing a lot with the British Embassy. There was a lot of choreography going on behind the scenes between the Irish government, the British Embassy, even the Northern Ireland Office. There was an emphasis on all the protocols being adhered to. Because obviously people were ultra-sensitive about it.
Barrett: I got no opposition from the GAA at all. They gave them back to me without a second thought. I met a lady out the back of the Cusack Stand – they always get a lady to do these things for them – they got a lady to meet me with the medals. Just outside the museum there. I wanted them out of there before the England games.
Conor O'Shea: Going into Pennyhill Park to talk to the English players was [coach] Brian Ashton's idea. Typical Brian really. From the time he spent coaching Ireland, he knew the significance of opening up Croke Park and when dealing with young fellas you just don't want them to make a mistake, the usual stuff that people say – like "It's only a pitch" – he wanted them to be fully aware that would not be appropriate. My Dad did win three All-Ireland medals so Brian got me to speak to his players. It was ironic, considering his position now [Ireland defence coach], that afterwards Andy Farrell was one of the players who came up to ask a few more questions. Andy just wanted to know more about the actual event [Bloody Sunday] which has such a special place in Irish history.
Security Concerns
A handful of hacks, mostly English, loitered around the handball centre early yesterday morning, awaiting entry to Croke Park. Scrawled on the wall, under the GOAL sign, was some fresh graffiti: “Don’t say sorry. Say Goodbye. Brits out.” The arriving drivers and passengers craned their necks to read the act of vandalism.
These included GAA president Nickey Brennan, who – despite flashing credentials – had his car boot checked at the entrance to the Cusack Stand, a routine operation. Next came a taxi containing Brian Ashton and Phil Vickery. The security guard, perhaps flustered by the media scrum, waved the Englishmen through the gate.
Afterwards, we found our own way out of the Croke Park caverns. A Garda paddy wagon was blocking the vitriolic scribble, waiting for someone to arrive with detergent. – The Irish Times report from the captain's run on February 23rd
Brennan: I don't recall that but I would imagine it happened. There may have been different security people involved for that particular week. And it just showed how well security worked. Wasn't that great? No matter who you were, you had to prove it. It was crucial that we did our bit on that front all through the week.
D'Arcy: There were no problems that day. On the bus going up we did see a couple of eejits wearing Celtic jerseys protesting. Only about five of them.
Grogan: Crowd disruption was the big worry. Absolutely, that's what we were discussing in meetings in the run-up. There were contingency arrangements for that. But in terms of someone making a protest during the anthems, that was something that couldn't be controlled. That would have been the biggest fear, definitely. The uncontrollables. Because of the level of debate beforehand, the fear was always there that something could go horribly wrong.
Brennan: It was still a sensitive topic. There were people out there who were against the decision but accepted that it was going to happen. But there was another cohort who you were worried might have done something to disrupt it. We were afraid that there might be stoppages on the trains coming from the north or something on the roads. Something just to make the day as uncomfortable as possible.
John Inverdale [on the BBC]: We keep saying the word historic and I apologise if some of you listening, perhaps on the mainland, think we are over-egging the cake here but, believe me, it is impossible to over-exaggerate what the people on this island have been feeling about this match over the last few months.
Brennan: You would just be concerned that something could go wrong. I never felt that someone would let a bloody bomb off in O'Connell Street or anything. Well, I suppose, I can't say it wasn't in the back of my mind. But at the same time, we had gone through lots of scenarios with the gardaí. And generally, the country was excited. We were generally working off the back of a tide of goodwill.
Ireland v England February 24th, 2007
Charlie McMickan: My Mam started writing to the IRFU when I was two weeks old. Every year that went by she would write to them, sending pictures of me with a rugby ball. Years went by and we heard nothing. The last letter she wrote was when I was about five or six, and again, nothing. Mam was driving to work in Ballyhaunis when she got the call. I know exactly where she pulled in. They said they had not forgotten who I was and asked if I'd like to be the mascot for Ireland v England in Croke Park. Couldn't have worked out any better – a mascot in the best game of all time.
William Moloney (whose son Daniel was the other mascot): We were sitting with the Garda Commissioner, would you believe? We had the posh seats that day! Daniel is a special needs kid with a facial disfigurement but despite being in and out of hospital for the first three years of his life, he is like any other kid. Brian O'Driscoll had become a patron of Temple Street and the hospital were asked by the IRFU to nominate somebody. We're from a GAA background ourselves, a little town in Waterford called Knockanore.
Grogan: Conor O'Shea was there in the press box for a while that day and you could see that he was taking great pride in showing rugby people the pitch where his father had played and won an All-Ireland in 1955.
Rala: When the Irish came out I could see Brian [O'Driscoll] and I could see Phil Vickery. For some reason my eyes were focussed in on Mr Vickery's red rose – don't know why. I can still see him coming out. That Vickery look. Great man, Phil.
Armstrong: We always do the anthems alongside the Garda Band and we take it in rotation. So the way we did it, I would conduct Amhrán na bhFiann and Ireland's Call and Inspector Pat Kenny of the Garda Band would conduct the visiting anthem. So he in fact conducted God Save The Queen.
Miriam Lord: I think it actually meant more to us than it did to the English. There was a palpable tension in the air as everyone waited for the anthems to start.
Brennan: Huge tension. Everyone felt it. Now put yourself in my shoes. In the context of the watching rugby supporters everywhere, I was a nobody. But it was still our pitch and my over-riding thing was I didn't want anything to go wrong.
McMickan: Brian seemed nervous but he was still very talkative. I told him not to worry!
Armstrong: The intensity inside the stadium was extraordinary for God Save The Queen. Everyone in the place was aware of what was going on.
Lord: Is anybody going to disrupt this? Is anybody going to mess?
Armstrong: Everybody could feel the intensity go up 100 times more than it normally was. We didn't know what to expect when the anthem was played.
D'Arcy: The backdrop was incredible and there was respect for God Save The Queen.
Grogan: I was up on Level 7 and to look around the stadium and to feel the sound all around as the anthems were played. You could only stand there and think of the whole historic side of it. People were crying, on the pitch and in the stands.
Rala: The anthems were amazing. Some of the lads were in tears. Fla, and big John Hayes.
Hayes: The anthem was, I don't know what to say, I had never heard it sung with so much gusto.
Brian O'Driscoll (From No Borders): You knew how important the game was when that freak was crying.
Hayes crying
Hayes: It was just a bit overwhelming. I felt the weight of responsibility. We were trusted to look after the place and not let the country down. And the missed tackle on Clerc had been haunting me. I badly wanted to make amends. I can only say that when the waterworks came, I was as surprised as anyone.
Brennan: When God Save The Queen was being played, I was standing beside the president of Ireland and the taoiseach of the country saying, 'Jesus, did I ever think this was going to happen?' Here was God Save The Queen being sung and being respected and in my head I was going, 'This is going far too well here. Something is going to go wrong.' Then suddenly it was over.
Barrett: I watched the games on TV. I hated to hear God Save The Queen. I felt sick. I did. There was no need for it. They needn't have kissed the arses of rugby to that extent. I just can't understand how Croke Park sent out that message.
Best: The anthem is as memorable as the rest of the game. There was a lot going on behind the scenes that we had been sheltered from but those 10 minutes probably proved the downfall of England. They couldn't have anticipated just how much of an atmosphere there would be – from the eerie silence before the English anthem to the noise for ours, it probably shell-shocked them more than they could have realised.
Armstrong: I was able to hear the English anthem better than the Irish one because I wasn't conducting it. And my impression was that nearly everyone in the stadium was singing it. It was so loud. I saw YouTube footage later on of Irish guys actually singing along to it. It was huge. Obviously there were visiting supporters and people coming down from the North as well.
Brennan: There was rapturous applause. Amhrán na bhFiann was sung like it was never sung in Croke Park before. And you just wiped the sweat from your brow and said, 'Christ. That wasn't just a sporting occasion. That was something that's going to be remembered for a long time.'
Best: The fact that everyone wore their hearts on their sleeves, just seeing what it meant to everybody in our line-up was unforgettable. We all understand what it means to be part of an all-island Ireland team and the responsibility that goes with that. It was as big for me and the rest of the Ulster guys to play in Croke Park as it was for anybody. When you play rugby, coming from where we are from, there is a massive responsibility not to politicise a sport which has done so much for both communities.
Rala: One of the English chaps waved to the crowd after.
Shane Horgan (From No Borders): Martin Corry, who's a really nice guy, applauded the crowd after it.
O'Shea: After the anthems Jeremy Guscott turned to me and said 'Well, we are f**ked.' We could just feel something very special happening before our eyes.
Brian O'Driscoll (From No Borders): You can see me smiling in the huddle just before kick-off, barely able to contain myself.
Lord: And then, in typical Irish fashion: 'Aren't we marvellous people? Aren't we all very tolerant and modern and a peaceful people?' Just because we behaved ourselves. The undercurrent as well was that the thing with Martin Johnson had happened to Mary McAleese a few years earlier in Lansdowne Road. So it was a case of, 'Well, they didn't know how to behave – we'll give them a lesson in diplomacy.'
Brennan: While I was happy that everything had been done and most of the arrangements were made without any involvement from me, nevertheless you always felt that Jesus, you're wearing the oul' pin of the president and if something goes wrong, you're likely to be the first person in the firing line in the immediate aftermath to explain why. So there was that sense of nervousness about it, coupled with incredible joy and relief when it went off okay.
Rala: They said it rained, all I saw was sunshine.
Armstrong: We don't get to stay for the game. We just march off and get on the bus and head back to barracks. It's a job, after all. And weekends are our days off, generally. So it's a matter of getting back to barracks and getting home to the family. There was a time, in the good old days in Lansdowne Road, where a friendly security man might look the other way and you could slip into a seat in the West Stand. But those days were gone, even then. I used to have a competition with myself to see could I make it home and be on my couch for the start of the second half.
D'Arcy: England never got out of the blocks. The Irish players did history justice. It was not about revenge, more of a tribute.
Brennan: It was a seminal moment in history. In a very public forum, Ireland and England re-engaged at a level that they probably hadn't before.
O'Shea: Lots of incredible things happened. I think Girvan Dempsey's try was scored at the same spot where Mick Hogan was shot down.
Paul O'Connell (half-time changing-room): There's no one here who is fucking tired. I feel I haven't fucking played yet. You know what I mean? There is fucking so much more in us. We should be talking about putting up a score here. Not their purple patch. We should be going bananas now for 40 minutes.
Horgan try
After 64 minutes, Ireland led 29-13 when Denis Leamy picked off a scrum. O’Gara was 10 metres from the try line, with three Englishmen in front of him, when he turned and put a delicious alley-oop kick for Shane Horgan to field over Josh Lewsey.
Ronan O'Gara (From No Borders): I think it was fitting for Croke Park that we threw one of these in, you have to.
Shane Horgan (From No Borders): You wanted to be getting scores in Croke Park when you were growing up.
Phil Vickery (post-match): It was a stuffing.
Brian Ashton (post-match): They were better than us physically.
O'Shea: I don't think any team would have beaten Ireland that day. No team of any vintage or from any era.
Brennan: When it did go so well, you felt relief, you felt proud and you felt elated. This was real moment in time. How the hell did I manage to be part of this?
D'Arcy: Those series of events will never happen again. Ever. Not even in another life time. It was unique.
Brennan: There was a reception afterwards up on Level 5 of Croke Park and I remember Bill Beaumont coming over and thanking us for what we'd done. I would only ever have seen the man on TV before and I presume he had no idea who I was but just got directed my way. And we talked for a while and you just got this sense of appreciation of what had happened.
McMickan: I'll remember the game for the rest of my life. I'll remember the atmosphere. I could put myself back on the pitch now, running out and looking at the far side of the stand, it was full. I'll never forget Shane Horgan's try in the corner. I went home on the train that evening, still in my full kit so people recognised me.
The aftermath
Brennan: The legacy of the rental of Croke Park was something that needed to be enjoyed. I wanted to make sure that every county got a certain slice of the action. Every county got €250,000. We said to each county that they could use it in one of two ways – they could fund a centre of excellence or they could give out 10 grants of €25,000 each to clubs that wouldn't have much funding.
Grogan: There was this terrible fear that our games would be completely obliterated at schools level and that rugby and soccer would be promoted to the detriment of our games. I never believed that for one minute and that's not how it has turned out. I don't think it has had any impact. The vast majority of teachers on the ground would say it has had no impact.
Barrett: The medals were in safe-keeping in my attic ever since and I sold them about three months ago. I have them out of my life, thank God. I was very worried about them – any time I went away on a trip, I brought them in the boot of my car. I couldn't possibly leave them. they were becoming a big headache and I sold them at auction in Kilkenny.
Hayes: I went back to there for the 2011 All-Ireland final between Tipperary and Kilkenny. Great game. The wife is from Tipperary. Don't be putting in that I was cheering for Tipp though. I was very much neutral. They say you can feel an atmosphere.
Everyone in Croke Park that day made sure we could feel it. It was different from all the other days. See, some people said it was great we were playing there whereas some were within their rights to say we shouldn’t be playing rugby in Croke Park.
It created more debate than any other game we ever played. But some people who might never tune into rugby on a Saturday afternoon watched that one because of what it was. To be part of it was pretty special.
Grogan: There was great co-operation between the IRFU and the GAA right the way through. And after those games, once the Aviva was completed, the Croke Park staff got invited over for some international matches as a gesture. So it was lovely to foster those relationships.
Rala: Brian Ashton is a dear old friend of mine going back to the New Zealand and Samoa tour in 1997 [when Ashton was Ireland coach]. That night during the post-match dinner in the Shelbourne I was chatting to Brian, not necessarily about the game as I don't tend to get involved in the game. And I remember David Strettle, who scored a try that day, coming along with his cap over his blonde hair. He said, "Excuse me Brian, I just want to thank you for giving me my first cap." Ashton said back to him, "You earned it."
End of conversation.
We left the Shelbourne around 4am. Brian and I were the last two, and had we missed our respective buses back to our respective hotels so we jumped into the back of a taxi.
Ashton said to me, “Bloody hell Rala, when I arrived here last Thursday I was surrounded by security from the moment we landed and now I end up all alone with you.”
