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DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Sunday
February 25 2007
43-13 Magnificent
What a magnificent day yesterday was.
Not just because the Irish Rugby team absolutely played England off the pitch to record a massive 43-13 victory, though that was a joy that will live with me and all who witnessed it for a long time. The whole day was wonderful, magic, memorable and will go down in Irish sporting history as one of the greatest occasions ever.
When the English team stood tall to hear their anthem played you could almost hear the soft intake of breath from the 80,000 plus spectators in anticipation of what was coming. It began, and God Save the Queen rang out so loud and clear over the grounds that I honestly thought for a moment that the Irish crowd were joining in.
Until the Irish anthem began that is - huge front row forwards had tears running down their faces, the cameras panned across the crowd, projecting onto the big screen images of rows of people either crying or with their eyes shut tight, singing for all they were worth. Really, the game was all over and in the bag right there.
Those media fools who had talked grimly of the potential for trouble, of crowds of protesters and of the risk that the English would be booed, their anthem shouted down, were proved more wrong than even those with a smidgen more faith in Irish sports fans ever thought they would be.
That was clear even before the game when it was painfully obvious how completely out of tune with the occasion the small, no, tiny, group of protesters outside the stadium seemed. Especially the fool holding aloft his 'No Foreign Games' placard while wearing the jersey of Scottish soccer team Glasgow Celtic!
Croke Park was a ramshackle ground far from its modern splendour when in 1920 the British Black and Tans responded to the IRA killing of 14 of their agents by turning their guns on innocent players and spectators, killing 12 people in the crowd and a young player on the pitch. Both events were just part of a long litany of horrors which have hung like a dead weight from Ireland, part of a history that seemed never to let go of the present.
Yesterday the few seconds of absolutely silent anticipation that preceded the playing of the English anthem was probably the loudest sound of a very noisy day, it was the sound of a country that was ready, finally, to leave the past behind, honour it but not dwell on it and certainly not let it continue to poison their future.
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