Against Romania on a sunny evening circa late May 2004? One of the 73 I attended. Havelock Square end.
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Has to be the 1982 Football Final. On the hill with the father in the middle of a load of “hardy” Offaly men. I’d say the best hurling ones were 2009 and 2010. They were the high point in the evolution of hurling in my opinion. 2010 was the last non Waterford final I was at.
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The father was “a great GAA man” and had been going to All Irelands since the 40s. His brothers had been going since the 30s, cycling up to Dublin from Carlow for the match. Our youth was peppered with tales of Uncle Pawdrig buying an orange box to stand on to watch the All Ireland and it collapsing when a few other lads beside him tried to stand on it too. Jumping over turnstiles as a kid to sit on my fathers lap was the way I saw the first few. When I got bigger I’d sit on the steps. When we got older we’d go on the terrace. Up til some time in the 80s you could turn up on the day pay a fiver and get in and stand on the terrace for an All Ireland. I had my favourite spot on the Canal and the Hill. I saw some notable crushes , Dublin Galway in 83 and Derry in 93. That was post Hillsborough and I was more conscious of crushes but that was the worst I ever saw and I still can’t believe no one was hurt.
When the father stopped being able to go I gave it up me self except for the Waterford All Irelands. You’d get a pain in your bollix calling in favours and ringing lads and then being left with three tickets on the morning of the match.
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Fun fact: I’ve never attended an All-Ireland football final which Kerry have won. I’ve seen them lose four and draw one (0-1-4). Neither have I attended a final won by Meath (0-0-1). Or, ahem, Mayo (0-1-3).
I’ve seen the following counties win football All-Irelands:
Dublin (8)
Donegal (1)
Derry (1)
Down (1)
Galway (1)
Tyrone (1)
Cork (1)
I’ve never attended a hurling All-Ireland final won by Cork.
The counties I have seen win hurling All-Irelands are
Limerick (2)
Tipperary (2)
Clare (1)
Offaly (1)
Kilkenny (17)
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When did all irelands become all ticket /could not pay at gate?
I’d hazard a guess at 1987. Definitely 1988 as I remember some Tipp roaster complaining she had paid a tenner or whatever for zero view.
Actually, 1984 in Thurles was all ticket. The father was at it.
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There was a discussion about this here before but can’t remember the year. I definitely paid in at the Canal End for the 83 football. All Ireland. We watched the hurling from the Hill that year. In 1984 the hurling was in Thurles and that was all ticket although the ticketing was a shambles. Tickets were coming back “from places like Longford” on the morning of the match and if you were enterprising enough you could buy these returns at a booth in the square in Thurles on the day of the match.
I won stand tickets in a raffle for the 1985 hurling All Ireland but had stand tickets for the 84, 85, 86, 87 and subsequent finals. I suspect it may have been 84.
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Ive never even been to a football all ireland. In fact the only championship game i’ve been to of any significance was by accident in 2007 when kerry defeated monaghan by a point in the quarter final
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I was at 2 football finals
1991
2002
Pretty good ones
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On before the Waterford Limerick game.
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Ian Robertson?
They’d often open the gates before half time in the old days. My auntie tells me of how she and her sister wandered down to the Babs Keating barefoot final in 1971 and waltzed into the Hill before half time for free.
1977 was the first all ticket All-Ireland football final. It was all ticket because it was all over the Dublin papers in the weeks after the semi-finals that the Armagh supporters were intent on taking the Hill for the final.
1983 was the last where you could pay on the gate.
My oul’ fella was strange in some ways. He grew up less than a mile from Croke Park and would attend everything under the sun. Then inexplicably he would not go to some of the biggest matches. He did not attend the 1976 All-Ireland football final on the basis that “I thought by staying away I’d bring Dublin luck”.
By 1983, despite him being younger then than I am now, he was beginning to find going to matches a hassle. He had tickets for two of his friends for the replay against Cork in Cork, and the friends didn’t turn up for the local bus being run by the club, and he ended up missing the bus as a result. He walked to the Naas Road and thumbed a lift and got picked up by a couple who were driving to some music event in Killarney. He told them he had two spare tickets for the open stand in Pairc Ui Chaoimh and they said “oh, we could go to the match in Cork and then head on to Killarney afterwards”. So that’s what they did. There were no phones at that time so he couldn’t find the bus back and ended up getting in a lift back in a van full of Dublin supporters. Despite the day working out well, he said he found it a terrible hassle and that maybe that was the end of him bothering to go to these matches.
For the final he didn’t fancy the hassle and said he wasn’t going, he’d go up to his mother’s off the Whitworth Road to watch it on the box. He ended up going down late against his better judgement. As he walked down Clonliffe Road about 3:20 or 3:25 there were streams of people going up the road. He said something jokey to one group like “it’s the other way lads if yis want to get in”. A chap shouted back “Get in? We thought we’d never get out!” The gates of the Hill were broken in that day and it was chaos down there. I don’t remember much of the old Hill but it had grass banks down the back and a toilet hut sort of yoke on the actual terrace behind the goal. The exact sort of things that would help to create a disaster especially on a wet day, and that was a right squally day.
Anyway my oul’ fella walked into Joneses Road and sort of loitered around outside the gates of the Hogan near the Nally. There were others loitering there too. About six or seven minutes after 3:30 some car pulled up and a gate opened to let somebody into the back of the Hogan. There was a scramble and my oul’ fella and a good few others got in, the Guard on duty almost pushed them on in, “go on, go on”. He had no sooner sat down on the steps up the back of the lower tier of the Hogan when Barney Rock lobbed in a goal from 45 yards.
I was sitting low down on the Cusack lower tier around the Canal 14 yard line at the 1993 All-Ireland football final. My memory is that between the minor and senior games a Cork fella got up on the top of the fence between the Canal and the Cusack and sat there entertaining the crowd for about half an hour, he was lying down on the top of the fence which I think had some sort of u shaped yoke on top which you could sit into or lie down on. Yer man was obviously pissed as a lord and the crowd started gravitating down towards his corner to join in the fun. Maybe that helped to cause some of the crush down in that corner.
I’ve got into two All-Ireland finals in the all-ticket era at half time. Once legitimately, the other illegitimately.
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The crush on the Canal for the 1993 final was Derry fellas coming in late and drunk.
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Given that I don’t have access to CCTV footage of the tunnel underneath the Canal End from that day I’m in no position to argue authoritatively on this point, but two things make me doubt the explanation is that simple.
i) Derry were given the Hill as their designated terrace. Now obviously that doesn’t mean there were no Derry supporters on the Canal, but the vast majority were Cork or neutrals. Cork were involved in the minor match that day, but that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been Cork supporters coming in late (by late I mean any time after around 3:15) and in some cases drunk too. Supporters coming in late-ish and with a few drinks on board is standard, it’s an All-Ireland final.
ii) Was this not still in the era of the “Holy Hour” when pubs would shut between 2 and 4? Like, I definitely have a memory of how you’d have to wait for a few minutes for the pubs to open after coming out of Dublin league games in Croke Park around that time. I often think that’s why attendances at minor finals seemed to decline over the years, because back in the day I don’t think you had much choice but to go into the stadium.
Pints being available in the stadium has definitely played a big part lately. Croker, Thurles and Cork all have a heap of pints available inside.
I find it weird how if you’re on Hill 16 for any well attended match you’ll find it very easy to get a pint say 15 or 25 minutes before throw in. Yet come down the steps 20 seconds after the half time whistle has blown and the queue for the bar is already at extremely silly levels.
I was on the Hill for the hurling final last year and vowed I’d never again go there for a big match not involving Dublin. It was like a creche from hell, slack jawed yet angry looking wannabe McGregors of 17-20 years age everywhere along with their slacker jawed but less angry mots and sisters. All of them seemed more interested in pints, chips, sweets or the cans of cider they’d smuggled in than the hurling. I’d say there was scarcely anybody over the age of 30 on the whole terrace and I felt like a grandad.
Pints being available has definitely amplified the airport terminal atmospheres (cc: of @peddlerscross), particularly at very attractive double headers.
I don’t much like having pints in a stadium. One around 3:05pm if I’m already in and it’s a 3:30 start might be my lot.
I’ve no problem with you doubting me.
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National Hurling League finals I have attended:
1988
2011
#nothingbeatsbeingthere
I believe it has been mentioned before here that the Limerick hurlers played on the same exceedingly attractive double header as the Monaghan footballers one time in 2007.
Usually the tales of it are told in a faux anthropological fashion, to give the impression of two tribes unaware the other’s existence accidentally chancing upon each other in the jungle, and getting on famously.
It does make sense that a lot of Limerick and Monaghan people would have met each other that day, as nobody from Kerry would have bothered to turn up for a quarter-final and every Waterford person there wanted to get the hell out of dodge as soon as Brian Begley caught that ball and buried it.
In reality, I think any Limerick people there who had any interest in the football would have wanted Kerry to win, because Limerick’s football team is Kerry - I would go so far as to say any supporters Kerry had there would have been from Limerick.
And any Monaghan people who stayed around for the first half of the hurling would have been supporting Waterford, given they play in the Monaghan colours.
But I suppose it makes sense they’d get on as neither actually gave much of a shit about the other’s game.
Did any future Limerick-Monaghan marriages come out of that day?
Don’t know kid. I just went to a hurling match that happened to be preceeded by a football match.