A Day Out in Dublin at the Hurling: The All-Ireland Hurling Final 2005, Cork vs. Galway

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Best day of the year. No doubt about that. Doesn't matter who's playing. Doesn't matter who wins. All-Ireland hurling Sunday is the best day of the year. The city is different, taken over by the country. People from everywhere heading for the match. Looking for mythical shortcuts to beat the traffic and getting lost in Stoneybatter. No shortcuts today. Back into traffic on the quays. Should have taken the special train and stopped into Ned Rea's of Parkgate Street and genuflected before the photos of Christy Ring on the wall. Or maybe even cycled. Fifty years ago, streams of bikes used to come across the country to Croke Park, meeting on the North Circular Road like so many tributaries flowing into a broadening river. Definitely going to cycle next year. Definitely. My brother can make the sandwiches. Egg and onion as usual. Abandon the car at the first chance. Pay some young lad—or not so young lad—€5 to "look after it." It's fairly legally parked. The city council's clampers seem to pride themselves on squeezing easy money out of GAA supporters on Sundays. You have to love that. Really classy. Forgot to say we wouldn't be back for the car until Tuesday—€5 doesn't seem so bad now.

Head into Barry's Hotel for a pint (only the one) and then down O'Connell Street. A Cork crowd are singing "The Banks," and down further, "The Fields of Athenry" is being murdered by a busker. And then by another one. There's three lads with beards and banjos and fiddles playing "The Black Velvet Band," and down a bit further a lad on a piano accordion is playing "The Merry Blacksmith." The crowd are in good form and the money is sparkling in the sun as it drops into the hat.

There's twenty, thirty, forty people carrying signs looking for tickets. A lad in a Galway jersey carries a "Ticéad ag taisteáil" sign. How does your man with the John 3:7 banner always get a ticket? You just know you're going to meet someone who hasn't been at a match all year. Bastard. Some waste of a ticket. Especially when Mike can't get one after going to matches the whole year. You want to say something, but you bottle it.

The crowds push through Mountjoy Square, past the clampers still circling in their vans, down Fitzgibbon Street. Take a detour into Gills pub on the corner of Jones' Road. Apartheid Irish style: real glasses for the Guinness drinkers, plastic for the lager crowd. The air is filled with speculation and gossip. "What do you reckon?" "Well?" "Will we do it?"And you always know the lads who've been up in Dublin since Friday, making a weekend out of a day. Big sick heads on them, nursing a long pint and wondering why they talked themselves into coming up so soon. Never again. Never again, again.

Bring the pint outside and stand against the wall, listening to stories and telling lies. Watching the crowd go down Jones' Road. A lovely way to spend an hour. Cork draw a few notables with them. First up are the Irish rugby boys. Frankie Sheahan in some class of a red-and-white rugby jersey with the collar up, Donncha O'Callaghan and Peter Stringer right behind. The rugby boys will be back to play in Croke Park in early 2007 while their own home, Lansdowne Road, is being renovated. Some lad remarks that the GAA managed to do up Croke Park without having to threaten to bring their big matches to Wales or to England. Nothing like the bit of a cut even when the sun is shining and there's joy in the air.

And then, a bit later, Sonia O'Sullivan comes along and there's applause and a bit of yahooing. You think of the silver medal at the Sydney Olympics and wonder about the lost gold in...