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Gerry Thornley: Fans in Croke Park next weekend will be there for the rugby, nothing else

Sold out Croke Park unlikely to field company clients and day-trippers to the same extent as Six Nations clashes at the Aviva

Leinster will play at Croke Park for the first time since meeting Munster there in 2009. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

Gerry Thornley's face
Gerry Thornley
Fri Apr 26 2024 - 18:30

Next Saturday’s Champions Cup semi-final between Leinster and Northampton is a sell-out. Repeat, an 82,000-plus capacity crowd will descend upon the iconic Croke Park venue for the first rugby game at the stadium since a then world record sell-out crowd of 82,208 attended the Leinster-Munster semi-final in 2009.

That was a landmark day in Irish rugby. As well as the Red Army inspiring the birth of the Blue Army, Munster had provoked Leinster to produce the biggest win in their history which they followed up by beating Leicester in Edinburgh in the final three weeks later. It was the day the balance of power shifted.

But selling out a semi-final in scarcely a day, less even given 40,000-plus tickets were snapped up by public sale in two or three hours, is another thing altogether, all the more so when one considers Northampton took an allocation of only 2,000.

The tournament organisers, EPCR, deserve credit for sensible pricing and the speed with which the game became a sell-out is clearly testimony to the collaborative approach taken between them, Leinster and the GAA.

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Undoubtedly there’s a Croke Park event curiosity factor at play here, for memories remain relatively vivid of those memorable days from 2007 to 2010 when the ground hosted Irish rugby matches while the old Lansdowne Road was being rebuilt.

This was, of course, especially true of Ireland’s games against England in 2007 and 2009, and also that Leinster-Munster semi-final when the supporters were choreographed into a blue and red steepling, square-shaped checkboard.

That it is a sell-out, on top of the Leinster-La Rochelle quarter-final drawing a capacity crowd at the Aviva at a week’s notice and in addition to the 40,775 which attended the Round of 16 tie just a week beforehand, is also a remarkable testimony to Leinster’s success story and their growing supporter base.

One would venture that this will be a slightly different crowd from the RDS, obviously, and considerably different from crowds at Ireland’s Six Nations games, which have become very corporate and consumed, in every sense, by company clients and day-trippers.

Leinster have evidently reached out beyond their D4, or even south Dublin, heartland. Furthermore, given Croke Park’s access to their fans north of the Liffey, it’s not hard to imagine that this semi-final may have drawn more of the province’s supporters from the north side of the city, Skerries, Malahide, Portmarnock, Drogheda, Dundalk and beyond than might otherwise have been the case in the Aviva or the RDS.

In any case, whoever is in Croke Park next Saturday will be there for the rugby. As with the Leinster-La Rochelle quarter-final, and Ireland’s World Cup games in France, tickets have been purchased by true rugby fans.

That GAA rules regarding the in-stadium drinking of alcohol will apply is a blessing and will stem the traffic to and from bars, though there would have been less inclination for this anyway.

There some ill-informed moans and complaints about Leinster enjoying home advantage in the semi-finals from boringly predictable sources across the water, even though the rules were the same for Northampton and Leinster as they were for everybody else who was competing in the competition.

Leinster, no less than Toulouse, earned their home country advantage in the semi-finals by dint of their performances on the pitch. Funnily enough, there were no moans about Toulouse earning home country advantage on Sunday week against Harlequins in the other semi-final! Nor, funnily enough, could one imagine there would have been any complaints had Northampton and/or Harlequins earned a home semi-final by dint of their results on the pitch.

It also tells us much, and is equally fitting, that Toulouse sold out the 33,000-capacity Le Stadium for their semi-final against Harlequins in no time. Furthermore, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the only other home team in the Champions Cup which might have sold out an 82,000-capacity stadium inside a day is Munster.

Clermont came and went. Toulon came and went, to be replaced in recent years by La Rochelle. Even Leicester and Saracens are no longer the superpowers of yore, while Wasps came and, sadly, completely went away.

Munster, Leinster and Toulouse have been the constants, the heartbeats of this competition.

Without the three of them the Champions Cup might have fallen off a cliff by now.

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