This weekend, the Ballybough Spaceship formerly known as Croke Park is ready for all comers, with four championship matches taking place on the hallowed turf. Time to wash out the thermos flask and dust down that straw sombrero.
If only my grandad could see it now. He would hardly recognise the place. In fact both my grandfathers - loved individually as Grandpa and Pop - were GAA men but it was my paternal grandad who introduced me to Croker.
He used to drive a Hillman Imp. In an era when seat belts were considered accessories, the march to manhood began by him allowing me sit in the front seat. When he was fully mobile we would park the car in Fairview and walk to the ground. Making our way to the now demolished Cusack Stand, Grandpa would lift me over the metal turnstile and share one single click of admission, a practised ritual familiar to every GAA kid at the time.
In the early days I was small enough to make it easy. As I started growing, however, the manoeuvre became progressively more difficult. I grew bigger and he grew weaker. We were both getting older. By the time I was going to matches with my father, negotiating the turnstile was a gymnastic feat worthy of an Olympic scoring system.
Grandpa was a GAA aficionado with connections. He had an important sticker for the car windscreen and by displaying it on the passenger side - my side - we were allowed through Garda barriers at Clonliffe Road.
We'd take a left at Jones's Road where the wooden gates of the Amharclann an tÚachtaráin opened miraculously before us.
It may have been the presidential car park but there was always room for Grandpa's Hillman Imp.
From there I would tag along with him, wending through a tall forest of men wearing brimmed hats.
Only one or two would wear county colours.
Sporting merchandise had not quite hit the GAA back then and the only ones wearing a team jersey were the players on the pitch.
The best you could do was a papier-maché hat bearing the reductionist legend "Up Galway" or "Up Wexford" or, occasionally, "Muigh Eo Abú!" Grandpa's ticket usually meant a seat upstairs in the old Cusack Stand. Eschewing the assistance of spectacularly uninformed stewards - each one designated by a badge saying Maor - we would usually find someone sitting in Grandpa's seat. A standard exchange would involve Grandpa asking to compare tickets but the interloper, usually having no ticket at all, would shift huffily to the next vacant space.
This would be our home for the next couple of hours, a grey timber bench separated into single units by metal rails. My perch was Grandpa's knee. Foot room was an alien concept.
The Cusack - like the rest of Croker - was more rudimentary in every way those days. Less a spaceship than a concrete bowl.
Fans came to watch hurling or football and had neither the time nor money nor inclination to leave their seats in the middle of a match.
Missed goals would not be seen on TV replays later that night.
Once the game started, you stayed put.
Exceptions were made for basket-wielding women selling apples and chocolate or, regardless of the weather, white-coated men selling plastic tubs of Maxi-Twist ice cream. One flavour only - vanilla with a twirl of raspberry and lime on top.
Though born in Ballaghadereen Grandpa ended up playing football for Dublin. He was generally neutral about matches except when Mayo, Roscommon, Galway and Sligo were involved.
My own loyalties were flexible and a little more arbitrary. I could cheer for Mick O'Connell (because he was brilliant) but against Kerry (because of their haircuts); roar for Grandpa's team (if I wanted a Maxi-Twist), for Kilkenny hurlers and Offaly footballers (because they too were great) or against Kildare (because of their stark Lilywhite strip).
And sometimes we'd both cheer for any team losing heavily because nobody else did.
Unlike the new fabulous structures at Croker, the old Cusack was built on thick concrete pillars. Grandpa and I spent one All-Ireland hurling final (between Tipperary and Kilkenny) joining dots of goalmouth action left and right of the stone column directly in front of us.
Croker was the first time I saw so many people gathered in one place. It was an introduction to the wider world, a broad hint that Ireland did not begin in Clontarf and end at Clonliffe. It was the first time to witness people impassioned by senses deeper and more profound than I could understand. Sport could be a thing of beauty or ugliness as well as something dull in between.
Embarking on each Sunday excursion in the Imp we just never knew what was to come.
Being lifted over the turnstile was how nearly every kid my generation first saw Croke Park. Many of the top players in the country remember it this way. The GAA's decision to ban the practice a few years ago was attributed to fire and safety regulations.
Citing legal reasons always seemed like an easy excuse and with parents unable to afford more than one ticket it remains to be seen what has been lost. It's a tradition that was worth preserving.
However the association deserves credit for since introducing low-price family tickets to enable adults bring children along. Maybe that's the new era. A fast-food emporium under the stand, Riverdance at half-time and a seat for every man, woman and child in the Ballybough Spaceship. Grandpa would hardly know it.