Football is replete with tradition and is also, more than any other competitive sport, one that commands mass support. And thankfully in this country, it has also retained its attraction as a family occasion: fathers and young sons know that for international matches at home, they may safely go to Lansdowne Road for an evening's entertainment, a small addition to the accumulation of experiences that bond parents and their children.
It is to be regretted that the popular preference for today's deserved welcome home for the Irish team and Mick McCarthy - an open-top bus ride through the city centre - is not to be. Instead, the team will be flown by helicopter directly from Dublin Airport to a celebration in the Phoenix Park. Returning teams accorded a reception traditionally parade through the centre of their towns, supporters and well-wishers thronging the streets. The Irish players made it clear to FAI officials that their preference for a homecoming celebration was an open-top bus ride through central Dublin. Callers to radio programmes yesterday overwhelmingly supported that preference.
However safety to life and limb has to be the priority and in this regard the authorities had little choice but to accept the advice of the Garda that a city-centre homecoming was not without risk. Sadly this reflects poorly on the crowd control skills of the gardaí. Avoiding crush and containing boisterous over-enthusiasm is probably the worst that they might have had to face had events been allowed to proceed along O'Connell Street and into College Green. Traffic control would have been a problem too - but not, surely, an insurmountable one.
Police in other jurisdictions seem capable of managing these occasions with due regard to public safety. Only days ago, several hundred thousand people packed the centre of London for Queen Elizabeth's jubilee celebrations. Similarly in Seoul, over one million people celebrated Korea's victory over Portugal by taking to the streets. In 1998, when France won the World Cup one million people crammed into the Champs-Elysée. Eight years before that, when Ireland returned from Italia '90, an estimated 250,000 greeted their heroes. However, concerns derived from that experience - the most terrifying of his life, according to Jack Charlton - led to the 1994 homecoming in the Phoenix Park, which was, by common consent, a damp squib.
It is to be hoped that today's celebrations will be carried off with more élan than 1994. As the Taoiseach said yesterday, it is up to the fans to create the right sort of party atmosphere so that everyone - most especially the team, their manager and officials, and their families - enjoy themselves. Those perhaps reluctant to make the trek to the Park might think again. But it cannot be that Dublin's streets are forever out of bounds for this type of celebration. The gardaí have plenty of time to brush up their skills: the European Championship is but two years away.