Friday evening now and Dublin’s traffic has slowed to a crawl and on the radio the AA Roadwatch announcer explains that the South Circular’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive, while a truck has broken down on Clanbrassil street: always a lethal combination.
In the dressing-rooms of the Aviva Stadium, the Boss is pacing the room, pushing his spectacles back along the bridge of his nose every time they slide down and rolling his sleeves up every five minutes and he has goalkeepers on his mind. Who to start. Who to leave behind.
There are merry Dutchmen all over the city. The Boss looks across to find his assistant sitting on the dressing-room bench with a vacant smile on his face and it’s clear his friend is dreaming of glory days: of a bright Saturday years ago, here, in the old ground, when Holland came to beat Ireland and had their mind changed by that tackle on Marc Overmars. The moment that Ireland swooned for the boy Roy. A day that began in Lansdowne Road finished at Slane watching U2. It’s a beautiful day . . .
And across town, a tanned American rock god is somewhere in the closed-off parts of Croke Park.
It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Springsteen entourage was ushered straight through to the dressing-room area of Croke Park by a stadium steward in no mood to brook any debate on the matter. Or that Bruce and the band exited their bus to find a notice reading “Bruce Springsteen&band” cellotaped onto the door of the ‘home’ dressing-room. And that said door was held open by an elderly gent in shirt, tie and GAA bib nodding at each of the musicians and saying: Good luck to ye now.
And that even as they acquainted themselves with the dressing-room, they were paid a visit by the head of Cumann Lúthchleas Gael, who would offer Bruce a firm handshake and quip: “I’m the president but he’s the Boss.”
It isn’t all that hard to imagine Nils Lofgren flicking through a discarded league final programme and reading “Thirty Things You Never Knew About the Gooch.”
Or to hear Soozie Tyrell explain to the tea lady that, no, she did not have relatives in any part of Kilkenny – and had not heard about the Westmeath result but was so pleased for them. And some part of you will always hope that a little before seven, Steve Van Zandt became restless in the confines of the dressing-room and decided to go exploring, not understanding that big as Croke Park looks from the outside, it is an absolute tardis on the inside.
It is a virtual city. (There is a reason that the GAA replaces its presidents every three years. Half of them have simply gotten lost navigating the treacherous route between the boiler room and the canteen). And that maybe Steve van Zandt, do-ragged and ready to rock, walked along one of the polished corridors of Croke Park’s interior which are decorated with photographs of iconic GAA figures at their darkest and most majestic.
Easy to see him studying these photographs, clasping his hands solicitously and tilting his head just like Silvio Dante as he absorbs early-era Ringy, say, or a still of Tommy ‘the Boiler’ McGuinness leaving behind him a trail of broken bodies as he emerges with ball in some long-forgotten Leinster championship game and giving his ‘all-due-respect-Ton’ nod.
And it is just as easy to imagine a Croke Park steward failing to recognise Bruce Springsteen’s band mate of some 40 years and enquiring of this extravagantly attired stranger: “Do ya have a pass” and gravely ignoring all of Van Zandt’s claims to be “with the band” as he guides him politely but unwaveringly to the exit doors and into the no man’s land behind Hill 16.
And, while all of this is going in the capital on a balmy Friday night, they are exiting Connacht like its Black ’47 all over again. All week, the only talk in the west has been of How To Get To Edinburgh.
Conversation overheard on Quay Street Galway, lunchtime Wednesday.
–You can get Donegal-Glasgow for 60 quid return.
– You can in yer arse.
– I’m tellin ya. Thirty quid each way.
– There’s no airport in Donegal.
– There is. Sure I know a lad who got a flight.
– He was done. There’s no airport up there.
Ferries from Larne. Flights from Donegal. Trains from London. Epic drives from Holyhead. Boom-era and NAMA-ed pleasure boats across the Irish Sea. Connacht fans may still be travelling in hope more than expectation but the point is that it’s a final and they are in it.
Nobody expected this. There are Connacht fans who had a vague intention of attending the Holland game at the Aviva. And there are others who had tearful conversations with themselves before offering their hard-won Friday night Bruce Springsteen tickets for sale on Done Deal, going with the philosophy that while it will break their hearts to miss Bruce, it would absolutely kill them not to be there for John Muldoon.
And that anyhow, they will catch Bruce next time because it seems clear he intends appearing at all the great GAA venues – Nowlan Park, Croke Park – so it is only a matter of time before he ends up playing Tuam Stadium.
It is, in short, one of those weekends which create a mood of fantasia over the capital city and across the land. For all the carping about Irish football, there is something wonderful about a country of five million people with a semi-professional football league qualifying for a sixth major tournament in three decades. The Republic of Ireland hadn’t even been to a major finals the first time Springsteen played here.
And there is something brilliant about the way the country goes half daft whenever the Boss guitars-up nowadays.
So Friday night and the mood is one of giddiness. The thousands in the Aviva are watching the Boss and the boy Roy, the odd couple of Irish sport, knowing that no matter what happens in the match, it isn’t a bad time to be following the BIG: that there is a big summer to look forward to.
And across in Croke Park, sooner or later the concert will reach that dream note in the evening where it is almost dark and everyone in the stadium is swept away to another place entirely by, say, the extended, soulful version of The River and they are the point where The Boss is into his long wooo-ooh-ooh-ooh fade out and everyone is going to realise pretty much at the same time that it doesn’t get much better than this.
And like the man says: Remember, in the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins.
