All-Ireland SFC Quarter-final/Dublin v Westmeath: Tom Humphries depicts the love affair and affinity Dublin fans have for their hallowed ground of Hill 16
Ah, The Hill. If you're a Dub of a certain blood type you'll know every pore on its face. The Hill has been our creche, our nursery, our homeland. And if you are of a certain age you went there first when really you were too small to go.
The Hill pinned you, arms by your side, into the warm heavy press of sweat-scented men. You could see the sky above and you could see flashing glimpses of green pitch below. Mostly you got carried helplessly about the Hill without your feet ever touching the ground. The Hill moved you about according to the ebb and flow of the game.
It was terrifying but you loved it. You saw nothing, heard lots and decided you'd never watch a Dublin game from anywhere else. Ever.
They say that the Hill, as we know it, was born in the 1970s when the Jacks came back and the shock of it was alleged to "let the Railway End go barmy, 'cos Hill 16 has never seen, the likes of Heffo's Army." Not quite true. The Dubs on the Hill was a phenomenon of the 1950s when Dublin teams peopled by Dublin men brought a new and unlikely glamour to the game.
Back in 1942, Dublin had won an All-Ireland title beating Galway in the final. The feat had gone virtually unnoticed in the city. Revolution wasn't far behind, though. St Vincent's in Marino won their first county title in 1949 and remained unbeaten in all competitions for the next seven years whereupon they lost a county final and then remained unbeaten again for a further six years.
What was as remarkable as that record was the fact that the St Vincent's side was composed entirely of Dublin natives. The idea of it caught the imagination. In 1952 a replayed county final between St Vincent's and Garda (Dubs v Culchies to put it crudely) attracted a crowd of 25,000. By 1953 when Dublin beat Cavan in the National League final all 14 outfield players were from St Vincent's. They wore the club's famous white jerseys with the blue band around the chest and back. The city was interested. Very interested.
By 1955 Dublin were applying a new brand of football to the championship. For the All-Ireland final against Kerry the official attendance was announced as 87,102, but the GAA issued a disclaimer pointing out that this was merely the figure at which they'd had to stop the counting. Two gates had been broken down by the sea of humanity. One of those gates was the entrance to the Hill. The Hill was a sea of blue and white that day, home to those who went to the cathedral from the near north side of the city, the GAA's stronghold.
The Hill was a place of baptism and renewal. Jimmy Keaveney and Paddy Cullen were boys on the Hill that day experiencing the heartbreak of Dublin's defeat. Come the 1970s they would have crossed the wire. That's the way of it. The Hill delivers Dubs on to the field and when they are done playing they return to the terrace.
The 1950s may have created the notion of the Hill but the 1970s delivered the place into happy infamy. Keaveney remembers the beginning. The previous September he and Seán Doherty had been stewards on the Hill watching Billy Morgan lift the Cup.
"The clearest memory I have of playing in front of the Hill was the 1974 All-Ireland final. The crowd was over the railing from the Hill for 10 minutes before the final whistle blew. We had the game wrapped up and there was a chance that the match could be abandoned. I remember Kevin Heffernan going down to calm them. Some of us had been playing in Croke Park for so long and never thought we'd see a crowd in the place for a Dublin match ever again. Here we were about to win an All-Ireland and maybe the crowd would take it away from us.
"I remember at the end there was a kick-out and, while the ball was in the air, Patsy Devlin, the ref, started sprinting towards the tunnel under the Hogan. He got to about 20 yards away and blew for full-time and kept going. We'd won." Seán Doherty went up to lift the Cup.
The Hill in the 1970s was a place which only a Dub could love. "Sweat, piss and warm canned beer" sums up Vincent Conroy, a Dublin full back in football and hurling in the early 1980s and a man who grew up a few pucks away from the hill.
"It was fellas well-oiled. It was the bootboy gangs, the bomber jackets, the parallels. Lads climbing the walls, the barbed wire, the big green banks, a flood of drink and urine at the end of a game. The Hill would be a swarming sea of runny blue hats. Fellas half-falling, half-sliding about the place. Scary but great."
Ooooh. On big days the toilets, (which before the 1989 revamp, were virtually an al fresco arrangement, just one evolutionary step up from merely peeing against a wall) wouldn't so much become blocked as prove completely inadequate. From an hour or so before an important game you needed marsh waders if you were to get through the great yellow sea to the weeing wall without taking home a little piece of other Dubs in your socks.
After the game the toilets presented a lingering peril. The old Hill had a couple of sets of steep concrete stairs running down its spine. You either chose to queue and step gingerly down these or you took your chances on the sheer grass banks which could deposit you down below in three seconds flat. You'd start at the top at a walk with your body at a 90-degree angle and the Hill would give you momentum and soon you'd be helter-skelter at top speed down the grassy bank, an involuntary roar coming out of you warning people you were about to fly off the little precipice at the end and splat into the ooze of the crowd below.
Or sometimes you just fell over and tumbled the rest of the of the way. Sometimes you came out on the wrong side of the Hill over near the Cusack side. You hit the bottom where the urine had gathered into a frothy lake. It earned you a cheer.
The access gates to the Hill 16 precinct were gloriously useless too and on a big day as the queue formed at the turnstiles and grown men argued with the Grab All Association about their right to lift other grown men over the turnstiles (he's only a bloody child!) you just had to stand and loiter until the pressure of the crowd burst open the massive green side gate. Then the giddy pre-Hillsborough type stampede up the back of the Hill arriving breathless at the top and shoving those who had paid and were punctual down the slope on the other side.
Back then the place used to have its seasons. In winter, when Dublin still played league games there, you could wander anywhere on the Hill and at half-time the gate into the Cusack would open and you had the run of the Hill and the run of the Cusack where the old dressingrooms with the big baths were. By mid-summer you were lucky to get pinioned into the Hill when the fine-day crowd returned to worship.
The Hill has its history and it has its own eternal geography too. For decades members of Dublin's GAA clubs spread themselves out in the same little pieces of territory on the Cusack side of the Hill. The spots they occupy are immutable and can never be changed. O'Toole's here. St Vincent's over there. Craobh Ciaráhere, Whitehall there and so on.
There is an etiquette to life on the Hill. You may say hello to people from rival clubs and you may stop and talk briefly to them but you don't upset the eco balance by moving in and proposing to watch a match from their territory. You stick to your own club's God-given spot.
Of course these rules cease to apply the closer one gets to the Hogan Stand side of the Hill. In the old days when the Nally Stand still existed, and before the Hill had been revamped, there was a toilet on the back of the Hill near the Nally Stand. For most punters in the 1970s that toilet represented Kurtz's lair at the end of the journey in Apocalypse Now. Even in the 1970s one had to pass through so many tribes of loolahs, scangers, hoodlums, drunks and nutcases to get to that toilet that soiling yourself was by far the preferable option.
Before that, though, the Hill toilets were a prized viewing spot.
"I think the demise of the old concrete toilets on the hill was a bit sad," says Dave Billings. "Watching Lar (Foley) playing full back from up there was an education in life. The view from that position was fantastic with your legs dangling over the edge just like being on the top of a ski slope in Austria. Dangerous but worth it. As kids we got lifted over the stiles and climbed up the steep steps to the hill and then made our way across to the concrete jacks. We'd get a hoosh up and we were in heaven watching the greats from all the counties. No prawn sandwiches there. I can still see Des Foley as clear as day in 1963 coming to the Hill with Sam. We could see over the barbed wire from the top of the jacks."
There is a notion happily believed by the Hill that the mere existence of the place is worth three or four points to a Dublin team. On good days when the margin is large anyway this is probably true. And in the wake of a Dublin goal the Hill's excitement is certainly contagious.
On bad days, though, the Hill is the epicentre of Dublin fatalism. Every Dublin player becomes a "waste of bleedin' space" and, in certain sectors of the Hill, grown men seem to compete for the right to have been the first to note what a waste of space the players are.
Jason Sherlock has been fortunate for a child of the Hill. He loves the place and, by and large, has been loved by it.
In the summer of 1994 he played on a Dublin minor side which won the Leinster title. It was like all the summer days of our youth: a damp day. The Klinsmann was in vogue. The young Dubs collected their trophy on the Hogan Stand and descended on to the pitch. They spread out in a line and went running towards Hill 16 where they performed a perfect mass formation Klinsmann dive into the soggy turf.
Jason hasn't watched a Dubs match from there since the 1994 All-Ireland final. It was raining that day and Dublin were playing Down. For reasons too arcane to go into, Paul Curran was marking Mickey Linden. Dublin lost their second final in three years.
"Near the end we were all standing there on the Hill like drowned rats. Our fate was sealed and it had all gone quiet. I remember this one voice letting out a roar with all his insight and frustration. He just yelled out 'Fucking Jaysus. Fuck.' Summed up the day. And the Hill."
Sometimes the Hill in all its intensity can be as much of a hindrance as a help. From the Hill you watch a different game than anyone else. Charlie Redmond remembers the kick-around before the 1995 All-Ireland final. Word got out the night before that Charlie was carrying an injury. Croke Park was filled with the usual babble but The Hill was waiting and watching anxiously to see what state one of its most beloved sons would present himself in.
"I only ever used to take one free in the kick-around before a game. I remember that afternoon still feeling the injury a bit and putting the ball down on the 14-yard line. Most of the ground isn't paying any attention but on the Hill they'd all be watching. I didn't even get the kick much off the ground, it went straight into John O'Leary's arms. And there was this noise from the hill. 'Oooooooooooooh' Like they were all shocked and all sucking in their breath at the same time."
Not that Dublin's right to kick into the Hill goal before games has always been undisputed. Before the 1984 semi-final against Tyrone, the Dublin dressingroom got word that Tyrone had gone out and begun their kick-around into the Hill end. Kevin Heffernan gave precise orders. The Hill booed and waited for the Dubs to emerge. When they did Tommy Drumm led the charge to the Hill end. Chaos ensued but the Dubs had made their point.
"We came out," says John O'Leary, goalkeeper that day, "sprinted straight to the Hill end. I think Mick Holden was one of the clever ones, he went to the dugout to look for something while we took the bullets. I had to go in and stand on the goalline beside Aidan Skelton. I'd put the ball down for a kick-out and a Tyrone fella would come and take the ball. I remember Gerry Hargan getting an awful slap in the head from a ball coming in. It was bedlam. Mad. And just this crazy noise coming from the Hill."
Charlie Redmond remembers the odd occasion since when teams tried the same stunt. "The Hill had an easy cure. We'd kick opposition balls up into the Hill and they wouldn't throw them back. They'd only throw back the balls with Ath Cliath written on them. Good days. "
The great days are easy to recount. The bad ones don't stray too far from the memory either. The 1975 final, and John Egan's crushing early goal, the rain, the sheer misery of having the dye from those crepe paper hats running down your face. Three years later and the first ominous sighting of the Bomber Liston.
The early 1980s and seeing Barney Rock decapitated by a Shrek-sized Aussie. Kevin Foley scoring into the Hill goal in 1991. Paul Curran slipping to the floor behind Mickey Linden in the first minute of the 1994 final. The Hill got the close-up on catastrophe.
Often times what was going on at the Canal End of the field was a sheer mystery. Mikey Sheehy's goal in 1978? Nobody on the Hill had any clue as to what had gone on. Ciarán Duff's dismissal in 1983? A blur. Great moments compensated. Kevin Moran's run towards the Hill at the start of the 1976 final. The 1992 Leinster final against Kildare and Keith Barr scoring the goal which Moran should have scored. Barney Rock's last-minute redeemer in the 1983 semi-final versus Cork. Keaveney lobbing Brian McAlinden in 1977. The late goals in the epic semi-final of that year.
Goalkeepers have always had a special relationship with the Hill. Kerry's Charlie Nelligan used to hear a lot about how, from behind with his ears sticking out, he resembled the Sam Maguire. Mickey McQuillan of Meath was hauled out of retirement for the Leinster final of 1994 and had the misfortune to allow a Charlie Redmond free to squirm through his hands and into the net. Ireland's goalie had done the same thing at the World Cup against Holland the previous month. From the Hill came a happy chorus of "There's Only One Packie Bonner, There's Only One Packie Bonner".
The current Dubs have formalised their relationship with the Hill, stoking it and stroking it. For the Leinster final they approached the Hill like 30 reservoir dogs, drawing the fire down from the terraces. It's the Dub haka.
To the great ungathered lore of the Hill can be added the near tragedy and low comedy of that last day out. The Hill has always had its fair share of gobshites mixing with the cognoscenti and the pitch invasion which marred the Leinster final was no worse than that which almost marred the 1974 All-Ireland final. The dullard streaker, the reports of loon high junkies wandering the terrace, the sway of drunken latecomers are all things which the Hill could do without.
There's nothing new under the sun though. A friend remembers watching Dublin play Derry in a league match in the 1970s and the Hill being temporarily distracted by a madly dishevelled drunk swaying on the concrete steps with a vodka bottle in his hand. He swayed one way, then the other, down a few steps, back up a few steps. Finally, inevitably he fell and in a moment of hush the Hill could hear his skull making a sickening crunch against the concrete step. Then everyone went back to watching the game.
The GAA have learned a few tricks between times. At this year's Leinster final the GAA lightened the mood brilliantly. The grave announcement of "All Stewards, Plan B. All Stewards, Plan B" will be fodder for the Hill for many years to come. Today, not long after somebody shouts that it's not fair for Meath to have two teams in the championship, somebody will call for Plan B. By the time the same joke has been cracked by the 53rd wit the Hill will be rolling its collective eyeballs.
No grass bank, no crepe hats, no sea of yellow, another blue summer drawing down. They don't know how lucky they are.
