Lansdowne Road The family connection: Gavin Cummiskeytraces the origins of the old stadium and talks to the man best placed to wax nostalgic at its latest metamorphosis
So the Grand Old Stadium will finally be torn down. The good news is a €365-million, and counting, modern replacement will rise on the same site, some time in the coming decade, after the collapse of the Taoiseach-endorsed plan to bring the nation's professional field sports to a faraway place called Abbotstown.
Many people retain memories of Lansdowne Road but few can be as personal as those of the Dunlop family. It was Henry Wallace Doveton Dunlop who is accredited with establishing the site for sporting activity in 1872.
So how did Lansdowne Road become the centre of our rugby obsessions? The place we descend upon every year with fresh hopes, often in flagrant denial of the national team's shortcomings.
Dunlop, a decorated track walker and engineering graduate of Trinity College Dublin, founded the Irish Champion Athletic Club in 1871.
The first championship meeting was held in College Park but, despite permission from the Provost of Trinity College, Humphry Lloyd, the university board quickly banned non-associated meetings on campus.
Dunlop had to find a new arena for his dream. In 1921, aged 75, he wrote a detailed account of these endeavours:
"I was, therefore, forced to look for another plot, and after careful consideration chose the present Lansdowne Road one. In conjunction with the late Edward Dillon (my trainer), I took a 69-years lease (off the Pembroke estate, worth £60 annually) of part only of the premises, stretching from the railway to about 60 yards from the Dodder.
"I will not say much about my difficulties and struggles in connection with the ground and its enclosing and preparation (of which I could say much) further than to record the following facts:
"I laid down a cinder running path of a quarter-mile, laid down the present Lansdowne Tennis club ground with my own theodolite, started a Lansdowne Archery club, a Lansdowne Cricket club, and last, but not least, the Lansdowne Rugby Football Club - colours red, black and yellow. On the tennis club grounds the first tennis championship was held long before Fitzwilliam meetings."
The rugby club's initial match, with neighbours Wanderers, was considered "a fiasco", but they finally recorded their first victory in 1874 thanks to a try by FW Kidd.
The backbone of the side was made up of Trinity students, so much so they became know as "second Trinity". The drawback was these players refused to play against their college, forcing Dunlop to look elsewhere to keep the club afloat in the tentative early years:
"I therefore took the unusual course of reducing our firsts to a paper one, selected the best men (not Trinity men) and formed them into a Lansdowne second team. This team I worked for all I knew, and after a while no second team could play them. From this team arose the present Lansdowne football club."
Financial assistance from Lords Pembroke and Longford, who were keen admirers of Dunlop the athlete, ensured his vision did not sink into the meandering River Dodder.
Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, allowing Dunlop to utilise his engineering expertise to create a pitch envied around the country.
"It was excellently drained and levelled and became one of the best grounds in Ireland - better, in fact, than the present one, which, owing to the shelter of the Grand Stand, does not dry properly during wet seasons; it has moreover never been drained," he wrote in the 1920s.
Dunlop's son Eric, a vigorous 88-year-old, lives today in Woodside Drive, Dublin 14, along with the great love of his life, his wife of 52 years, Enid.
Among other achievements in a rich life, Eric Dunlop inherited his father's creative energies, albeit in a literary sense.
"My father died in 1930 in his 87th year," he wrote in The Irish Times on September 22nd, 1972, to commemorate a century of Lansdowne RFC.
"Considering he was born two years before Parnell and 12 years before the Indian Mutiny (1857-58) and I arrived on the scene not far from his 80th birthday, he didn't do too badly."
When I spoke to him lately, Dunlop junior recalled that contribution: "I rang up Paul McWeeney (then Irish Times sports editor) in 1972 and asked would he be interested in the article. He said yes. Quite an affable man, McWeeney. Quite easy-going."
Dunlop's offerings to this newspaper were resumed in 1999 when he wrote the first of several contributions to An Irishman's Diary - mostly documenting a fascinating family history, though he also helped elevate the 1930s English winger, of Russian descent, Prince Alexander Obolensky to near mythical status.
Dunlop was also the central figure in a 1985 BBC documentary - televised on the eve of Michael Kiernan's unforgettable drop-goal that sank England and clinched the Triple Crown - that charted the history of Lansdowne Road.
"From when I was very young, my father used to take me to matches on the train from Blackrock," he recalled. "There was no east stand then, just a big green hill and an area for the press reporters to sit in - a pavilion-like structure. They had no anoraks, just something wrapped around them."
The teams used to emerge from the Lansdowne Pavilion, at the Havelock Square end, between today's west stand and north terrace.
Dunlop's father remained actively involved with his beloved club, and was even known to offer the players Drumhead cigarettes before they went onto the field.
"I notice that Peter Stringer occasionally wears gloves when he plays," said Dunlop.
"Well, my father may have been ahead of his time, as he designed netting gloves and toe-caps for players like Eugene Davy. His wife made them and although it was considered a bit of a sissy act, the players would try them out as they didn't want to offend my father."
Henry Dunlop had only arrived in Ireland aged 17, via India (coincidentally, Eric served there during World War Two. It was also where Henry's father, William Glasgow Dunlop, died while acting as superintendent of the Bombay Harbour Police), Germany and a French boarding school.
Where Henry Wallace Dunlop really excelled was in negotiations with the IRFU, then known as the Irish Football Union.
His first offer, in November 1875, for Lansdowne Road to be used for an international was rejected on the stated grounds it was "quite inadequate for a rugby match"; the Leinster Cricket Grounds in Rathmines were considered a more suitable venue.
A breakthrough occurred the following year when Leinster and Ulster played at Lansdowne on December 16th, Wallace giving the union an option of a £5 rent or a share of the gate receipts. They chose the latter.
For the first international at Lansdowne Road, on March 11th, 1878, Wallace upped the ante to £5 and half of any profit over £50 after expenses. It was only Ireland's fifth Test match and fourth against England.
The first victory at Lansdowne didn't arrive until February 5th, 1887 - once more England were the opposition - thanks to tries from CR Tillie and R Montgomery.
Around this period Harry Sheppard, the honorary treasurer of the IRFU, acquired the lease from Dunlop and when Sheppard died in 1906 the union paid £200 into his estate for full control of the lease. They negotiated a new deal with Pembroke Estate for 50 years at £50 per annum.
Having gained sole control, the IRFU set about developing the ground, changing the orientation to the north-south axis and providing a covered stand on the west side, which was finished in 1908 and rebuilt in 1955 along what is now the Dart line.
In 1927 they built an east stand, which was modernised in 1982. It has been creaking ever since.
Eric Dunlop last attended the stadium some 10 years ago, when his second son, Nicholas, took him to see South Africa play the Barbarians - which included an all-Irish front row of Peter Clohessy, Keith Wood and Paul Wallace - though, as an honorary member of Lansdowne, he occasionally attends lunch in the shadow of his father's legacy.
"From the time I was a schoolboy I always loved the north terrace. Schoolboys and schoolgirls were supposed to go to the south terrace because they would get in for a shilling but when the stewards weren't looking I'd slip down behind the east stand. I liked the view from there."
How does the redevelopment plan sit with him?
"I would go along with it," he told me. "I know there will be objections but that's par for the course. Sure everywhere - look at Twickenham and Cardiff - have had to redevelop."
Any lasting memories?
"I remember when I was a child there was a war memorial from the First World War that people would tip their hat to when passing by. It was on the inside wall between the first and second gate."
The IRFU will find a place for the war memorial in their new home but they could tip their hat to history by including some form of monument to Henry Dunlop when their super structure is unveiled sometime in the next decade.
"I certainly wouldn't disagree with that suggestion," says Eric Dunlop before breaking into a wry smile. "But the man to talk to about that is Philip Browne."
