Magical arena to live on only in our memories

LOCKER ROOM: New York's Giants Stadium will soon be no more, but we will always remember it for one mad afternoon in 1994 and Ray Houghton's goal against Italy

THERE HAS been plenty of nostalgic talk in the last week about that day in 1994, that mad afternoon when Ray Houghton did it again and we beat Italy. Razor’s looping punt. The majesty of McGrath. The blazing heat. The fans. The sheer Irishness of the place.

Myself? I was there. Got up early and went with a friend to watch Dublin and Kildare on a big screen in a pub. The game was dire and a draw, but it was fun to be out and about in Manhattan so early on that Saturday morning, seeing men and women in Dub, Kildare and Irish jerseys all scuttling about in the canyons of Manhattan looking for the appropriate bolt-holes in which to find a big screen, a big breakfast and some drink.

By the time we had our fill of all three it was time to dander out into the dead heat of Manhattan and wonder about the journey out to Meadowlands. To Giants Stadium. We hacks were staying with the Irish team in a place called Parsippany, New Jersey, and the bus or taxi from Parsippany into Manhattan took you past Giants Stadium, which loomed gloriously in a sea of concrete parking spaces.

Part of the anticipation of that game was the ethnic mix of New York city, the still fresh thrill of being World Cup finalists, the memories of Rome in 1990 and the fanciful thought that we would be avenging Toto Schillaci’s somewhat freakish goal. And part of it was Giants Stadium. It sounded right. And viewing it from the bus or taxi, it looked right. The place didn’t disappoint.

For some inspired reason we met the moment splendidly that day, hiring a sleek black Lincoln towncar with smoked glass windows for the ride out to east Rutherford from downtown Manhattan.

There was something dizzy about that air-conditioned ride through the ocean of fans, letting the windows whirr down electronically every now and then to tell familiar faces that yes, we live like kings, or to flash the press card and tickets and get waved through another barrier nearer and nearer the stadium.

Ah. There are few things in life more exciting than a great stadium in the hour or two before a great event. I remember hanging around outside for as long as possible because I enjoy stadiums and the sense of magnificence they offer. The buzz around Giants Stadium that day was extraordinary.

Everybody claims to have a vivid memory of what it was like walking into the stadium that afternoon and seeing the sheer cliffwalls of green, white and orange. I dispute this. By definition the first half of the attendance arrived to find the place half-empty or worse. By design I waited until about 10 minutes before kick-off to make my regal entrance. It was stunning. Not just me. But the place.

Built for the compactness of a gridiron field, but to house a capacity of over 80,000, the place rose up like immense walls around the pitch. You could get vertigo just by looking down. It gave you the sense that you could leap out into the air and land on the centre circle.

And, yes, it was all tricolours and faces gone beetroot from the unfamiliar sun. We were just coming into our bit of money as a nation and hadn’t yet lost the innocence which informed the adventure of Italia ’90.

The 90 minutes of football that followed was epic of course. Houghton’s goal. The siege at the other end. The sense that, no matter what, Ireland were going to hold on. The knowledge that working for a daily paper and covering a great event on a Saturday freed one from any pressure of tight deadlines that night might have helped. I remember wandering down afterwards for the post-match quotes.

In those days things were different. The players (visited by Charlie Haughey if I recall rightly) emerged from the dressingroom and hung around and spoke as if they had all the time in the world. Oddly, the Italians did the same. I remember wandering back into the main stadium and looking at the place with its walls of red seats, now denuded of the gaiety of tricolours, and coming back out with the evening cooling and Italian players still standing around speaking with anybody who was interested in speaking with them.

That was long ago and far away and now, as if to emphasise the rate at which the world changes, they are tearing down Giants Stadium when this year’s gridiron season winds up. The place has only been open since 1976 and seemed to serve its function well, but there is something very American in the constant need for renewal which sees a fine old stadium torn down and its replacement erected just a hundred yards away.

But ours is not to reason why. Like Yankee Stadium, which disappeared last year, or Ebbets Field, which vanished from Brooklyn long ago, Giants Stadium takes with it more memories than just our own. The demolition of a stadium robs us forever of that novelty of knowing and gazing fondly at precisely where this or that happened. We lose a little bit of the thread of history.

You look at Dalymount Park (Pissers Dignam’s field as it once was) and, though it is just a shadow of its old self, famous ghosts still inhabit the place. Ditto with Croke Park or Wembley. You might not be able to mark the spot with an ‘X’ when pointing to where Geoff Hurst scored his third goal or where Seamus Darby ended Kerry’s five-in-a-row quest, but those places continue to be sacred because of their history.

Giants Stadium’s shift across the concrete feels like a goodbye. One thing is razed. Something else takes its place nearby. The place accumulated so much history in its 33 years. Its usage for varying sports means the memories are spread over a huge swathe of the population surrounding the place.

There is the old myth that the labour leader Jimmy Hoffa had his body dumped in the foundations at one end zone, sometimes referred to as the Hoffa Zone. Various people have proved this not to be the case but it’s too good a yarn to let go of and if, perchance, they dig Jimmy up in a few months’ time when they level the stadium, they should quietly transplant what is left of him to the new joint. Just to lend it some character.

We will always remember Giants Stadium for Ray Houghton’s goal. For New Yorkers, it’s the stadium named for one team, the Giants, and played in by another their rivals, the Jets, who have always had to artfully hide all Giants references right down to always insisting that they play their home games in Meadowlands and not Giants Stadium.

And there are the big events. The Pope brought 82,948 to the place in the mid-1990s. U2 eclipsed that and broke the record last month with a crowd of 84,472. So, U2 hold that record, but Bruce Springsteen owns the place. The boss plays great strings of gigs in what is as much his home ground as it is any of the sports franchises which have used it.

He has played five nights of farewell gigs there since September. Remarkable as it is to fill a stadium that size over five nights, the run was just half the length of his 10-gig stint back in 2003. The Boss has said his goodbyes. The old place is on its way into history. Even all these miles away there is nostalgia at the passing of one of the original cookie cutter stadiums. On a quiet evening I’m sure our olés are still to be heard echoing.