As southside fans head across O'Connell Bridge and into the unknown tomorrow, Kathy Sheridangets the view of people on both sides of the Croke Park divide.
James Doyle sups his pint in Meagher's of Ballybough - first stop for the filling of "the Sam" on the odd occasion that the Dubs get lucky - and nods in sad bemusement. "I was going into town on the bus to get chicken legs for Skippy [ an ancient Pomeranian dog] in Moore Street and what do you think I saw on the number 123? A big notice saying 'How to Get to Croke Park'. Now I did hear that the southsiders don't cross the Liffey but I didn't believe it till I saw that."
As well as the bus notices, the cute little transport guides to Croke Park, complete with maps, cost €150,000 to produce by all accounts. "Ah Jaysus, ye'd think Dublin was bleedin' Brazil," interjects a gentleman who should have been nowhere near a pub at 4pm on a Thursday. "They can't be that stupid. Put them standin' on a pallet in Balls-bleedin'-bridge and they'll be able to see the place for Jaysus' sake."
Dominick Gaffney, an electrician, who lives directly across from Croke Park, only recently discovered rugby on the television: "And I thought, by God, this is a real man's game. The GAA is gone very tame in comparison. I like looking at bank managers and accountants killing each other . . . it's great. Oh yes, I think a different class of people play rugby - they're not ordinary run-of-the-mill Joes like electricians - but I think it's proper order that they're playing in Croke Park. Why keep it just for one sport? I haven't heard a single, negative word about it."
Sean O'Neill, who lives just around the corner and has worked on security at both Croke Park and Lansdowne Road, says: "They're all gentlemen. It's the soccer that worries me. I hope when England comes, their fans behave."
James Doyle, still bemused by the notice on the bus, is no stranger to rugby. He played it as a youth, though his passion is cricket.
In other words, southsiders heading north tomorrow should leave their assumptions at O'Connell Bridge. The big division in Croke Park, says Sean O'Neill, is between where the VIPs "like Bertie" sit - called "the cushioners" - and the rest.
A satirical guide for southside rugby clubs on where to meet up with their clubmates, courtesy of "DNS (de nort soide) Tourism" was doing the e-mail rounds this week. What it demonstrated (rather too gently, probably) is that the one-upmanship between the Dublin southside clubs is as lively as any northside-southside divide.
Denizens of Lansdowne RFC were directed to The Hogan Stand pub - "No, not the stand in Croke Park or Donnybrook, this is a pub on the NCR (North Circular Road). You should feel right at home here as you can see the back of the stands from the bar and tell the locals you are Irish rugby". Railway Union, CYM, and Seapoint, meanwhile, are directed to "the canal bank adjoining Mountjoy Prison (numerous off-licences in situ)".
On the other hand, the newspaper ad for shuttle buses, placed by four southside pubs, offering match transport for a fiver and a free pint on your return, reads more like a burst for freedom back to the southside than a bid to keep the highly lucrative, traditional match-day business. The part of the ad that breaks out in quotation marks to emphasise the fact that the convoy will return "over O'Connell Bridge to Ballsbridge" is what raised eyebrows.
"Makes O'Connell Bridge sound like Sniper Alley," snorted one northsider.
The irony is that the first All-Irelands were played in the quintessential Dublin 4 location of Elm Park. "And isn't de Valera himself supposed to have said that the two games most suited to the Irish were hurling and rugby?" says Tony Garry, a Clare man, all-round sports fan and chief executive of Davy stockbrokers. "Although, being an old Blackrock boy, he was possibly trying to justify the blot on his nationalist credentials."
In fact, de Valera was clearly on to something. The interweaving of Munster rugby and Gaelic, for both spectators and players, has always been a given, even in rugby's pre-professional days. Liz Howard, president of the Camogie Association and former public relations officer of the Tipperary GAA board, says that 80 per cent of those she meets at Munster GAA stadiums would also be regulars at Thomond Park. But she also points to Leinster and Ireland stalwarts such as Shane Horgan, who played minor football for Meath, and Gordon D'Arcy, who played football for Wexford, and notes that two of Brian O'Driscoll's first cousins played minor hurling for Dublin.
As Garry points out, that increasing competition for talent at grassroots level between the two codes may be one good reason for the GAA to feel more nervous about opening Croke Park to the IRFU than to the FAI. "Rugby offers someone with talent the opportunity to stay at home and make a good living, while in soccer, the attraction is usually in the clubs abroad. Rugby is going to be a serious competitor to the GAA."
The fact that the argument can be couched in those terms is probably indicative of how far this country has moved towards what one GAA man calls "pragmatic patriotism".
While there is talk of some Irish fans arriving at the Ireland-England game armed with "Lest We Forget" banners (usually seen on British war memorials), the debate now seems to be between commerce (if you were Tesco and Sainsbury's had to close for some reason, would you invite them in to sell groceries in your shop?) versus neighbourliness (if your neighbour's house burned down and you had a spare room, would you not offer him a roof over his head?). But supposing your neighbour burned his own house down with a view to building a bigger and better one? It all seems academic now. The main problem with the move to Croke Park for the rugby buffs was finding sufficiently multi-starred northside venues in which to lounge over their elaborate pre-match lunches. These, of course, are no rubber chicken affairs; they include a leisurely, multi-course meal, free bar and guest speaker, all in salubrious surroundings, plus transport to the match, programme and ticket, all for roughly €800 a head. It is estimated that there could be up to 10,000 such corporate packages sold for tomorrow and it's clearly a nice little earner. By one reckoning, the total cost to the organiser is around €230 a head, including an €80 ticket, although to be fair to non-IRFU organisers, they will probably have paid three to four times the face value.
Places such as Belvedere College have been staked out in the dearth of four-star hotels.
Lansdowne RFC is basing itself at the Rotunda's Pillar Room.
For the IRFU, of course, parachuted into one of the world's finest hospitality centres, armed with its own supply of cost-price corporate tickets, this is bonanza time. Combine access to several thousand corporate hospitality places, twice as many programme sales and tickets, priceless global publicity, not to mention a total absence of local competition, and suddenly, the northside is looking very damn cool indeed. Although they will of course be adjourning to the southside's Berkeley Court for the traditional committee dinner.
"It's going back to Lansdowne Road that's going to be the hard bit, never mind losing nearly half the ticket allocation," says one big Leinster fan and quintessential southsider, who - naturally - declined to be named.
As for the northside-southside carry-on? "It's only good-natured slagging," everyone says. There is one way to find out. Tony Garry suggests that two teams be created in Dublin, the Northsides and the Southsides. "That would give a real edge to it," he says gleefully.