LOOKING for tickets for the All-Ireland final can be a frustrating if not enraging business. When you’re just an ordinary enthusiast, trying to find a ticket can lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
As you start your quest, all the old discouraging clichés are put before you. “Ah, they’re scarce as hen’s teeth,” or “Unless you’re well in with the club chairman you haven’t a hope.” Your annual quest brings you in touch with some less than admirable traits in the Irish character. A fellow says to you: “Is it a ticket you’re after? I might be able to do something.” “Oh God, I be very grateful.” “Leave it with me. I’ll do what I can.” You thank him effusively. Unfortunately, this is the very last you’ll hear from him. You try to contact him but there is no response to your messages.
Why do people make promises they can’t keep? Maybe they want to savour the moment of warmth, the sudden gush of gratitude, no matter how spuriously aroused. They are compulsive promisers. We should know better than to approach them.
Another equally enraging type surfaces after the All-Ireland.
“Ah, if only you had contacted me. I had a few to spare.” The trouble is that he can never be found or contacted before the All-Ireland. He only surfaces from the bowels of the earth two days after you watched the match from a noisy pub near Croke Park.
Everyone seems to have a story about getting a ticket by the most tortuous ways. Indeed the value of the ticket seems to increase with the difficulty of getting it.
One tale I heard was when the ticket was entrusted with the guard of the train from Tralee. When he arrived at Heuston station in Dublin he gave it into the care of one of the barmen in the Aisling hotel nearby. When the anxious ticket-seeker called there on the Saturday night he was told it was the barman’s night off.
He had to go to the fellow's digs in Chapelizod. There the landlady told him the barman was down in the local pub. Our man went there and eventually found the barman and got the ticket. But he had to buy a round of drinks for a crowd of carousers and ended up singing Galway Bayat 3am. However, he took his seat in Croke Park for the All-Ireland.
The climax of all the drama of ticket-seeking can be seen on the Sunday afternoon of the All-Ireland outside Gill’s public house, at the corner of Jones’s Road and North Circular Road. It’s within sight and sound of the stadium. This is the rendezvous where promised tickets are handed over. Only those with tickets are allowed past the well-guarded barrier set up across the roadway.
There’s only an hour to go before the ball is thrown in and the tension is high. Every so often the surging roars of the crowd watching the minor game can be heard. A shuffling horde of people gyrate anxiously. Many are bellowing into their mobile phones, hand clapped to the ear to try to hear what the other person is saying.
People stand on tiptoe as their eyes swivel about, looking for the faces of their saviours. They get angry when some big dope, pint in hand, stands there blocking their line of vision.
The year before last I lingered to watch the great spectacle outside Gills. I found myself beside a middle-aged woman who was vibrating with jolly excitement. Then her mobile phone rang. It was bad news. Her face turned yellow with vindictiveness. For a while she was speechless and then I heard her say, “I’d love to put rat poison in his beer after him letting me down like this.”
Last Sunday week, armed with a ticket given me by a decent man in Portlaoise for the hurling final, I again savoured the manic atmosphere outside that pub. I met a middle-aged fellow I know from Crinkle, near Birr. He’d been waiting for an hour for his partner to turn up with the tickets. There was no sign of her and she wasn’t answering her phone. He was seething. “I’ll wring that big heifer’s neck when I catch aholt of her,” he growled.
Then, 20 metres away, he caught sight of the well-padded woman approaching. She was smiling and held aloft two tickets as she came towards him. His face underwent a dramatic change. A huge smile took over. He rushed towards her and clasped her in his arms, “Ah God, you’re the salt of the earth,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” And they went up the road to Croke Park arm and arm, with a spring in their step.
The search for All-Ireland tickets brings out the best and the worst in people.