Ciarán Murphy: Young Kilkenny fan in Croke Park reminded me of my magical first visit in 1991

The image of the weekend just past came from the stands in Croke Park, rather than the pitch.

Inpho photographer James Crombie has always had a knack for catching these communal moments – whether it’s Galway fans in the Cusack Stand rising in acclamation to Joe Canning’s last-minute winner against Tipperary in the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final, or the people standing or sitting in the Hogan Stand in the moments before Seán O’Shea’s free from the end of the earth that finally decided the Kerry-Dublin football semi-final last year.

This Sunday, it was a two-year-old boy from Antrim in a Kilkenny strip standing out from the crowd, on the steps of the Hogan Stand that caught his eye. And this week more than any other, it struck a chord with me.

Because we were all once that child. Maybe it was that kid’s first trip to Croke Park, or maybe he’s been there before – either way, to be brought to big games as a child is a gift so many of us were lucky to have been given. They’re incredibly formative, vivid experiences.

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My first trip to Croke Park was for the 1991 All-Ireland football final between Down and Meath. The moment they were kept apart in this year’s Tailteann Cup draw, I hoped they’d win both their semi-finals, and give me a chance to luxuriate in nostalgia.

I was a very serious-minded nine-year-old. I remember my dad telling me on the Friday night before that he was going to bring me to Croke Park, and I immediately ran off to read the chapters (already well-thumbed) of Raymond Smith’s The Football Immortals that related to the Down team of the 1960s.

I was acutely aware that Down had never lost an All-Ireland final. And of course I couldn’t help but admire the Meath team that had survived nine games that summer to get all the way to the Big Dance.

But for all my serious-mindedness, for all that I might have doggedly bothered my dad and his friends in the car up about James McCartan and Mickey Linden’s scoring record that summer, my memories are unquestionably those of a child.

I remember walking up the side of the old Cusack Stand, as the Hill appeared and then disappeared with each turn and turn-back on the gangway. Steps up and up and up, but only seeing concrete – until we were deposited to our seats and the intense green of the field hit me.

I remember with astonishing clarity the blue and gold GAA logo painted at centrefield, a new addition for that final noteworthy enough for it to be mentioned by Michael Lyster in the prematch preamble (all thankfully still on YouTube – I confess I did quite a bit of luxuriating this week).

Most distinctly of all, I remember the Down fans on Hill 16. We were seated on that side of the old Cusack Stand, so it felt like we were almost dangling out over the top of the terrace. And the noise! The red and black flags, the extraordinary spectacle of it all.

I thought I’d imagined a young man on the roof of the Nally Stand, but he was there too on YouTube, the sort of cartoonishly chaotic carry-on that we pretty much took for granted in the early 1990s.

Which leads me to my hard-earned ticket for this final, which was of course, a figment of my imagination. When my father told me I was going to the All-Ireland final, I should not have taken that to mean that I’d have a ticket.

Because, even if it sounds like something from the 1950s rather than the 1990s, I was thrown over the turnstile. I stood between my father’s legs for the duration of the game and took my rest by leaning up against his chest whenever my energy started to fade.

A harbinger of the end of this practice of throwing kids over turnstiles at sporting events was in the programme itself, which I pored over countless times that winter. An artist’s impression of the new Croke Park was carried in that programme – a brand new stadium, which looked outrageous and unlikely, and un-Irish, quite frankly.

The Cusack Stand I sat in that day would be demolished and in its place would rise the new Cusack Stand, much of it in place in time for Down’s return to the showpiece in 1994 against Dublin. What looked fantastical in that 1991 programme would be made reality within a couple of years. And once that phase was completed, like the one corner of the house you decided to dust, the rest of the stadium had to be redeveloped – the sooner, the better.

The return of Down and Meath to a national final, even if it is the Tailteann Cup, reminds us of that line about there being no ‘poor people’ in the American consciousness, just ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’.

A win this weekend would be more important than either Down or Meath would like to admit. It’s not just me that luxuriates in nostalgia – one gets the impression both of these counties have wallowed for far too long in their glorious histories. This Saturday can be the beginning of a new story.