Special day for all Irish sports fans

Willie John McBride: I think tomorrow will be a very special day for all sports fans in Ireland. Opening Croke Park was a very brave move on the part of the GAA and I am delighted to see it.

This match has been been eagerly anticipated and it will be a marvellous occasion, a spectacle, apart from anything else.

Personally, I was, of course, somewhat saddened at the end of Lansdowne Road as we know it. That ground is part of my soul at this stage.

I played there for 14 years and have carried those memories on with me.

I thought it was a brilliant ground in which to play, with a completely unique atmosphere and that sense of the crowd almost in on top of the field of play.

There was a great connection between the supporters and the players that was very rare.

The crowd always seemed more remote in the bigger grounds like Twickenham, which may have looked more impressive but just didn't have the same charisma.

I have attended both a hurling and football final at Croke Park but before the stadium was fully developed.

In fact, I was there most recently to attend a Tina Turner concert, which was a highly enjoyable. And the place is magnificent.

It is going to be a strange sensation for the Irish team when they run out, highly emotional no doubt and also new.

That is something they are going to have to cope with.

And they are going to have to come to terms with the practicalities of getting their sight-lines in order for line kicking, judging the flight of the ball against the new peripheries of the stadium and coping with the strangeness of playing on a much more open and bigger field. But they are professionals and will have a great support behind them.

In terms of the significance of opening Croke Park to rugby and an all-Ireland team, well I would just say that it is the 21st century now and that the GAA were brave and farsighted enough to make this gesture.

And there are members of the GAA who will probably disagree with this development.

But the playing of rugby and soccer in Croke Park is going to showcase the GAA's stadiums and it is going to bring foreign visitors to Croke Park who would not be there otherwise.

And they are bound to ask questions and get a sense of what the GAA is about.

So let us hope that having Ireland teams playing in Croke Park might encourage those who have their reservations into changing their minds and seeing that this is a good thing, a positive progression and something that the whole of Ireland can share in.

Christened William James McBride, but known throughout the rugby world as "Willie John", he made his international rugby union debut on February 10th, 1962, against England at Twickenham, aged 21.

McBride was capped 63 times for Ireland (12 as captain), earning his final cap in 1975. He also won 17 Lions caps and was manager of the 1983 Lions tour to New Zealand. In 2004, he was named inRugby World magazine as the Rugby Personality of the Century.