There is a little corner of Ireland still

Sideline Cut: Not having a ticket for the rugby classic in Lansdowne Road last Sunday, I got to see it from the next best place: an Irish bar in the middle of Manhattan, writes Keith Duggan

You probably know the scene: 20 bucks in, a walk through a narrow doorway where framed photographs of now greying All-Ireland championship teams hang, a deep breath and into the bedlam. If you tried to squeeze the entire population of a small county like Leitrim into one pub, it might resemble this place.

Some people had dragged themselves out of bed for the 9am cut-off point; you had to get there early because they generally lock the doors once folk begin to faint. The ubiquitous Colin Farrell supposedly turned up at the same doors a few weekends earlier in the hope of seeing the Scotland game and was turned away by a doorman. Whether he thought Alexander sucked, was a French auteur snob or simply had no interest in contemporary cinema was not known. But Farrell was politely and firmly rebuffed and probably had to chase a cab out to Queens or up to the Bronx to see the match live.

Apparently he related the tale in a good-natured way to Letterman or Jay Leno a couple of nights later, much to the horror of the doorman in question. But as the guy said in self-defence, it would not have mattered if Robert De Niro himself had presented for admittance. The place, he declared with finality, was f***in' wedged. Jammers. What, came the question, if old Colin had appeared with his Alexander co-star Angelina Jolie in tow? The doorman sighed. There's always room for an exception to the rule, he admitted.

With the doors closed and the bright morning sunshine blocked by heavy curtains, the party-goers who had made this the last stop of a long Saturday evening out could drink in the happy illusion that they still held the night in the palm of their hands. They knocked back pints and shots while others ordered fried breakfasts and Bloody Marys and coffee. It was both Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

And then the televisions beamed in the RTÉ transmission and there was George Hook and the boys, woofing it up and framed by the staunch and plain familiar backdrop of Lansdowne.

The atmosphere was reminiscent of the old Irish haunts a bunch of us used to head up to in Boston years back, just before the Old Country went prosperous and emigration, illegal or otherwise, felt like a lifelong deal.

There is a particular feel to Irish-American pubs anyway, a heavily lachrymose sentimentality in the decor and furnishings that give those institutions a separating quality that works a magic after the crowd begins to get loud and tipsy.

Sundays were always the epic days in the pubs of Dorchester or Brighton in Boston, and the same along McLean Avenue in the Bronx or Woodlawn in Queens. The great construction sites were quiet for the day, bar workers were through the heavy part of the weekend, and so, in the Irish quarters, there were thousands of young people with a few dollars in their pockets and an itch to spend them. On championship days, no matter which counties were playing, small armies would descend upon these Irish pubs, most wearing team shirts to watch the game.

People who have lived for a time in the States have often said the only time they truly read the Irish newspapers, particularly their local county broadsheets, was when they were living away. Then, they scoured them cover to cover, anxious not to miss any bit of familiarity or connection. It was probably in much the same way that those championship broadcasts were scrutinised, with a kind of rapt intensity that was probably even more solemn than at home.

You had, gathered in those drinking places, Irish students for whom America was just a summer novelty and the older generations who fled out of necessity and never had the choice of considering the life of apartments, subways and hot streets as a luxury.

It was around that time most of us first heard the name of Setanta television. Nobody was quite sure how it worked, you simply paid your $20 at the door early on a Sunday morning and traded the humid city morning for a darkened, air-conditioned room with a slice of pure Irish authenticity on the big screen. With the sun banished and the lights down, you could have been in your local bar at home.

Watching those games were, of course, many Irish men and women who had stayed to work illegally and could not or would not travel home without forsaking the lives they had built for themselves along the east coast megalopolis. Perhaps that is why, even on days of championship games which you watched as a neutral, it was impossible not to get drawn in by the ferocity of attention paid to every ball kicked or hurled. With the booze kicking in and emotions high, it was easy to believe Croke Park was right there in the room with you - until the game ended and the blinds were drawn and the brunch crowd came in and later that afternoon those same screens showed the New England Patriots.

Perhaps that is why in the 1990s, when a succession of new(ish) counties made it to the scarcely comprehensible realms of the All-Ireland final, folks from Donegal, from Derry, from Down, Mayo, Clare and Wexford booked flights home that September, to hell with the consequences. It was a once-in-a-lifetime sight, their county on that field, and they were not going to watch it from a cushioned seat in an adopted city.

It is probably greatly changed now. You get the impression that most young Irish in the establishment cities of America are there by choice, regardless of their immigrant status. Home is no longer the closed door it once was in terms of employment. Students are no longer taking up the J-1 option as they used to do, and instead easily find summer work at home.

Of course there are many people who emigrated decades ago locked into a mindset that has placed home at a distance far exceeding the width of the Atlantic, people who have left it so long to return that the thought of the journey holds a kind of fear.

There is safety in recreating home through the epic sports events.

So it was comforting to see, while Irish people are much more transient than was the case even a decade ago, that the time-honoured tradition of seeking out some darkened corner far below the gleaming skyscrapers on a bright morning from which to cheer and curse is alive and well. It was and remains a way of taking shelter, of sorts, from the cosmopolitan options that shine from every neon sign along every street. As during the high days of the Gaelic summer, as during the World Cup tournaments and critical qualifying games in far-flung eastern countries, as during the nights when Sonia O'Sullivan owned the world's great running arenas, the place rocked.

Outside, the last of a February snow melted and the city went about its Sunday morning business, uncaring. Deep in that bar felt like the only place to be, just like the hundreds of others like it have always felt to so many.