Locker Room: It was surprising to read in yesterday's sports pages that, after all the fanfare, Jonny Wilkinson had a quiet and unproductive day in Croke Park on Saturday.
Through no fault of his own, Wilkinson never got to continue his renaissance by means of a kicking duel which might have told us the truth about how intimidating an atmosphere Croke Park really is.
A lot of the guff and puff written about Croker in the past few weeks suggested that, because of the place the stadium holds in our hearts, it would automatically be a cauldron or a fortress. I don't know how it was on Saturday against the more traditional foe and with all those undercurrents of history swirling, but for the French game the atmosphere seemed tame and the rugby pitch's geographical remove from the stands seemed to inhibit the audience a little.
The 5.30pm start on Saturday would have ensured that a little more drinking got done in the afternoon and a little more roaring and bellowing should have ensued. Yet apart from reports of some early booing of Wilkinson as he lined up a kick, Croke Park never got to see the man's legendary sangfroid being tested.
Pity. We'd spent some time on Saturday watching a preview of tomorrow night's Laochra Gaeledition on Charlie Redmond and listening to Charlie, still a natural showman, describe his place-kicking routine in Croker in detail.
Between the piseogs for practising and the elaborate choreography of his run-up, including a couple of licks of his right glove, Charlie was to place-kicking what De Niro is to method acting.
Charlie's missed penalties became a matter of legend back in the early 1990s, and to his credit he could laugh about them then and he can laugh about them still. His free-taking was more bankable, but, even with the frees, the thrill of watching Charlie was knowing that he was so porous a character. He absorbed everything. The mood of the crowd, the circumstances of the game, his immediate history. His addiction to method reassured him, but he never quite managed to make kicking an act removed from the rest of life, just a simple, mechanical process.
Who could? In our time maybe Jimmy Keaveney and Matt Connor were the coolest free-takers. It's still astonishing to think that Matt's 161 games for Offaly yielded 82 goals and 660 points, as well as that 1980 dismantlement of the Kerry backs. (There were county teams who scored less in that span than Matt did single-handedly.)
And yet from the lives of Keaveney and Connor there are no conclusions to be drawn about place-kicking. Matt Connor liked to practise all the time in front of a goal, relentlessly honing his accuracy. Jimmy could take or leave it, but would stroke a few over at the end of a training session, as much, one suspects, to be seen to be doing a little bit as actually needing to.
In Croke Park they were both impeccable, and it's still a surprise if you look at old footage to see either man miss a kick.
That's why it would have been nice if circumstances had brought the great Wilkinson to the point in Croke Park where he had one big pressure kick with it all on the line. This is a guy, after all, who, the old story goes, realised when he was a kid that his right foot was less effective when kicking and bought a video of Gavin Hastings to study for hours.
Forget all the history and having to forgo the pleasure of walloping England, it would have told us something about Croke Park and what sort of a place it is. I imagine for a visiting player, despite the polite comments and the nods to history, it is just another stadium, and the openness and asymmetry of the Hill 16 end probably diminish the place's potential to be an actual cauldron. It will be nice to measure the atmosphere there against the temperaments of various place-kickers.
Perhaps a last-minute penalty into the Canal End to save Steve Staunton's job on the night we play Wales would be an appropriate amount of drama.
And we need an American football game. We flatter ourselves in this part of the world that the difference between our place-kickers and the NFL's is that our boys might just have performed the equivalent of an army assault course when they are asked to place the ball on the ground, bring the pulse down and kick a pressure free.
I imagine the special pressures on a man like Adam Vinatieri, who won yet another Super Bowl ring early this month, are more exquisite. Your entire livelihood depends on your ability to kick that ball, which has a smaller sweet spot than a soccer, Gaelic or rugby ball. That you depend on somebody else to catch and place the ball, that so many games hinge on your talent. Vinatieri, regarded as the coolest in history, has won two Super Bowls (for New England) with kicks in the last five seconds of the game. It's no surprise to learn he is a distant cousin of Evel Knievel. That sort of kicking is like a tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon.
All the steam has gone from the business of opening up Croke Park now. There'll be a few instances, no doubt, of the GAA and the FAI rubbing each other up the wrong way, both intentionally and unintentionally, but from now on it's business as usual really.
And one of the pleasures to be taken from having an open house is seeing how others find it and react there, sampling the different atmospheres that can be created there. It's nice to think now that there are no more hang-ups, that, while Croke Park will always be the GAA's, the greats of so many sports might yet grace there.
Croke Park wasn't built to tolerate mediocrity. If it's going to be open, it is going to be open for the elite and the great.
Ali was just a start when it comes to enhancing the legend of the place.
It's not on the schedule at the moment, what with rugby expecting to be in its new quarters by the 2009 season, but we suspect we might see Wilkinson in Croker again. His people say he won't be at his peak until he is 32, in five years. Maybe we'll see him and others in the clutch on the same patch that Charlie and Matt and Jimmy graced.
• We lost a friend at the weekend. In St Vincent's of Marino there was no man more central to the heartbeat of the club than Jackie Gilroy. His sudden loss represents a blow not just to all of us who knew and loved him but to the kids in the mini-leagues and the kids yet to arrive in the mini-leagues, because the club and the community will be the poorer without Jackie. Our challenge is to once again be the club and the people Jack dreamed of us being.
He was one of those characters who was never afraid of a big idea or of the hard work needed to make it happen. In a world where some give all and all give some, he gave more than anyone. He was a man of happy mischief, a cajoler and organiser. It's hard to believe there'll be no more of those phone calls from Jack rustling up the enthusiasm for this idea or that project in the club.
Through it all, through a fine playing career, a happy family life and the incredible blows he took through illness, he shared himself and his energy unsparingly. He was so in touch with everything, so consumed with passion for what he did, that at times it was easy for us to forget what an inspiration he was to all of us. He was beloved and he was a hero in the sense that he never surrendered or considered it. He elevated the hopes of everyone he spoke to.
Jackie Gilroy was a rare one, a man you don't meet every day. To Pat and to all of Jackie's family, may his strength be yours now. Rest easy now, Jack.
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