Early April, 1999, but it’s more like a day in November. Wind and rain sheet into the old disabled viewing area in Croke Park. The corner where the Nally Stand and Hill 16 meet. The kindly old Steward, Bobby, who da and I had got to know from years of being in and out, says “This is miserable, c’mon, I’ll bring ye over to the new place”.
The new place – we’d heard about it in the pipeline, we’d heard it was open but weren’t sure how to gain access to it, as it was on the Cusack Stand side of the field and ‘in my time’ we’d never been over there. As the wheelchair spot was on the opposite side of the ground when I started attending matches in 1990, obviously.
Actually, there’s a small degree of a misnomer in the above, I had been in the Cusack Stand side once, May of 1996, with my dear mother for a Neil Diamond concert. Again, the first noticeable factor were weather conditions more conducive to Lapland in December than Drumcondra in early summer. Well, that and the winding spiral ramp we had to negotiate to get to our viewing area. Five loops of it to be exact.
Mighty woman as my mother undoubtedly was when in the full of her health, there’s no way she would’ve been able to push me in a manual wheelchair up the loopy ramps – nor would I have let her try – and even with the help of two most obliging Stewards. You can imagine our ire, then, when noticing that the lifts were, in fact, operational, but had been reserved for the caterers. If you told it to an ass it’d kick you.
Back to our football debut in the same spot. Luckily, by then, I’d acquired a powered wheelchair by then, but, even at that, it was a good job our old friend and long serving Maor at the Jones’ Road venue, Johnny Kavanagh, on standby just in case the batteries in my vehicle calved before the five loops had been completed.
No such problems manifested themselves on the occasion in question, and in fact, for the remainder of that 1999 season, the disabled viewing area was back in the old spot. As most of you will know, Meath went on to win the All Ireland that year. Chalking up the most resounding victory achieved against Dublin in my lifetime along the way.
However, it’s for less glamorous reasons I recall the day. For that was the first season in which the GAA gave in to the do-gooder set and stopped fans from getting out onto pitches after matches. Worse than that, the Brains Trust of the day came up with asinine idea of presenting the trophies in the middle of the field.
Thankfully, that bullsh** was done away with by the time the boys from the county Armagh raided The Kingdom in 2002. And better still, every Steward in Croke Park, Dad’s Army or a fleet of bulldozers wouldn’t have kept the great people from the Orchard off the pitch that day and more fu****g power to them!
Back in ’99 though, it was all too new and people were far too sheepish in a ‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’ sort of way. Hardly surprising given the sycophantic obedience which was leathered, literally, into previous generations in relation to the Garda, the teacher and the Parish Priest.
Be that as it may, you’d have thought the fact that a member of the Meath panel and, indeed, a member of the backroom team signalled for me to join them on the pitch would’ve been enough for the Maors to allow me out.
And to this day I remain convinced that it was left to Bobby, I would’ve been out on the field within seconds. But no, a heavy-set ignoramous who I knew to be related to one of the Dublin players got a serious ego trip out of his Hi-Vis bib.
“I can have you arrested”, he kept bellowing at me, ah, says I “F*** off, ya Dublin b****x, if your own crowd won you’d let the whole of the Hill out, it’s well known it was done before”.
Did I regret it? Not in the slightest in terms of Brutus and his bright green bib, but I knew it upset Bobby. He had been so good to me over the years, when he quietly, almost apologetically, asked me to extend the olive branch to my nemises before the All Ireland semi final against Armagh, refusal wasn’t an option.
But from my perspective, there was about as much warmth in the handshake as one would expect to find in an ice bath. However, the passage of time has made me actually grateful that at least it put Bobby and I back on an even keel because time would prove that to be the penultime occasion on which the little gentleman with the knowing grin would look after us. As the All Ireland Final of that season against Cork was the last time us wheel-using folk were allowed anywhere near the hallowed turf.
Thereafter, I am disgusted and upset to say, it has been a case of out of sight out of mind in terms of disabled Gaels. With our new ‘home’ being at the back of the bottom deck of the Cusack Stand. Now, the five loops aside, the view of the pitch was, in fairness, spectacular. Or it would be if the simple step of removing a couple of rows of seats from in front of the viewing platform. But then, you know my theory about common sense – it very seldom lives up to its name.
Thus, if there’s a big game in GAA HQ, and, if some of the crowd stood up to get a better view of some incident, those of us in the ‘reserved’ area may as well as be at home watching it at the fireplace as having to watch on the big screens above our heads.
I have, from the time the disabled viewing facilities moved over to the Cusack, being persistent in my pointing to the Brains Trust in Croke Park as to the inadequacies of our ‘accommodation’. Pointing out that, it was somewhat inconceivable that there was nowhere for wheelchair users in the Hogan Stand. Which is, of course, widely recognised as the prime seating area within the Jones’ Road venue.
The paltry and frankly insulting two line response received from the higher echelons of the Association only made me more determined to go full on dog-with-a-bone than ever before with my umbrage about the issue. Albeit initially employing a degree of reverse psychology by boycotting GAA HQ until, after about five years, a change in circumstances gave me an ‘in’ which has made attending the Drumcondra venue a little more palatable, but, one is continually cognisant of the fact that 99.9% of disabled patrons are not fortunate enough to have such a connection.
On that score, the bottom line is that the disabled viewing ‘facilities’ are utterly shambolic and frankly a disgrace for, not only the Association’s headquarters, but what is also regarded as one of the finest sporting stadia in Europe. Though in all honesty, can it be regarded as such when quite a sizable cohort of society are so poorly catered for.
The bit of assistance I have been able to garner out of who rather than what’s known aside, to my personal shock and bitter disappointment, my fervent hopes that current Uachtarain CLG Jarlath Burns would be more approachable in respect of such matters have thus far been badly let down.
Though an acknowledgement of receipt of my communication did hit my inbox within days of Mr Burns assuming his role, there’s been more chatter from the Cistercian Monks in the eight and a bit months since the initial query was sent.
However, I now appear to have relevant individuals or bodies backed into a corner they will do well to wriggle out of after a cat was let out of the bag which shows some of what I was fobbed off with over the years to be blatant untruths. That is to say, the assertion that there were no disabled viewing facilities in the Hogan Stand was openly disproved when RTE broadcaster Des Cahill posted a photo on X of Cuala GAA’s inspirational warrior Sean Drummond – wheelchair bound after a catastrophic injury – after watching the Dalkey club’s victory in the Leinster Club SFC Final against St Mary’s of Ardee from, yes, you’ve guessed it, the Lower Hogan.
Cuala’s brave warrior being in situ thence proving that what the Croke Park clerical staff had fobbed me off with was nothing short of bluff.
What you have just read will be sent in their direction once again but no breaths will be held while awaiting a reply.
Prove me wrong Croke Park, prove me wrong.
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