The Wearing of the Blue

The Dubs in front of Hill 16 is one of the great GAA sporting scenes.

This piece charts a personal journey of identity, the GAA and my children.  This was broadcast on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany on 22 September, 2013. Click Here to Listen

It was first published in September Sundays, as heard on Sunday Miscellany, New Island, 2013.

It was 32 years before I was finally able to bring myself to put on a Dublin jersey, to publicly express my allegiance to my county, to nail those blue colours to that proverbial mast.  It’s not that I was ashamed to do so.  Far from it.  It was that I did not feel, well, qualified.

 

If you met me you there would be little to tell you that I was not born in Dublin, that I was not a Dub through and through.  I am both well disguised and comprehensively assimilated.  But I do know that part of me is different.

 

The reason for this is that I came to Ireland in 1979 at the age of 12 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.  In America my family was not part of any Irish community and I had virtually no exposure to Gaelic games.  When we upped sticks and came across the Atlantic my games of choice were basketball, American football and baseball.  Teams called the Bucks, the Packers and the Brewers, rather than the Dubs, were the subjects of my devotion.

 

But I soon developed an early affinity with the city in which I lived and also its great Gaelic football team.  Living in Blackrock in south Dublin and going to Newpark comprehensive where Gaelic games were not played it was only in 1983 that I made my first visit to Croke Park to see the infamous bad-tempered final between Dublin and Galway, which Dublin won.

 

In my later years in school I became friends with Stephen Ladd whose sister married John O’Leary, the then Dublin goalkeeper and captain.  Through Stephen I became a regular attendee of Dublin games Croke Park and the Dubs became part of my summers – I even played five a side matches with members of the Dublin team.  Although I woke on big match days as nervous and excited as anyone else, there was no question of me putting on a Dublin jersey.  In my head I remained an outsider to this world.

 

When Dublin won their next final in 1995 and played against Tyrone my girlfriend Sinead and I, unable to secure tickets, watched it in Meagher’s pub.  After the match the place heaved with celebrating Dublin supporters, almost all dressed in blue, matching the canopy of the early evening sky.   Then, out of the blue, as it were, the Dublin team appeared on the roof of Meagher’s holding the Sam Maguire trophy aloft in triumph – knights bringing back a holy relic.  As that evening wound down John O’Leary, captain, gave Sinead and I a lift across the city.  I sat in front talking with the winning All-Ireland Captain, just hours after victory, while Sinead sat in the back with, believe it or not, the Sam Maguire cup beside her.

 

Even after this experience I still did not feel qualified to wear a Dublin top.

 

My ‘Americanness’ receded with each passing year.  I was in the immigrant’s limbo, no longer American, but not yet, and perhaps never would be, Irish. Symptomatic of that confusion was that I would sometimes wear the blue shirt of my old Milwaukee baseball team to show my allegiance to Dublin.

 

In 2000, after I had been working at various heritage sites – including Kilmainham Gaol – for a number of years, I had the good fortune to be put in charge of the GAA Museum in Croke Park.  A strong interest in the games, their history, cultural significance and Irish heritage in general saw me overcome what might have been perceived potential shortcomings – I’d never played the games, went to a Protestant school and did not speak Irish.  When I got the job I was reminded of the 1980s ad in which young members of a band met with a music promoter who tells them, ‘You can’t sing.  You can’t dance.  You look awful.  You’ll go a long way.’

 

After being in charge of the most important artefacts of the GAA’s history and helping to interpret that history to the Museum’s visitors you’d think I wouldn’t have had a problem wearing that top.  But still I couldn’t.  In fact I never even tried one on.  My friend Stephen could not understand my reluctance – I knew as much about the game as many, was as vociferous as any and more disappointed than most when Dublin lost.  But that was not the point.  Those people around me were Dubs and I was not.

 

Then I wrote a book on the history of Croke Park.  While I felt honoured that people thought I was qualified to put down the history of what is an icon of Irish cultural life I remained, in my own mind, under qualified to wear that jersey.

 

I eventually married the Sinead who had travelled in the car with the Sam Maguire in 1995.  We have had two children.  Before children I, like most people, had no idea the impact they could have on one’s life.  But from the moment I looked into my daughter’s eyes in the very minute she was born and felt that connection that only a parent can feel I knew my life had changed.

 

My children Jennifer and Aaron have ‘settled me’ in a way I find hard to describe.  Having them has resolved many internal conflicts caused by the circumstances of my life.  They have helped to define me, but also helped me to define myself.  And that has even come down to wearing the jersey of a sports team.

 

Both of them play for Cuala GAA club and when Sinead and I started bringing them to Dublin matches they, of course, wore the jersey.  As they got a little older they wanted to know why their Dad did not do the same.  They did not comprehend the reason for my reticence.  When I tried to explain my reasoning it sounded, even to myself, as hollow hubris.  Whenever we headed into Croker they wanted me to be fully part of their world and were disappointed that I refused.

 

So, when Dublin played Donegal in the 2011 All Ireland semi final I, at last, put on the top.  When I met Stephen he smiled at the sight of me.  Walking into the stadium and taking our seats in the Cusack Stand I have rarely felt more self-conscious.  I believed people were looking at me saying to themselves, ‘He can’t wear that.  He’s not allowed.  How dare he.’   But no-one said anything.  I wondered why I had resisted, but knew that these things sometimes just take time.

 

The next match was that final against Kerry.  It was a match in which years of pain for the Dublin supporter melted away as Stephen Cluxton’s free floated over the bar.  And at that moment I was part of the mass of blue that shook the stadium to its very core.

The programme of my first game at Croke Park, the 1983 All-Ireland football final won by Dublin.  Not long after John O’Leary, Dublin goalkeeper, married the sister of a good school friend who would later be best man at my wedding.