The Magic Stadium

So I got married last weekend, right? And now I'm in Ireland on my honeymoon, and I want this to be the best vacation of all time. And I'm pretty easy. If my wife is happy, I'm happy. She has a few things she absolutely must see and do while we're here. Sleep in castle -- check. Get massage -- check. Drink Guinness -- check (obv).

I have the same requirement for this trip as I have for most: I must attend some sort of sporting event. If I'm out and around the States, I have to go to a baseball or football game. If it's abroad, it's usually soccer, as it was in England (Arsenal) or Germany (Bayern Munich). In some countries you can be a little more exotic and unfamliar -- such as the bullfight I attended Easter Sunday in Madrid in 1998. Pretty hideous sport, bullfighting, by the way. I'm glad I went, but I'm not going again. It's morally indefensible.

Ireland, of course, has soccer, but it's not the season, and their play doesn't quite compare to England's or Germany's. Not that I couldn't enjoy it, but, as I said, it's not the season.

But Ireland is known not for what most other countries call football, and certainly not for what Americans call football. They have their own football. Gaelic football. It's similar to rugby, but much, much faster. It's not that easy to watch on TV, but I was hoping to catch a match live, which is the only way to really experience any sport.

This time of year brings some healthy competition. There is the All-Ireland tournament going on right now, and the teams that did not advance to the provincial finals -- Ireland has four provinces, and each has it's own football championship -- are playing single-elimination matches right now to try to move on. A bunch of those matches were played yesterday, and my wife and I thought that we'd attend. We'd have loved to see Donegal. They played yesterday in the town of Ballybofey (one of my favorite Irish town names). Donegal was our first stop in Ireland, and we are completely in love with this place. But we left there Friday, so there was no way we were going all the way back to see them play. I was pleased to check the paper and see they won, though it was obvious that whoever wrote the 100-word blurb on the match was hardly impressed.

Our other option for yesterday was to venture from Galway (where we stayed after Donegal) to Mullingar, in County Westmeath, for a 7 p.m. match. Westmeath haven't beaten Meath in championship play. Ever. 0-19-2. I decided that was the one to see. I could get behind an underdog like that, and if Westmeath were to win, I would have made sure to let the locals know later in the pubs that I was at my first Gaelic game and had clearly brought their team luck, and they would have bought me pints all night.

But that was a long drive into an unfamiliar place, and it would have left us driving back across the country late at night. If we're going to drive somewhere for a match, it should be somewhere we can just stay a while. Like, say, Dublin! The Dubs were hosting the Leinster championship today at 2 p.m. at Croke Park Stadium, an 85,000-seat beast. The NFL should absolutely hold one of it's international showcases here. It's right in a local Dublin neighborhood -- as a stadium should be.

So we left this morning, made the drive from West Coast to East (Ireland is a great place to drive, by the way) and got checked into our hotel just in time to get to the match a few minutes early. Problem: we had no tickets. Nobody seemed to be able to tell us how to get any. We figured we could try at the stadium box office -- if there even is such a thing.

We got out of a taxi about a mile from the stadium and followed the crowd of blue-clad Dubs supporters eager to see a fifth straight Leinster crown for their team (which kind of made me root for Kildare, even though they go by the sad nickname of the Lilywhites). We got to within two blocks of the stadium and found that there was a gate, guarded by uniformed officers who seemed to be making walkers show their tickets to get past. I asked if he knew anything about whether tickets might be available at the stadium. We seemed to have a communication breakdown, but he said something like "ask the guard" and let us through.

When we got to the last block before the stadium, it was shoulder-to-shoulder, with another uniformed officer ushering people past the corner and onto the narrow street on which the entrance to Croke Park stadium stood. I asked him if he knew if they had tickets. "Where do you want to go?" he asked. "Wherever."

He pulled out a wad from his pocket that contained both paper money and a bunch of bent-up tickets. "Don't know if I have two together." Somehow, without my asking, a cop had become, apparently, a ticket scalper.

Finally, he pulls out a pair that were attached. Clearly, two seats together. Section 307. Lower level. Side. Great. He must want at least 100 euro for them.

"How much?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Are you serious?"

"Have fun."

I have no idea why this happened. My guess is that he, as a cop or stadium security officer, had confiscated the tickets from scalpers and was just happy to give them to a couple who clearly were just going to attend the game. Whatever.

The seats were great, and the game was tremendous. It's a very easy sport to follow, even if you can't figure out all of the rules. Dublin jumped out to a big early lead, but Kildare came back and actually led three times by a point, including 12-11 at halftime, before falling 21-18. (The scoring actually is a little more complicated than that, but 21-18 tells you all you really need to know.)

So, we got to the stadium with no idea how or if we'd get tickets, got great seats for FREE, and fell in love with a new sport, one that I could easily see myself following. My wife dubbed Croke Park "The Magic Stadium."

Indeed.