I always went to GAA matches with my Dad.
Walsh Cup, Allianz League, Leinster Championship, club matches, my own matches… my most vivid memories are sitting in the car with my Dad, wishing someone would invent the Arklow bypass.
They are still working on the cure for New Ross traffic.
The one time I can remember during my childhood when I did not attend a match with my Dad was the 1996 All-Ireland hurling final, because tickets were like hen’s teeth and I was blessed to get one for Hill 16, where I stood with my brother and a banner so awfully puntastic I am relieved I cannot remember the exact wording.
Gary Laffan’s name definitely played a pivotal role in the pun.
My Dad travelled with his own brother and sat in the lower tier of the Hogan Stand to watch Wexford beat Limerick before we stormed on to the pitch in a sea of Purple and Gold.
No such worries for any fathers and sons of Kilkenny or Tipperary this year – not with terrace tickets still available for general sale on the GAA website up until Wednesday afternoon.
A LIMITED amount of All-Ireland Hurling Final terrace tickets are on sale NOW here» https://t.co/v3A3qIoDfq #KKvTIPP pic.twitter.com/iJTkZW9oYg
— The GAA (@officialgaa) August 31, 2016
It does appear, as of Thursday morning, to be entirely sold out, even if the website still leads you to the portal page with the promise of tickets for sale.
But they are all gone, it would seem. Thankfully.
Seriously? What would it say about the game of hurling if the All-Ireland final could not sell out Croke Park. Fair enough it is the fifth decider featuring Kilkenny and Tipperary since 2009, but it is not as if the last four have been duds – most of them have been stone cold classics.
Both sides emerged from excellent semi-finals also – the Waterford-Kilkenny two-parter proving particularly entertaining.
Is hurling in such a bad way that the biggest game of the year featuring two of the game’s big three and the most dominant two teams of the last decade is not an instant sellout?
When fewer than 35,000 showed up at Croke Park for the drawn semi-final between Waterford and Kilkenny I wrote a piece asking if Kilkenny’s dominance was the problem.
I was slammed from all sides. People blaming the recession, the cost of a trip to Dublin, the respective populations of the two counties and some non-existent Kilkenny bias for my nonsense reasoning.
I included a graph and everything. Which I have not updated to reflect only 30, 358 showed up in Thurles for the replay. So the distance to travel cannot be blamed on that front.
According to the preliminary census results there are just under 100,000 people in Kilkenny and over 110,000 in Waterford – placing them in the lower half of populations, but far ahead of much of Connacht, the border counties and the Midlands.
Tipperary is home to just under 160,000 people – or twice the capacity of Croke Park.
Chuck in the tickets that go to the Limerick minors, sponsors and every county board in Ireland, it is hard to see how tickets for the biggest day in the hurling calendar were still available just days ahead of the match.
Contrast the slow take-up to the football final. Granted Dublin is Ireland’s metropolis, but already you have Mayo fans mobilising and desperate fans sending you desperate WhatsApp messages.
As soon as Tipperary beat Galway I had a text from a friend asking me to keep an eye out for a final ticket. Her aunt from Boston was coming home specially.
She got sorted quick enough. Someone should have told her there was no real rush.
In-depth chat with Michael Fennelly in the GAA Hour Hurling Show. Subscribe here on iTunes
