Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Murphy’s Law The Second Noel By Dan Murphy On my second day in Dublin to cover the Notre Dame-Navy game, I met two men named Noel. The second served me a short glass of whiskey from behind what claimed to be the oldest bar in the city. After graciously answering all my questions about the flood of Americans invading his pub, Noel had a question of his own. Why are you here? For the football game. Yes, he knew that — so was seemingly every other person within a 200-bar-stool radius. He meant all of us. What are college football and its diehard fans doing in Ireland? There are plenty of answers. It’s a cultural experience for the players. They soaked in all the culture one can glean from a 30-minute Irish step dancing show and the bus rides to and from practice on what every coach and player from both teams called a “business trip.” It’s a great way to spread our game to new regions. Football is still too much of a niche to register on most Dubliners’ radar. The 40,000 U.S. fans that filled the majority of Aviva Stadium’s 51,700 seats took most of the tickets from the few locals with a passing interest or curiosity in the game. Those 40,000 Americans did bring somewhere in the ballpark of $100 million into an economy where roughly one out of seven people is jobless. That’s the first thing that most Irish citizens noted, appreciatively, about the game. But Notre Dame and Navy didn’t schedule this trip with purely humanitarian motives in mind. And why this economy? Why this country and this team? The sea of Leprechaun logos and Fightin’ Irish shirts in the well-known Temple Bar area each night provided an obvious answer to that question. The local fans that cared enough to pick a side adopted Notre Dame as one of their own as well. But is there any real connection, Noel and I wondered, between the country and the football team beyond a mascot of debatable origin that somehow landed at a school started by French priests in a Polish city? That’s where the first Noel comes in and retrospectively provides some clarity. Noel Fitzsimons has called Dublin home for his entire life. He’s shuttled tourists around his streets for much of that time as a taxi cab driver. When it comes to finding the pulse and opinion of a city, no one is more reliable than its bartenders and cab drivers. Fitzsimons attended the first Notre Dame game in Dublin 16 years ago at Croke Park, the country’s largest stadium. He knows enough to follow the action, but Fitzsimons’ fond memories of that game aren’t of big plays or who won. He raved about fans turning the seats blue and gold and green. He was enamored by the atmosphere, which he said is how the Irish feel about all of their sports. Saturday’s game likely would have been played in the 83,000-seat Croke Park if the field wasn’t already slated to host the weekend’s main event Sunday. Dublin was playing Mayo in the Gaelic football semifinals — Ireland’s equivalent to the AFC championship game. The biggest difference between the GAA and the NFL is Irish players aren’t paid a dime, not even a scholarship. Fitzsimons was more excited to see the city’s colors fill up the local pubs and the pride from both groups of fans than how the match would shake out. The only story he told about Croke Park wasn’t about a game, but the time in 1920 when soldiers opened fire on civilians inside the stadium, killing 14 of them on what’s known as Bloody Sunday during the Irish War of Independence. Sport here is a way to remember history, to celebrate tradition and fanfare more than goals and wins. That sounds familiar. Those are the values that make so many Notre Dame fans fall in love with the South Bend campus on fall Saturdays, even though the Irish haven’t been a real national contender since before their last trip to Ireland. They’re the same values that talking heads like to bash Notre Dame for holding despite their recent lack of success. There’s your connection, or maybe more of a lesson to be carried back home by Irish fans connecting with their roots in Dublin. There’s no reason to be tortured while waiting to escape mediocrity in the win-loss column. There’s no shame in just enjoying the show, right Noel? Dan Murphy has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2011. He can be reached at dmurphy@blueandgold.com