The subject of the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road Rugby grounds is a topic around which one treads warily, particularly in the catchment area of ‘NewsFour’ readers.

Not everyone is enamoured at the prospect of the massive demolition project which will be entailed in the demise of the old stadium, or at the prospect of an ultra-modern edifice rising phoenix-like from its ashes, to dominate the skyline of Dublin 4.

Those who will have to live, quite literally, in its shadows, have particular concerns. But raise it will and one can only hope that the various concerns and reservations about the project will have been noted and acted upon by the Planning Officers.

For those less directly affected, the idea of being able to continue to attend rugby or soccer internationals in one of the nicest parts of Dublin, in a comfortable, seated, safe, relatively weatherproof stadium, is a mouth-watering prospect.

Generations of Lansdowne Road fans still bear the bruised elbows and crushed ribs which were the inevitable battle wounds incurred while trying to exit the stadium in the midst of the mass stampede which took place after each final whistle.

Crowd control, channelled exits, or any pretence at health and safety, was definitely for sissies, and any hope of keeping warm and dry during the course of a match was immediately shattered when the skies darkened.

Even the huge roof of the East Stand, a piece of cutting edge eighties technology, was no protection against a sou’westerly rain-laden wind that came straight in over the North Terrace like an icy lash, and left the sheepskin-clad alikadoos in their expensive seats as sodden as the rest of us on the bleak terraces.

Well, the curtain came down on all that when the whistle blew at the end of the last-ever rugby match, fittingly titled The Last Stand, at 3.20pm on New Year’s Eve last. Forty-eight thousand of us, virtually a capacity crowd, came to watch Leinster beat Ulster in a Celtic League match, but equally importantly, to pay our respects to the Old Ground for the last time.

The weather entered into the spirit of things by being just as we always remember it at such events: bitterly cold, with a strong, gusty wind and vicious, squally showers.

Considering the significance of the occasion, there was remarkably little official razzmatazz. Perhaps because during all of 2006 we had been marking various ‘lasts’– the last Six Nations, the last Schools Finals, the last Soccer Friendly, the last Autumn International– the organizers felt they could not summon up any more hype.

But amongst the crowd, there was a real sense of history and occasion. At the final whistle, throughout the terraces and stands Leinster men and Ulster men shook hands and exchanged appropriate good wishes and promises to meet again, maybe in Croke Park, but more importantly, back in our old spiritual home, a ‘new’ Lansdowne Road.

We have always been proud that ours is the oldest international rugby stadium in these islands, and therefore, presumably, in the world. Originally designed and laid out one hundred and thirty years ago by Henry Wallace Dunlop, it has in its various shapes and configurations been in more or less continuous use until now.

Dunlop was a Trinity College man, and a talented athlete himself. He saw the need for a multi-use sports ground, bigger and more accessible than could be accommodated on the Trinity campus. As an engineering graduate, he saw the potential of the site between the railway line and the river “out in the country near Lansdowne Road Station”, and took a sixty-nine year lease from the Pembroke Estate at £60 annual rent.

By all accounts, the new Lansdowne grounds were impressive, with a 500-yard cinder running track, a cricket pitch, a croquet lawn, tennis courts, archery butts, and of course the rugby field.

During its century and a quarter, the grounds have changed in shape, axis and function, though rugby has been its original and constant raison díetre. Latterly, of course the Football Association of Ireland has become a paying guest, and is now a joint partner in the redevelopment programme.

Externally, the stadium’s most visible features are the East and West stands, two grim, gaunt and mismatching pieces of architecture which can just about be described as ‘functional’. It is an irony that for fifty years the residents of some of the most expensive properties in Dublin have had to look out at the mass of dingy, crumbling concrete straddling the Dart line, festooned with rusting pipes and sagging cables, which in any other city would have been condemned as an eyesore years ago.

The Last Stand match on New Year’s Eve, 2006, was an emotive occasion for some, it marked the serious drawing up of battle lines, as they prepared to defend their properties and their environment from the inevitable assault this redevelopment will entail.

For others, it was the closing of another chapter of rich local and rugby history, and the commencement of a new era which they hope will lead to an epic time in Irish sporting life.
Out with the old, above (Photo by Michael Penston). In with the new (as yet computer-generated) Lansdowne Road, below.