GAELIC GAMES:It's been nearly 20 years in the making but tonight the final touch is added to the new Croke Park with the switching on of the floodlights and the stadium's first illuminated Gaelic games event, Dublin v Tyrone before a sell-out attendance of 82,500.
Promoting Irish culture lies at the heart of the GAA but, like the nation at large, the association loves to bask in positive international comparisons. So there has been satisfaction at the suggestion that the opening fixture of the 2007 Allianz National Football League will be the best-attended sports fixture in the world this weekend.
Attaining that status will require the capacity crowd that has acquired tickets to turn up in full but would place a round-one tie of the GAA's secondary competition ahead of such substantial events as gridiron's Superbowl in the Miami Dolphins' stadium in south Florida and this afternoon's Calcutta Cup rugby match at Twickenham.
But this evening's event (throw-in at 7pm, live on Setanta Sports) is at heart a celebration of the GAA's achievement in developing the stadium from commissioning its integrated architectural design, finalised in 1991, to this evening when association president Nickey Brennan turns on the lights at 6.10pm.
The match has attracted immense interest within the GAA at large, even - Croke Park reported last week - from hurling clubs in Kilkenny. As well as being an occasion of pride for the association at the completion of its magnificent home, this evening has wider significance.
In a week's time we will be preparing for the first rugby international to be staged at GAA headquarters, the Six Nations meeting of Ireland and France. It is important for Gaelic games supporters to launch this new era with an appropriate celebration of their own before the opening of the stadium to other sports.
Although there will be musical performances from the Dublin Gospel Choir at 5.40pm and the Saw Doctors at 6.20pm, the main event brings together two teams responsible for extremes of performance in the past 18 months.
In the drawn 2005 All-Ireland quarter-final, Tyrone and Dublin played out what was one of the best matches of the championship, one that featured a much replayed goal, of dazzling virtuosity, by Owen Mulligan. On the way to winning the All-Ireland Mickey Harte's team were convincing winners in the replay.
Barely six months later the same teams staged a notorious match, on the opening day of last season, that summarised all the failings of the modern game: serial fouling, cynicism and disregard for rules and the authority of the referee. To cap it all, virtually every miscreant got off scot-free through the thickets of red tape that inevitably enveloped the matter.
A recurrence of that mean-spiritedness is, however, about all that can spoil the match, and both counties have been in good recent form. Dublin just last week won the O'Byrne Cup in a cracking final, which went to extra time, against Laois, whereas Tyrone are unbeaten and have reached the McKenna Cup semi-final.
This year's NFL is particularly important, given the final positions will determine counties' places in next season's league, which will revert to the format of four hierarchical divisions.
Dublin and Tyrone consequently know they must finish in the top half of the Division One A table if they are to remain in elite competition in 2008.
The cost of installing the lights was just over €5 million, the Government allocating before Christmas a €3.65-million grant towards the project given its importance in respect of the upcoming soccer and rugby internationals.
