PIPE DREAM IS REALISED

Sports reporter and Croke Park regular PAT NOLAN last month fulfilled a lifelong ambition of playing at HQ with St Joseph's bandmates on a big GAA day

- Pat NOLAN

THE routine is so ingrained by now as to be done on autopilot.

Try and get to Croke Park as early as you can on big matchdays, dump the car somewhere around the North Circular Road, stroll down Jones's Road and in the media entrance in the Hogan Stand. Your name will be ticked off and an 'event staff' wrist band issued, bag checked and tagged. Take the lift up to Level 7, your match programme is issued by Padraic and Éamonn, find a seat in Row C of the press area and while the time away until throw-in. But, today, bar the fact you're issued with the same wrist band, it's different.

I've played pipes since I was 10 years of age and St Joseph's Pipe Band, Clondalkin, of which I am a member, has been afforded the opportunity to play at the Meath-Galway and Kerry-Armagh All-Ireland football quarterfinal double header.

My first exposure to playing at a game was as a 12-year-old for the 1994 All-Ireland Under-21 hurling final in Tullamore.

All was going well until a fracas broke out among the Kilkenny and Galway players during the parade.

But there are no pre-match parades for quarterfinals, so at least there's no fear of having to meet a shoulder from Rian O'Neill or David Clifford.

I played in Croke Park for the 2003 Special Olympics opening ceremony, which was amazing, but it wasn't an enormous part of the ceremony. This time, a more niche element of our musical culture is being given a sizeable platform to itself.

It sometimes feels as though the pipe band scene exists in a parallel universe. Not all bands play competitively but next month, for example, we will travel to the World Championships in Glasgow.

Some 30,000 will attend.

The commitment required to compete at this level is commensurate to that of, say, senior club level in GAA terms, so it's certainly not insignificant. Irish bands, including St Joseph's, have won big in Scotland in the past, but it just doesn't tend to resonate over here.