Fall of the rebels

On Sunday I went to see the Cork 'The Rebels' vs Mayo in the national Gaelic football quarter finals in Croke Park with my dad. Everyone expected Cork to win. They grow them big in Cork, just look:

But Mayo crept up on them in the first half, and in the second half Cork scored only one point. The final score was Mayo 1-13 Cork 2-06 (each goal is worth 2 points, so in total, Mayo scored 1 x 3 + 13 = 16, Cork scored 2 x 3 + 6 = 12). Despite his enthusiasm, this fellow went home disappointed.

After the match, my dad and I did a tour of all the pubs of the area, where he grew up. We went from pub to pub, looking inside and sizing up the crowd, leaving without getting a drink. Quinns was packed with a young crowd of mostly Mayo supporters. It was cavernous inside and pitch black, and it was like stepping forward in time to 4 o'clock in the morning. Fagans' was miserable. It used to be former taoiseach Bertie Ahern's local. A friend of mine wandered in unknowingly and at the urinal, noticed he was peeing beside the head of government. But apparently Bertie doesn't go in there anymore because he's been attacked.

Then we took the road to Fairview and ended up outside a crazy-looking establishment, bristling with flags (Dublin, Ireland, Palestine...). We could hear a band playing so we poked our heads inside. It was an enormous place, packed with hundreds - hundreds - of men in Celtic jerseys. A man was dancing around topless with his 5-year old son. The band's grey-bearded lead singer sang something like "...diddle idle in the Old IRA" and the whole crowd yelled as one "Up the 'RA!"

We turned around and left very quickly.

My dad said this was the infamous Players' Lounge. He'd heard the place discussed on Joe Duffy (a radio chat show the nation calls to complain about all things terrible, awful and shocking). The owner is John Stokes, who's the father of the Celtic player Anthony Stokes. Ahead of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Ireland, he hung a 60ft banner on the pub saying "She and her family are all officially barred from this pub as long as the British occupy one inch of this island they will never be welcome in Ireland."

This morning the pub was front page news. At 2am this morning armed men broke in, tied the manager up, stole €50,000 and set the place on fire.

This is what it looks like now. I called by to take some photos, people were super cagey. The Gardaí grumbled in my general direction and a few people who were being questioned yelled at me, thinking I was taking photos of their faces.

Everyone is assuming it was done by some Republican faction or other as intimidation. Two customers and the doorman were shot by the Real IRA this time last year.