Football Match at Lansdowne

We've been hanging out with Brent and Sharon quite a bit lately and it's been fun. We got a call from Brent asking us if we would like to go to a football match with them to see Ireland play Holland. Since neither of us have ever been to a live match before and tickets were only 25€ we said sure!

We all met up after work in Ballsbridge at a pub and had some pints until it was time to walk to the stadium, which was only blocks away. The atmosphere on the street was great. Tons of people dressed in green and the odd orange dressed supporter of Holland. There were food and football memorabilia stands all over the place.

The game was at Lansdowne (hmmm I guess Ballsbridge is like the Glebe, both nice old richy-rich areas with a Lansdowne stadium nearby - interesting) and the stadium holds around 35,000 and it was pretty packed. Since it's an old stadium there are seats and standing options. We got the standing option which pretty much works like this:

You make your way into the stadium until they tell you which gates to go through and when you get there (late like us), that gate is packed so you go to the next one and so on, until you find one that is not packed. Then you walk in and do the best you can to make your way somewhere where you can stand comfortably and actually see the field. It’s very different then walking into the Corel Center, but an interesting experience.

We somehow managed to get a decent spot really close to the field. If we were at the ring watching the Sens for a spot like that it would be the most expensive tickets, that’s how close we were.

And then we watched * IRL 0 – 1 HOL * IRL 0 – 2 * half time.
Ireland played like, well, they really didn’t play at all. No offense whatsoever and the defense was useless.

Second half.... Luke getting thirsty * IRL 0 – 3 HOL *

The 4 of us decided this was really getting pathetic and Pearse Pub was waiting to have us for some Guinness so we left about halfway through the second half. And it’s a good thing we did cause Holland scored again after that.

We actually live pretty close to the stadium so the walk home was about 10-15 minutes. The rest of the night we just sat and enjoyed some pints and chatted away. Then we decided to get food and go back to our place for more beers. We got chips and nuggets and 4 cans of beer and went back to our place. Eventually we called it a night just after midnight.

It was pretty neat to be at a real game in a real stadium.