Gavin Cooney

WALK PAST THE Five Lamps in Dublin’s north inner city and Portland Row rolls out in front of you like a concrete corridor, on which Kellie Harrington is responsible for the only real splash of colour. 

Opposite her home is a trio of distinct metal panels on the windows of a derelict building painted according to the tricolour, with the whitewashed central panel bearing the Olympic rings above the word, KELLIE. 

Take a closer look at the panels now and you’ll see they are beginning to fade: they are flecked with rust and graffitied across the otherwise blank green panel is the word HELP. 

There is a different call for help on freshly printed signs now facing from the windows of homes along the street, reading Back Our Children, Back Our Community, Save Our Pitch.

The pitch in question is locally known as the Strand Pitch, at the end of a short cul-de-sac on Aldborough Place, which is tucked off the main road. It’s a rectangle of bumpy tarmac, enclosed on three sides by a high fence and a concrete wall on the other side. 

The pitch is threatened by a proposed housing development of 49 units, to be built on the site and on the adjoining Dublin City Council depot. Harrington has led the local residents’ campaign to save the area, and is a named party on the appeal against the development which has been lodged with An Coimisiún Pleanála. 

Those backing the campaign to save the pitch say they do not object to the need for more housing in the area and support the building on the council depot, but argue that the pitch has to be retained for the sake of community cohesion. 

The list of names publicly backing the campaign is testament to the many kinds of genius fostered on an apparently unremarkable patch of tarmac.

Harrington has won two Olympic gold medals yet continues to train there, while it was on the Strand Pitch that Irish internationals Troy Parrott, Keith Treacy, Wes Hoolahan, Graham Burke, and Olivia O’Toole learned how to be footballers and so gloriously find an alternative path leading from the inner city and through life. Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan, who grew up on nearby Sheriff Street, has also spoken up for the campaign, while Barry Keoghan recently took a breath from filming a Beatles biopic to join the chorus and film a video beneath his Ringo Starr-mop of hair.

Consider the irony that a few weeks after Dublin Airport was quickly calling itself Troy Parrott International that Parrott had to go public in a bid to save the pitch that made him, posting on social media, “Great pitch and vital part of our community, a safe place for all to build friendships and practise our trade”.

Those backing the campaign to save the pitch’s disappearance will have both sporting and societal implications. 

“This was Anfield to me, it was everything I wanted it to be,” says Keith Treacy, who has agreed to meet me at the pitch. 

He has met me despite the lashing rain of this endless winter, which has also cleared the pitch of anyone except a council worker, who is gathering rubbish and sweeping away leaves by one of the steel goalposts. Mid-morning life is otherwise burbling on around us, with a couple of men holding a conversation by a parked car at the end of the lane way on the other side of the fence. Treacy points to a plaque on the wall saying it was opened in 2014, but tells me this was merely when it was officially opened by the government after it was refurbished thanks to a state grant. Treacy says the place has been around for as long as he can remember. 

“It’s not an exaggeration to say I wouldn’t have played for Ireland, I wouldn’t have played in the Premier League, and I probably would have gone down a much, much darker path if this pitch wasn’t here.” 

Tuath, the housing body in charge of the proposed development, and the council have promised to build new publicly accessible open space, play and recreational facilities for the community nearby, along with an indoor community facility for local residents.

Treacy and other campaign supporters say this will not be a sufficient replacement for the existing pitch, which they say simply works within the area’s ecosystem.

As councillor Daniel Ennis explains, there are houses close enough to the existing pitch to provide a measure of passive surveillance but are not so close as to be disturbed by kids playing football and basketball. The proposed alternative is much closer to a set of flats at the back of Portland Row.

“At a certain stage of day or evening, if kids are loud, you’ll have conflict in those flat complexes,” says Ennis. “This is my experience as a young man: ‘You don’t live here, get out of here.’”

“In the north inner city, you can’t just ramble into a set of flats and play football,” says Treacy. “I know politicians will say, ‘You can on paper’ but it doesn’t work like that.”

Treacy explains that the casual, ad hoc nature of the Strand Pitch is crucial to the social cohesion of the area.

Having started playing football at the age of four when he tagged along with his brother to a newspaper call-out for trials with Belvedere at Fairview Park, Treacy was drawn to the Strand Pitch every day. He passed it on his way home from school at O’Connell Boys on North Richmond Street, and stuck his head in to see if it was empty: if it was, he raced home to grab a football.

If the pitch was already occupied, it didn’t operate off any kind of timetable or booking system: it was a case of, ‘You’re here, join in’, which is a godsend for keeping any quiet or socially-awkward kid engaged. 

“Half the time, East Wall Bessborough would be training here, like the men’s team, but they’d say, ‘No, no, if you turn up, come on and play.’ You’d end up playing with adults, it just put hair on my chest. The little bit of community, when you turn up and they see a snotty-nosed kid with a blow-away ball under his arm and say, ‘Come on, in you come.’ I loved it.

“I was really socially awkward. I wouldn’t have had the social skills to say, ‘Can I play, lads?’ I’d just walk up and down outside and someone would say, ‘Come on in.’ Unbelievable.

“Sometimes my mind wanders to what it could have been like. I think I’d have been like 50% of the people in the north inner city. I’d have been on a street corner, getting involved in drugs and the dark side of things. Rather than me sitting in the house every day, getting bored and wondering what am I going to do today, it was come here.”

Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

The pitch served other social purposes as well, hosting games between Portland Row, Ballybough, Sheriff Street, and Summerhill. The gardaí used to play games against locals too, which served a purpose of breaking down barriers between them and the community, as it offered a chance to engage without needing to wear the uniform that can beget an adversarial dynamic. 

The new League of Ireland season kicks off this week with the fresh impetus of the government’s commitment to provide multiannual funding for the development of professional academies, and while the investment is badly needed, Treacy explains that footballers are merely polished in these academies. They are made by the rough tarmac on which we are standing. 

“The footballer is born years before he goes into an academy,” says Treacy. 

“A lot of people now think grassroots are academies. Grassroots starts way, way, way before academies. I played for 11 years before I went to an academy. This is on concrete where bigger lads think, ‘He’s a bit tricky, I’ll kick the legs off him.’ You learn to deal with that way, way before you go into academies. 

“A lot of modern day football, you’re coached within an inch of your life.

“When I went to Blackburn at U15s, we did bucket loads of technique work – half-volleys, chest volleys – and I realised I’d been doing this for years. When you play here, balls just get thrown at you any which way, and you have to control it. It might flick up off a bump on the ground: it’s all just technique work, getting you ready to control a ball any which way it comes at you.

“I cannot overstate just how valuable these types of pitches are. Look at our best-ever footballers, Giles, Brady, Wes; all our best players are street footballers. When you look at our team now you look at Troy Parrott, and then we look at the pitch he played on in the north inner city and say, ‘Let’s knock that down and build flats.’ I don’t understand.”

In a statement to The 42, Tuath said, “Dublin City Council and Tuath Housing recognises the strong local connection to a part of this site as an important community and sporting space, as well as the proud sporting tradition of the area.” 

They also said the city faces an acute housing need, and that their challenge is to deliver homes while also supporting community facilities and social infrastructure, pointing to promises for an alternative pitch and community centre. They said the current plans represent a downsize of initial proposals following consultation with local residents.

A decision on the fate of the Strand Pitch is expected before 6 May this year.

“I know the opposition say it’s this or housing, but it’s not as black and white as that,” says Treacy. “This is a very small area. This is my Anfield. It doesn’t need to be knocked down for housing. Housing can be put anywhere.”