South Dublin

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  Sports O

  Rugby

  There's little Southsiders enjoy more than their rugby, and every year a team called Leinster represents South Dublin in the Heineken Cup. With star performers such as Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy and Shane Horgan, Leinster is Europe's most glamorous team, though their tendency to underperform on the big occasions has led supporters of their great rivals, Munster, to christen them ‘Ladyboys’. In Munster, a ladyboy is anyone who washes his hands after having a piss.

  Munster fans are known the world over for their passion and for the high-decibel support that has turned their base of Thomond Park into a fortress. Leinster fans take a different tack and try to unnerve visiting teams by feigning disinterest and remaining deathly silent throughout matches. Facing the famous Ballsbridge Hush is said to be one of the most intimidating experiences in sport. On the rare occasions that they are moved to sing, it's a rousing chorus of ‘Allez les Bleus’, a song that reflects the fact that many Leinster fans have second homes in the South of France.

  Leinster supporters also have a sense of style and flamboyance that matches that of their team. At games, most prefer to wear the team's alternative strip, which is comprised of a pink shirt and blond streaks in their hair, with designer shades worn on top of the head. For the women it's UGG boots, mini-skirts and tops that expose at least six inches of midriff. As the early rounds of the Heineken Cup take place during the winter months, the St John's ambulance service generally has extra crews on hand at matches to deal with cases of frostbite and hypothermia.

  The anthem of Munster's supporters is ‘The Fields of Athenry’, a song that has a special resonance for tens of thousands of Limerick people because it's about a petty thief. The song is set in the West of Ireland around the time of the Famine (1845-9). Recently it has been suggested that a new version be written to place it in a more modern context, with Michael stealing not Trevellion's corn but his iPod, then being shot dead in a feud with a rival Limerick family.

  The Leinster Schools Senior Cup

  The Leinster Schools Senior Cup has long since replaced the Leaving Certificate as the defining event in the lives of young South Dublin males. Success or failure in the famous knockout competition – dominated for a century and a quarter by the elite, fee-paying schools – marks students down as winners or losers in the eyes of their peers… for ever.

  Despite his phenomenal success as a rugby player, captain of industry and philanthropist, Sir Anthony O'Reilly is perhaps best known for having never won the Leinster Schools Senior Cup with Northside school Belvedere. And even though he captained both Ireland and the Lions, Brian O'Driscoll will never live down the shame of his Blackrock College team being knocked out at the semi-final stage in 1998.

  Notwithstanding that notable defeat, his alma mater has won the competition sixty-five times, which is more than all the other winners put together.

  The Cup traditionally kicks off in January and culminates with a final played at Lansdowne Road, usually on St Patrick's Day and attended by as many as 25,000 people, almost all of them girls wearing mini-skirts that wouldn't cover the palm of your hand. Many of them later throw themselves at members of the winning team at the end of a marathon, under-age alco-pops binge. It is estimated that thousands of criminally ugly teenage boys who might otherwise have died virgins have experienced intimacy with beautiful girls thanks to their abilities with a rugby ball.

  In many schools being on the ‘S’, that is the Senior Cup team, is sufficient to exempt a student from studies and, beyond school, from doing anything else with his life. The Cup is usually presented to the victors by the mother of the winning captain. If, as often happens, she is a yummy-mummy, she is in danger of being crushed in a stampede of adolescent boys, eager to collect their medals and cop a sly grope during the congratulatory kiss.

  A WORD FROM ROSS

  I've got something here around my neck, roysh, that Brian O'Driscoll will never have-a Leinster Schools Senior Cup winner's medal. We actually won it in, like, 1999, beating Newbridge in the final, a bunch of boggers it has to be said. Of course, Drico's probably too old to repeat now, which I happen to know eats him up inside.

  Hockey

  In South Dublin's elite girls’ schools, hockey is the equivalent of rugby – in other words it is generally played by ugly kids who sweat a lot. Hockey is an exciting sport, but sadly its growth has been stymied by its high post-school dropout rate and its image as a game for women who like their hair short and spiky, listen to Joni Mitchell and can change a tyre. As a general rule, girls tend to give up hockey when they discover boys. Girls who discover girls continue playing, and all efforts to make it sexier, including making the skirts shorter, seem doomed to failure.

  In 2005 South Dublin was the venue for the women's hockey World Cup. Thousands of men flocked to Belfield to check out whether foreign players were easier on the eye than their own. They quickly flocked out again.

  Golf

  Golf provides a vital staple of conversation between males who would otherwise have nothing to say to one another. You'll often hear South Dublin ‘men of a certain age’ engage in friendly banter and good-natured raillery about that skewed drive off the third tee that everyone out in Portmarnock remembers so well, or that putt from 30 ft in Elm Park that owed more to luck than anything else.

  Golf is no longer an elitist game. In fact it's the most popular sport among Dublin taxi drivers, though the good news is that you can still play a round of golf without running into one. Thankfully, in South Dublin the old traditions are still very much alive.

  Many South Dublin men are members of the K Club, the venue for the 2006 Ryder Cup, which was originally built for golfers who couldn't get into Elm Park or Milltown, South Dublin's super-exclusive clubs (see page 163). Membership of a decent golf club can set

  you back up to €40,000 per year, though money isn't the biggest issue. When you apply to join you are entering a world of Byzantine politics, which involves enormous amounts of networking and shameless cosying up to some of the biggest arses you've ever had the displeasure to meet. In other words, it's just like a career at the bar. It's no coincidence that 40 per cent of all golf club memberships in South Dublin are held by members of the legal profession.

  Unfortunately, in recent years almost all golf clubs have been forced to accept ladies as members.

  A WORD FROM OISINN

  Some of the richest men in Ireland, we're talking billionaire property developers here, would give up half their fortunes to get their hands on what I have: membership of Elm Park Golf Club. Yeah, I'm out there every Saturday morning, tramping the fairways with the great and the good, we're talking surgeons, judges and government ministers. You want to know the funniest thing about that? I can't even hit a focking ball straight. The reason I got in is because my old man is a member, and he had my name down before they'd cut my focking umbilical cord. So all these goys with their new money, if they wanted to play Elm Park, I'd have to sign them in!

  Royal Dublin Horse Show

  One of the world's premier equestrian events takes place in South Dublin over the course of five days in early August. The centrepiece of the Royal Dublin Horse Show is the famous Aga Khan Cup, though the event is as much a social occasion as a sporting one, drawing upwards of 20,000 spectators to the RDS in Ballsbridge.

  A WORD FROM ROSS

  It's a little-known fact, roysh, but the Horse Show is basically the best week of the year for getting your Nat King in Dublin. Horsy birds are always gagging for it, as everyone knows. But Protestant horsy birds from the country – they can never get enough.

  Anyway, roysh, come the middle of August it's not difficult to find a bird who's ticking all those boxes around Ballsbridge. During the week of the horse show, roysh, Old Belvedere opens up its ground on Anglesea Road as a car park. Or is it the other way around? Maybe it's a car park that Old Belvedere opens up eleven months of the year to allow people to play rugby very badly – basically it's one of
those half-empty or half-full questions. Anyway, roysh, my point is that the place ends up being wall-to-wall – or sideline-to-sideline – with man-hungry Proddy boggers with trailers. Honestly, roysh, I've slept in hay more nights than Moscow Flier.

  Interestingly, it is believed to be the only event that has South Dublin's elite rubbing padded shoulders with country people, or ‘boggers’.

  The most colourful day of the week is undoubtedly Ladies’ Day, when rich women don summer frocks, high heels and wide-brimmed hats, drink Pimms and Champagne, and complain among themselves about the awful smell of the horses and the country people.

  Sailing

  For many South Dubliners, there's no better way to rid yourself of the stresses of a week stuck in a big car on a gridlocked road than spending Saturday and Sunday stuck in a big boat on the gridlocked Irish Sea. The coast between Blackrock and Sandycove is often referred to as the Irish Riviera. When the Champagne is flowing aboard the 100-ft Sunseekers and Wally Yachts berthed in sun-drenched Dún Laoghaire harbour, it's difficult to believe you're not in Monte Carlo.

  The attraction to sailing is more social than sporting, and most of those who would identify themselves as ‘Yachties’ have, in fact, never set foot on a boat that wasn't anchored firmly to the seabed. The people who do leave the harbour can be broken down into two sub-groups: sailors and motorboaters. The former tend to look down on the latter – and the rest of the world. Sailors are usually wealthy professional types, such as doctors and barristers, who don't mind getting their hair wet or the clatter of a boom. To motorboaters, sailing involves simply turning the ignition switch in their Gin Palaces, or Stink Pots – so called because of their foul-smelling diesel engines. They tend to avoid any sea conditions that might cause them to spill their Mount Gay tonics.

  Yachties have their own style of dress, which has now crossed over into mainstream fashion. It was they who first made Dubes popular, although they refer to c them as ‘Dockies’. Beige canvas trousers and Henri-Lloyd weatherproof jackets were also part of the sailing look before being appropriated by a generation of rugby types.

  Sailing also has its own version of rugger-huggers – in the form of simpering bimbos who chase sailors around like a bunch of boy-band groupies. They're known as Dockside Dollies or, in the case of the big game hunters, Racer Chasers. They tend to wear Gucci clothes that never see so much as a splash of salt water, perch sunglasses on top of their heads and generally act like they're aboard a 120-ft Hinckley in Cape Cod.

  Skiing

  Despite enjoying a subtropical climate all year round, Southsiders take to the snow like Chukchi Eskimos. Every year tens of thousands of them migrate to the Alps to spend a fortnight hurtling down mountainsides at 90 mph on two narrow slats of fibreglass. Skiing holidays are regarded as an indicator of status in South Dublin; where you choose to go is considered an accurate barometer of your social standing. The super-rich gravitate towards Meribel, Val d’Isere and Verbier – or ‘Verbs’, as it's more commonly known – while Andorra and Bulgaria tend to attract people who were born working class but have been processed into middle class by the upturn in the Irish economy – the so-called new faux riche.

  Like golf, skiing has its own rituals and codes of behaviour. Women, for instance, tend to go to Pamela Scott on Grafton Street and spend thousands of euro on ‘off-piste’ fashions, while picking up the cheapest pair of ski boots they can find in The Great Outdoors – boots that are unlikely ever to leave their box.

  Men tend to take the sporting side more seriously and will often be heard trying to outdo each other with their experience and knowledge of the world's most famous slopes, saying things like, ‘We took the kids to Whistler a couple of years ago and found it about four or five degrees too cold to ski,’ or ‘St Moritz would be perfect if it weren't so low.’

  Most South Dubliners take between two and three ski holidays a year, and hopes are high that the area will one day produce an Olympic champion, that is if skiing downhill while hungover on Eiswein ever becomes an Olympic event.

  Music

  South Dubliners are well known for their appreciation of music, which is no surprise given that most of them receive their first musical instrument before the placenta has been washed from their bodies. In fact, most will have developed an ear for music even before that as South Dublin mothers, ever keen to impart c culture to their children as early as possible, use Personal Sound Systems to play classical music to their babies in the womb. This explains why, by the time they reach Montessori school, many children can recognize Rachmaninov’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paginini’ before basic spelling-aid symbols such as an apple or a ball.

  Nowhere is South Dublin's love affair with music more in evidence than on Grafton Street on a Saturday afternoon, when boys and girls in evening dress demonstrate their wonderful proficiency with various string and wind instruments.

  Technically, they are ‘busking’, but don't feel under pressure to give them money – their parents are rolling in it, and they won't starve.

  Grafton Street is occasionally the site of other impromptu musical performances, such as Traveller children singing ‘The Fields of Athenry’ using just two notes, and also Northsiders doing what's known as ‘human beat-boxing’, but the Gardaí usually move these people on.

  Given this rich and vibrant musical scene, it's little wonder that South Dublin produced one of the most successful popular music acts in the world right now. The Thrills ‘broke America’ just two years after they formed in 2001 and have since sold hundreds of thousands of records worldwide. Like U2's The Joshua Tree, their breakthrough album came at the end of a spiritual and musical journey through the soul of America, though, unlike U2, they were on a J1er at the time.

  Just like Scottish band The Proclaimers, who resisted pressure from the industry to soften their strong Kilmarnock brogues, Thrills frontman Conor Deasey has also refused to compromise his accent on hits such as ‘One Horse Town’ and ‘Big Sur’ and continues to sing in a style South Dubliners recognize – that of Beverly Hills.

  Rugby Songs

  Those few South Dubliners without a classical music education can still ‘turn a tune’ – even if it is a grossly offensive one. Believe it or not, many of the bawdy rugby songs we all love were first improvised in South Dublin pubs, on buses travelling to and from rugby matches, or on the street in the early hours of the morning! Among the best-known are:

  Oh Give Me a Clone

  (to the tune of Home on the Range)

  Oh give me a clone,

  Of my own flesh and bone,

  With the Y chromosome changed to an X.

  Then when it's full-grown, My own flesh and bone,

  Will be of the opposite sex.

  Bestiality's Best

  (to the tune of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport)

  Chorus

  Bestiality's best, boys,

  Bestiality's best (fock a Wallaby),

  Bestiality's best, boys,

  Bestiality's best.

  Stick your lug in a slug, Doug,

  Stick your lug in a slug.

  Stick your lug in a slug, Doug,

  Stick your lug in a slug.

  Chorus

  Suggested verses:

  Stick your pole in a mole, Noel.

  Intercourse with a horse, Boris.

  Up the rear of a deer, Ciar.

  Blow your load in a toad, Maude.

  Give some love to a dove, Guv.

  Stick your lat in a cat, Matt.

  A WORD FROM JP

  Many times in the Bible we are told to honour God through music. ‘Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs,’ the Book of Ephesians tells us. ‘Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Amen to that.

  I've always loved music, although these days I'm listening to a lot less Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent and a lot more of Cliff Richard's Gospel Hits Remastered.
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  Religion

  See Rugby.

  Language

  South Dublin is regarded as one of the most difficult languages in the world to master, not least because of the number of age- and gender-specific dialects in common usage. Men speak a version of the language that is only loosely related to that spoken by women, while boys and girls speak two different variations that are barely on nodding terms with one other, although there are of course features common to all four.

  In a broad sense, South Dublin is a form of creolized English, a hybrid of the language used by the British aristocracy and that spoken by the characters from popular American television programmes, such as Friends. The unlikely fusion of the two, essentially hay-nay-brain-cay meets Central Perk, reflects South Dublin's identification with the English upper classes (reinforced by Anglocentric education methods in the elite schools) and its rather shallow efforts to ape the cool, pretty people it sees on television, sitting in comfy, colourful chairs and saying implausibly humorous things to one another while drinking cappuccinos from improbably large cups. Adults tend more towards the former and young people towards the latter, but again the two elements are present to varying degrees in both.