Please, please put your camera phone away

The Aviva Stadium, we are constantly reminded, is a smoke free environment. If we could make these places a phone free environment, the world would be a better place.

Twenty-seven thousand people attended the Aviva Stadium yesterday afternoon to see the Republic of Ireland defeat Uruguay, an impressive turn out for a post-season international friendly. There were mitigating factors of course. The kick off time was a pleasant 6pm, on a bank holiday Sunday. The opponents, despite the absence of Luis Suarez, still a relatively glamorous attraction in international soccer. The spectrum of a vital qualifier against Austria at the week’s end hung over the fixture, providing some competitive relevance.

Here the twenty-seven thousand strong crowd were rewarded with an enjoyable game and a positive Irish performance, which sets up Martin O’Neill’s team nicely for the important test of Austria, next weekend. Previous Irish friendly matches at the Aviva have not yielded such strong numbers, and yet, you wonder what the turnout might be on occasions such as these, if only people who were there to watch the football, attended.

The Americanisation, and generally exasperating, modernisation of international football and rugby matches is something we have grown accustomed to over the last decade or so. Previously a football stadium would reach its atmospheric crescendo during the twenty minutes preceding kick off, a crisp tension building, fans unable to contain their excitement would exude a natural mood of anxiousness and anticipation, resulting in, atmosphere.

Today however, people linger in the overpriced, watered-down-beer serving bar, for as long as they can in a bid to avoid the pre-match build up taking place out on the pitch. Somewhere along the line some person, or persons, decided that atmosphere was something that needed to be encouraged by something other than the football taking place. Queue the world’s stadiums blasting out a revolving play list of about five songs in the ninety minutes prior to kickoff, while the stadium announcer waffles through an itinerary of topics like an irritating, yet persistent morning radio DJ.

The Aviva stadium went one step further in March of this year, when they employed a trumpet player to screech out the tune to ‘Come on you Boys in Green,’ at randomly intermittent points throughout the Wales and Iceland games, often when the opposition were attacking which made for a bit of a contradiction of emotions. Unlike say, a drum, the slow march band like quality of the trumpet is at odds with the pace of a football match. Sounding more like a funeral procession from a Godfather film than music accompanying a sports event, it received a universally negative reaction and thankfully, appears to have been shelved.

This atmosphere encouraging trend, which attaches a host of bells and whistles around the match, has lent a more ‘day out’ feel to attending football matches. Attending a game is now more comparable to going to the circus or a funfair. People go because it’s something that people do in their spare time, or so they’ve been told. They have a look around, take it all in, get some snacks and take some pictures. Oh do they take some pictures.

There is no singular definition of what supporting a football team is. Showing up is sufficient. Nobody says you have to take an active interest in what’s going on. Just as at the cinema, you will often find people who are not particularly interested in the film, but are evidently there for the food and a whispering chat in between dialogue.

Football matches are beginning to resemble a trip to the cinema in more ways than one. There is the evolving definition of what is acceptable food at a match. Hot dog, burger, both fine. Preferably you’re looking for something you can hold in one hand while gesticulating with the other as to where Glenn Whelan should pass the ball. Popcorn does not fall into this category. Not even a little bit. The site of people sitting, happy as Larry, with an over-sized bucket of popcorn at the Aviva, gives you the impression you’re at a rodeo derby somewhere in the mid-western United States, rather than watching a football match in Lansdowne Road.

Eating popcorn at a football match is of course, acceptably fair, it just looks odd, out of place. What is not acceptably fair is the constant presence of our old friend the camera phone. It is an aspect of modern society and a by-product of social media that people incessantly record their lives on smartphones. Yet a football or rugby match is where this modern trend is at its most intrusive. You’ve made the effort to attend this event, paid a decent amount of money to do so, why not actually sit there and watch it, take it in instead of incessantly recording it on your phone, snapping poor quality pictures never to be seen again? Even if you are lucky enough to snap a blurred shot of Jonny Walters’ backside as he takes a throw in, upload it to your Facebook profile and get a few ‘likes’, as A Bronx Tale’s Sonny repeatedly reminds us, ‘nobody cares, nobody cares’. Really, nobody cares.

Our habit of recording live events we’ve handed out lots of money to see isn’t exclusive to sport. Last year The Lumineers played Dublin’s Olympia theatre. Three songs in, faced with a of sea aluminous smartphones, singer Wesley Schultz simply asked, ‘why does everyone have their phone out?’ The phones were swiftly stuffed back in pockets. That’s all it takes. One person, through common sense, to hold up a mirror to a hoard of silliness.

So go to the match even if you’re not all that interested, by all means even get some popcorn if you must, but leave your phone in your pocket. You’ve paid the guts of fifty quid to be here, so be here. Sometimes, just like on Sunday, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you see.