The National division is effectively the third tier of French football, and Red Star, having just been promoted, are having a difficult time of it, especially at home. They’ve only won three games – one at home, two away (including a freakishly high 4-0 result against Paris F.C. at the Stade Charléty). So hopes were low coming into Friday night’s match, and were repayed by an insipid performance, with the Saint-Ouen side giving away an early goal. Red Star’s listless defence was repeatedly breached by an enterprising Ajaccio side, and they were lucky to go in only a goal down at half-time.

The second half began positively for Red Star, as they began to put together the kind of passing and movement that they’ve proved capable of in the past. But then, on 56 minutes, Ajaccio’s Colleredo scored the second, and Red Star had virtually no response. A frantic round of substitutions followed, but it made no difference. At the end of the game, as booing rang out, only two Red Star players came over to acknowledge the crowd. One lingered, and ended up being involved in a verbal spat with the fans. 2-0 to Ajaccio.

Stade Charlety

Getting to Red Star’s stadium, you leave the Clignancourt metro station and pass the huge markets at Saint-Ouen. In contrast, you can arrive at the Stade Charléty on a tram – and the station’s right next to the turnstiles. Running late, I climbed from the tram and heard the referee’s whistle signalling the start of play. But I was in my seat with three minutes gone, in time to see Paris FC’s well-taken goal in the fifth minute.

I thought I was in for a free-flowing and entertaining game, but instead things settled into a niggly pattern, with some hard tackling down the sideline, tight passing but little expansive play. I settled into trying to judge the capacity of the stadium (it’s about 20,000) and guessing how many people were in the crowd (about 300-400, I’d say). It was well into the second half before Arnaud Soquet went on an audacious solo dribble from near the halfway line that ended with him putting it past the Bayonne keeper from about 15 yards. Soquet’s run was achieved in part through passing the ball past opposition players, who each panicked in turn. The Paris FC forward showed real class and composure, and it’s little surprise that he’s been called up to the French under-20 squad. The Bayonnais turned up the heat on 90 minutes, with a brilliant curling goal from distance that made the added time distinctly uncomfortable for the home side.

During the game, I noticed something: goalkeepers, rather than taking long kicks downfield in the English fashion, were passing the ball to well placed defenders, who then tried to work attacking moves through midfield. This is the French third division, and everything’s played to feet. What’s the explanation, cultural differences?

Firhouse weir

I’m standing on the edge of a stone precipice beside the weir, peering down into the water as it violently crashes and breaks on the rocks below. Behind me, the hiss of tyres is audible: the ancient weir on the river Dodder in Firhouse is now concealed by the M50 motorway, and stands in the shadow of the imposing Tallaght interchange. On the hill immediately above me looms a concrete works, a landmark of the area, visible from miles away.

The view from the top of the weir at Firhouse

The area around the weir has changed a lot since Henry F. Berry, writing in 1891, suggested that his readers take a walk down to the weir from the main road, noting that ‘a steep irregular lane-way leads to it from the Blessington high road’. Now that lane leads from a network of footpaths that run around and across the motorway.

This weir played an extremely important role in the provision of Dublin’s first municipal water supply, and dates back in some form to before 29 April 1244. It was on that date the Lord Justiciar of Ireland, Maurice Fitzgerald, issued a writ seeking the establishment of a reliable source of fresh water to be carried to the city via the river Poddle.

The Priory of St Thomas owned Firhouse weir, and the city authorities soon came to an agreement with them: water would be redirected from the weir via a small canal to join up with the course of the Poddle in Templeogue.

As I stood at the top of the weir, I could still see, among the sprawling undergrowth, how the system of sluice gates would have diverted the water into the canal and towards the Poddle, a mile downstream. These still visible features date from the nineteenth century, when Andrew Coffey, the waterworks superintendent, reconstructed the weir. The channel in the direction of Templeogue is also discernible, although it’s now overgrown with wild flowers and weeds.

A sluice gate

The rerouted flow joined the Poddle, but ran with it for only a few miles until it reached ‘Tongue field’ in Kimmage, near Mount Argus. At this point, the river was divided by a cutwater called the ‘tongue’ or the ‘stone boat’. The Stoneboat pub on Sundrive Road is named after this feature.

The stone boat, which still exists, looks like an overturned clothes iron, a flat surface with a sharp point facing upstream. One sunny day over the summer, I sat on it and watched the water flow by. Now refurbished – presumably by the developers of the housing estate that now surrounds the river – the stone boat divided the flow of the river, allowing two thirds to flow north along the main course of the Poddle.

The Stone Boat, Kimmage

The other third flowed west along what was known as the City Watercourse, under the Grand Canal, through Dolphin’s Barn and into the City Basin, near James’s Street. The Basin served as a reservoir, with fresh water being channelled along James’s Street to the city. Initially the Basin only supplied Dublin Castle, but within ten years it also catered for most of the citizens.

The city watercourse formed part of a labyrinthine network of diversions from the main course of the Poddle that flowed through the area between James’s Street and South Circular Road. The diverted streams brought water to the mills that were once so numerous in the area. These streams still flow, but they’re now underground, so you need to know where to look: one flows above ground next to a car park off Donore Avenue, another flows through a derelict site against the back wall of Warrenmount Convent, near Ardee Street.

When I went to find these locations, the streams still flowed with quite a strong current, and the babbling sound made by the water seemed to impose for a moment a contemplative quiet on the wholly urban scene it flowed through.

Channelled and culverted for around 800 years, the Poddle can still bare its claws from time to time, when the wildness of nature reasserts itself and this little river, for so long apparently tamed, overflows. The river is for the most part covered over from Kimmage to the city centre, and as a result it is usually ignored by many, but periodically – forcefully – it makes its presence felt to the people who live and work along its course.

The heavy rain that fell on Friday April 4th 1823 caused a flood ‘so great on Saturday morning that the water flowed over the Street in Thomas Court and Pimlico’, an inspector’s report of the time recorded. The storms that lashed Ireland in October 1987 caused the Poddle to swell and flood the gardens of houses under which it flows on Lower Kimmage Road. The following January, one side of the road was closed so that the Corporation could re-cover the unruly river.

Residents of an apartment block in Newmarket Square weren’t aware their building was built on the river until the underground car park flooded in December 1997. Water from the river flowed into apartments and flooded Mill Street, including the basement of the Tenters’ Pub. ‘There was water up to the bonnets of the cars in the streets,’ one witness observed.

As the name suggests, Mill Street had for a time been the site of a millpond, recorded in 1829 as belonging to a Mr Busby. The eastern corner of Newmarket Square is also sited above the confluence of a number of streams, which then flow under New Row towards St Patrick’s Cathedral.

The meandering and subterranean character of the Poddle lends it much of its charm; the river’s numerous diversions and hidden courses imbue it with an enigmatic quality, ensuring it remains, as one Irish Times journalist labelled it in 1901, ‘that mysterious underground river.’

Because I spent a day at a conference in the Schloss Charlottenburg, I didn’t get a chance to see as much of the city as I would have liked. Instead, I bought a day pass for bus and rail, and spent every evening jumping from U-Bahn to S-Bahn to bus. Inevitably, I was drawn towards the bruised monumentality of the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag, but also to the seedy vitality of the Bahnhof Zoo.

Last Monday’s Irishman’s Diary, about my trip to Groucho Marx’s house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is available here.

London:
to British Library
to Spurs v Everton on Tuesday night
to Global Cities exhibition, Tate Modern

Wednesday
London to Paris via Eurostar, from Waterloo to Paris Gare du Nord