Firstly I have to report that Dublin is one hell of a place to be on Saint Patrick’s Day as I found out yesterday – and thank god I am here to write about it.

The city put on a party to remember and coupled with the rugby celebrations it saw huge numbers of people pouring into the city for the day. Along with my family I was one of them. It took us three hours to park the car…

If anyone has ever walked through Grafton Street you will know that it is a not-too-wide pedestrian thoroughfare opening to St Stephens Green at one end and a main street at the other. Yesterday I was part of a brief, but terrifying, incident which very nearly resulted in tragedy.

Halfway up Grafton Street was a brass band playing with a large group of people watching and enjoying – the band were terrific by the way. However the crowd soon swelled as more stopped to watch until the spectators were several deep and beginning to block the access of the throngs of people walking by. Myself, Arnold and my three sons were at this point when we became caught in a wall of people trying to walk around the spectators and a wall of people coming toward us. No-one could get past.

A complete bottleneck – total human gridlock.

Nobody was able to go around anyone and masses of people were pushing from behind and the same were coming from the other direction with the result being, very quickly, a mass of humans being crushed together. My son (15 and 6ft 2) could see over the heads that the entire street in both directions was totally blocked with people – and we were stuck right in the centre of it.

Cue the drunken rugby supporters now pouring out of a pub on one of the side streets and into the crushing mix, pushing and swearing, and the situation quickly became desperate. I had hold of my six year old son’s hand with an iron grip though he was crying and being crushed between people; if my son Allan had not had 4 year old John up on his shoulders from the start I just dread to think what would have happened to him – Arnold became separated from us in the surging mass.

I could not believe that a simple walk up this famous road was now turning into a scaled-down version of the Hillsborough Stadium tragedy in 1989 – it all happened so fast. And through it all the band played on, just several feet away, those watching them having no idea what was going on just behind them.

There is nothing more terrifying than being caught in a dangerous situation over which you have absolutely no control, the speed with which it happened and escalated, and much worse – my children being in the middle of it. I thought we were going to die, simple as that, but my real panic came from the idea of my kids being crushed to death.

I don’t know how I did it but I managed to force my way sideways, dragging James, into the spectators watching the band (going backwards or forwards was impossible) and attracted the attention of the Gardai to what was happening – at that moment whistles were blowing up and down the street as police started to try and break the crush of people.

Just reading the coverage of the yesterdays events in Dublin in an Irish newspaper I read than the police stated “There was nothing of note to report…”

It took seconds to happen and what seemed like ages to finish, I suspect I have an aversion to large crowds now…

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