McBride's tale of Azadi Stadium

IT will be ten years next week since the Republic of Ireland last booked their place at a major finals - when they qualified for the 2002 World Cup despite a 1-0 reversal to Iran. 

Next week also marks the tenth anniversary of the day Irish photographer Donna McBride, from Donegal, snapped a unique piece of history. On that November evening in the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, Donna became the first women photographer ever permitted inside a sports stadium in Iran.

At the time, women were not permitted into a sports arena, but around 40 Irish women were permitted entry into the stadium for the crunch World Cup play-off - including photographer Donna, who now works with the Donegal News.

Shay Given has vivid memories of that game and once outlined his horror at having a live grenade thrown at him by a segment of the passionate 100,000 vervent supporters in the Azadi Stadium.

Ten years on, Donna - who was then a sports photographer with Cork-based agency Provision - also has clear recollections of the night she re-wrote middle-east history. “The minute we came off the media bus, this was a few hours before the game, one of the RTE cameramen came to me and said ‘get in there now’,” she said.

“The rumour was that the Mullahs were going to kick in and that no women would be allowed in. On the way in, I had about four blockages. “I was told, initially, to go in with the female Irish fans. I showed my accreditation and at one stage before I got it all sorted I was in a cage with a pile of Iranian men! 

“At that time, women weren’t allowed into the stadiums at all. They had a small section penned up right at the top of the stadium for the Irish fans. It was like a gladiator arena.”

Donna, and the other Irish women in the small Irish crowd that travelled to the game, had to wear a headscarf, and she recalls the boiling tension that was in the stadium. “When the fans came in they started throwing debris at me,” she said. “There were 100,000 fans in there and it was just pulsating. Debris was flying everywhere. Ray McManus from Sportsfile was telling me ‘get out in front of the advertising hoarding’. There was a ring of debris all around me - and none anywhere else!

“I was then in front of the hoarding, but all the other photographers were behind it - it took a fair bit of arguing to let me stay there. It was anything from bottles to large bits of stone that they were pelting down. “As the game went on and the Iranians realised they weren’t going to qualify, they started to set things on fire. The lit newspapers all around the place and looking around it was terrifying - all you could see were flames everywhere. It was a real cauldron, because the way the stadium is laid out the crowd is really on top of you.”

Despite the frightening experience inside the ground, it was a strange scenario - because the locals were so friendly away from combat. The Kerrykeel woman said: “It was a massive contrast, because outside of the stadium the people were amazingly friendly. I remember going into the wrong room in the stadium when I was going to send my pictures. I walked into a prayer room and they were all very welcoming, even giving me cake.” Tehran itself, she remembered as being a ‘fascinating place’. 

“It was also great to meet the locals, who were very friendly to the Irish,” she said. “There was a street where we were called ‘Bobby Sands Street’. When their revolution was going on, it was the same time as the Hunker Strikes, so they classed the Irish as comrades against the bigger nations. “They were very hospitable and in fairness they wouldn’t have got many tourists.”

It had all started with a dare with her boss at the time after her snaps of Jason McAteer’s famous match-winner against Holland at Lansdowne a few weeks earlier had impressed them - but her history-making trip to Tehran saw her hog the limelight for a bit. She appeared on local TV in Iran as well as being given a segment on BBC’s Football Focus and the papers in Iran and here in Ireland were captured by her story.

She said: “It was a massive deal at the time. It was only two months after 9/11 as well so the security was extremely tight. The Americans hasn’t gone in to Afghanistan at that stage, so there were a lot of things going around about that situation.”

The memories of the final whistle and Shay Given howling a triumphant roar into the Tehran sky remain clear. She said: “I couldn’t describe the scenes at the final whistle. It was like following the Donegal team this year, it was hard to keep the professional head on and have the tears of joy streaming down your face - we had just reached the World Cup finals!”