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Cut from movie "Michael Collins" 1996.
The Dublin Gaelic football team was scheduled to play the Tipperary team later the same day in Croke Park, the Gaelic Athletic Association's major football ground. Despite the general unease in Dublin as news broke of the assassinations, a war-weary populace continued with life. About 5,000 spectators went to Croke Park for the Tipperary match, which began thirty minutes late, at 3:15 p.m.
Meanwhile, outside the park, unseen by the crowd, British forces were approaching and preparing to raid the match. A convoy of troops drove in from the northwest, along Clonliffe Road, while a convoy of police (including Auxiliaries and Black and Tans) approached the park from the south or canal end. Their orders were to surround the ground, guard the exits, and search every man in the park. The authorities later stated that their intention was to announce by megaphone that all males leaving the stadium would be searched and that anyone leaving by other means would be shot. However, for some reason, shots were fired as soon as the police convoy reached the stadium, at 3:25 pm.
Some of the police later claimed that they were fired on first by IRA sentries, but this has never been proved. Correspondents for the Manchester Guardian and Britain's Daily News interviewed eyewitnesses, and concluded that the "IRA sentries" were actually ticket-sellers:
It is the custom at this football ground for tickets to be sold outside the gates by recognised ticket-sellers, who would probably present the appearance of pickets, and would naturally run inside at the approach of a dozen military lorries. No man exposes himself needlessly in Ireland when a military lorry passes by.
The police in the convoy's leading cars appear to have jumped out, chased these men down the passage to the Canal End gate, forced their way through the turnstiles, and started firing rapidly with rifles and revolvers. Ireland's Freeman's Journal reported that,
The spectators were startled by a volley of shots fired from inside the turnstile entrances. Armed and uniformed men were seen entering the field, and immediately after the firing broke out scenes of the wildest confusion took place. The spectators made a rush for the far side of Croke Park and shots were fired over their heads and into the crowd.
The police kept shooting for about ninety seconds. Their commander, Major Mills, later admitted that his men were "excited and out of hand". Some police fired into the fleeing crowd from the pitch, while others, outside the park, opened fire from the Canal Bridge at spectators who climbed over the Canal End Wall trying to escape. At the other end of the park, soldiers on Clonliffe Road were startled first by the sound of the fusillade, then by the sight of panicked people fleeing the grounds. As the spectators streamed out, an armoured car on St James Avenue fired its machine guns over the heads of the crowd, trying to halt them.
By the time Major Mills got his men back under control, the police had fired 114 rounds of rifle ammunition, and an unknown amount of revolver ammunition as well, not counting fifty rounds fired from the machine guns in the armoured car outside the Park. Seven people had been shot to death, and five more had been shot and wounded so badly that they later died; another two people had been trampled to death in the stampede. The dead included Jane Boyle, who had gone to the match with her fiancé and was due to be married five days later, and two boys aged ten and eleven. Boyle was the only woman to die in either of that day's massacres. Two football players, Michael Hogan and Jim Egan, had been shot; Egan survived but Hogan was killed, the only player fatality. There were dozens of other wounded and injured. The police raiding party suffered no casualties.
Once the firing stopped, the security forces searched the remaining men in the crowd before letting them go. The military raiding party recovered one revolver: a local householder testified that a fleeing spectator had thrown it away in his garden. Once the grounds were cleared, the park was searched for arms, but, according to Major Mills, none were found.
