Oasis is an emotional subject for Chantelle Guilfoyle (49) and her three children from Co Offaly, who attended the reunion concert in Croke Park on Saturday.
Her late husband Noel was a lifelong super fan of Oasis, collecting their records, magazines, books, newspapers and regularly travelling to concerts around the world.
“Our children Mark (27), Indi (16) and Hunter (13) are all also inspired and intrigued by Oasis, the voice of a generation that continues to resonate; a catalyst for human connection, being joyful, present and free, a rare gift,” Guilfoyle says.
Noel died by suicide in June 2023. Last month, when freeing his ashes at sunrise in the Mojave Desert in California, the family played the Oasis song Champagne Supernova..
RM Block
“We had no signal and miraculously our kid Mark had only two tracks on his phone, Layla and Champagne Supernova. The latter was meant to be the last track at our wedding party in 2007, but the DJ ... forgot.”
Sixteen years later, Guilfoyle, a HR manager, says: “I still hold a slight grudge, but maybe this was meant to happen, as we shared our last dance together in the desert with our children to Champagne Supernova.”
Hearing the Gallagher brothers play the song live in Croke Park left her with “no words ... tears of sorrow and joy say it all ... [It was the] gig of my life and sharing this experience with our children felt sacred.”
The Saturday night Oasis gig in Croke Park was a “once in a lifetime” moment too for Melissa Moloney (54) a civil servant from south Co Dublin.
“Even a couple of days later it still feels so magical,” she says. “I’m looking back at videos of the gig, and thinking like, ‘Wow. I was there in the middle of it’. It was just an out of body experience.”
“I’m lucky to be old enough to have seen them at their first gig in Ireland in September 1994.
“You’re going to take the hit of the cost of the ticket cause you don’t know if you’re going to see them again.”
The Gallagher brothers’ Irish heritage is a huge connection point to Moloney: “It’s like they’re one of you.”
Susie Keeling (47) from Clonskeagh enjoyed the “raucous, joyous, singalong trip down memory lane” so much on Saturday that she came back on her own on Sunday to stand outside the stadium and sing “one more tune”.
“In the mid-90s it was the soundtrack of my life ... I saw them in Slane in 1995 and I got in a crush at the front and crowd-surfed at the age of 17. I can’t put my finger on it, it’s something about the guitar riffs and getting down with it.”
[ Noel Gallagher left ‘shaky’ after Oasis after-party in DublinOpens in new window ]
Keeling also went to the Oasis concert in August 1996 in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, on the eve of her Leaving Cert results.
The 2025 gig was a full circle moment: “I was lucky enough to be there on Saturday with the same schoolfriends and my eldest daughter, Aoibhe and her schoolfriend, similarly a fan, 18, waiting for those [Leaving Cert] results and on the cusp of life and all its possibilities.”
Keeling, who works in research and operations, says she’s “finding it hard to concentrate on real life” in the week after the concert. “I actually can’t come down from it.”
They had seats in the lower Cusack stand and Keeling says while “the queues were chronic, I don’t want to dwell on it”.
“When you were going to the toilet or to get a drink, you had to miss songs, so we planned it.”
At the concert she “just felt so young again, and so free. Not worrying about the mortgage and the kids.”
“I was telling everyone, Half the World Away is my favourite tune, it’s going to be played at my funeral.”
[ Oasis weekend in pictures: Liam and Noel Gallagher gave fans two joyous gigsOpens in new window ]
While the brothers blew the crowd away, the management of the 80,000 people entering Croke Park stadium left a lot to be desired, according to several attendees.
Alison Breen from Glasnevin, Dublin, described the situation as “dangerous and potentially volatile” with people “shouting at staff” in frustration.
“I had my ticket scanned and had a search done. Nobody at any stage said get a wristband. I went into a narrow space with a throng of people, and at the turnstiles I was refused entry because I didn’t have a wristband,” she says.
“Other people were being refused as well and walking back through the throng, which looked very dangerous. They gave me a way through a barrier and a one way exit. When I got back, they said there were no wristbands left.”
Breen says the stressful situation caused her to “actually burst into tears”.
”None of the security staff knew what was happening. There was no information given to the crowd, it ruined the beginning of it to be honest.”
Meanwhile, John Fitzpatrick (51) from Killiney, Co Dublin, who attended the Sunday gig, also found the crowd management was “particularly poor”.
“I was on the green route, a lot of people didn’t seem to be aware that they had a route. The signage was poor. A lot of people were getting caught out, friends were getting split up.”
Going through the tunnels to enter the pitch “was tight”, Fitzpatrick says.
“I was worried it could turn out nasty. There were loads of temporary urinals on the way in, and not enough for women so that was slowing down everything.”
Breen says she spent 45 minutes “going around in circles”.
“I tried not to dwell on it, I didn’t want it to be the overriding memory, and nobody got hurt.”
But one minute after Breen and her husband arrived in the stadium, “the band [were] out and the stress of getting in evaporated. Each song was performed to perfection”.
“The memories attached to these tunes are of a different time.”
