Why Ireland Must Bid to Host Euro 2016

aierlan1000

This article appeared on my blog:

http://thegreatestsportsshowonearth.blogspot.com

http://www.eleven-a-side.com/blogs/viewblog.asp?bid=323

and

http://www.anfearrua.com/db.asp?a=topicdisplay&tid=587046&xpos=0

Let me know what you think...

I see that Poland and the Ukraine are hosting Euro 2012. That ought to be fun if they ever get the stadia finished. Mind you I wouldn't fancy the drive between a game Gdansk and another one in Donetsk or Odessa. Then there is the issue of changing currencies and languages. Could either the Ukraine or Poland not have just hosted the competition themselves? I would have thought either of them would be big enough to have managed it on their own.

How hard can it be to host such a tournament. Surely the will would be there politically and economically to make sure it's a success. The European Championships are such a wonderful occasion and I'm sure any country snap your arm off for the oppertunity of hosting it.

Which brings me along to the year of 2016. To cut to the chase I think Ireland should make a bid to host the tournament by themselves. Yes, I believe that it makes complete sense that the Republic of Ireland in the guise of the FAI make the bid to host Euro 2016 all by their lonesomes. I actually think it would be foolish not to and a successful bid would represent our salvation from this nasty recession we find ourselves in.

I'll let you in on the plan. Croke Park and the new Landsdowne Road would be the two main Stadia obviously enough. One of them would host the final and the opening game and whatever other matches in between. The same as Wembley was used in Euro 96.

After that you can take your pick from the following stadia.

In Limerick you have the Gaelic Grounds (Cap. 50,000) and the famous Thomand Park (about 27,000 I think). The Gaelic Grounds is terribly underused. It has only been close to full once (last year's Munster Hurling Final) and Thomand is obviously top class.

Pairc Ui Chaoimh in Cork would be available, Semple Stadium in Thurles (both can take between 50,000 and 60,000 people), Pearse Stadium in Galway, Clones, Castlebar, Nowlan Park in Kilkenny, Portlaoise, Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney. There are 8 stadia in this paragraph alone each comfortably able to hold over 30,000 spectators. To my mind there are 12 grounds (I hate the word stadia) capable of hosting a game in the Eurpean football Championships.

A certain amount of work would need to be done on each of course but not as much as you'd think either. In Croke Park, temporary seating is already put in for the International soccer games without any hassle. In fact there is hardly ever anyone even sitting on them. Borrussia Dortmund used to have temporary seating in the Nord Tribune, the biggest terrace in Europe when they used to play in the Champions League. (I had the privilege of being there myself one night when they played Real Madrid but that's another post).

Who knows, by 2016 UEFA might have rolled back on their anti terracing stance. They can surely be made safe. In fact they are already safe and are used in many grounds without incident or fear of it. Managing crowds properly is the key to safety and surely that can be done in this day and age.

The stadiums might not all be up to scratch. So what, improve them. Renovate them, do whatever it takes. We have 7 years to do it for God's sake and it's not like there aren't any builders out there scratching their arses just now.

The second point is that we might not have the infrastructure to handle such an event. Of course we do and again whatever improvements need to be made, we have still have 7 years to do them. If we need more hotels, a better road or rail network we should build them and when the tournament is over and the whole country has gotten rich off the back of it, we would still have all this fantastic infrasture in place which would attract investment into the country for years to come. The Olympic effect they might call it.

The GAA can't possibly have any argument against it. First of all, they have already opened Croke Park to other sports so any moral objections have already long gone out the window. It's only for about six weeks anyway so it's not going to make that much difference. Secondly and much more importantly though is the fact that the country is on it's knees economically and let's face it, there is no prospect of a recovery in sight.

People are already emigrating in their droves and it's about to get a whole lot worse, it's in the national interest that the GAA throw their full support behind this proposal. It would save us from recession and make the GAA a lot of money as well. On a practical level, it would undoubtedly disrupt the GAA championships of 2016 but you know what disrupted the championships of 1916, a couple of little things called the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme so it could be worse. The championships could just be postponed during the Euro's, they could start them earlier and finish a little later. The off season in the GAA is long enough to handle such disruption.

As a venue, Ireland would be an amazing place to hold the tournament. It is actually a beautiful country with very friendly people who love having a laugh. Essentially this is true even if we forget it sometimes. I'm sure our European cousins would be totally psyched at the idea of spending their summer holidays roadtripping around Ireland following the footy. Plus Ireland is so small that once you get here it wouldn't involve too many long trips. The towns and cities could handle the crowds. They are used to it. Thurles is tiny yet it regularly caters for over 50,000 people entirely without incident on glorious championship Sundays.

Scotland are already bidding for the tournament. We are a far more attractive proposition than they are and we already have much better stadiums in situ. We are the logical choice to host this tournament. It has already been given to Austria/ Switzerland, Belguim/Holland but I think we could actually handle it on our own and I can't think of a single reason why not. There would be a lot of work involved but isn't that exactly what we are looking for right now.

DubTony

Is this the right forum for this? Anyway, aerlian, this is definitely a non-runner. Our stadia aren't suitable and, in my opinion, your suggestions are full of holes.

All but a couple of the stadia you mention are GAA grounds. There's little or no chance that they'll allow that game to be played in them. It was only by repeated persistence that they allowed soccer in Croke Park and that's temporary.

It's unlikely UEFA will ever roll back on the seating only rule. Are you old enough to remember the Heysel Stadium Disaster and the Hillsborough Disaster? These were both horrific incidents.

Anyway, the cost of renovating these stadia would run into tens, if not hundreds of millions. Things are tight. Who's coming up with the money for it? As for hotels, I think we've enough hotels to house most of the population at this stage :rolleyes:.

As for being a better location than Scotland? I'm not so sure. But either way, Scotland already has the stadia in place and most would need little work to get them right. Parkhead, Ibrox, and Pittodrie are all good stadia and of course there's Hamden Park and Murrayfield as well.

I don't see it happening.

pepsicokeacola

switzerland and austria countries in central europe, with much better infrastructure than us, people who actually go to watch their domestic league, stadiums with soccer as their sole purpose, had to host the tournament together, what chance does ireland, a country on an island on europes periphery with no history of hosting anything of this magnitude with none of the previous things mentioned have of hosting it?

i think as a people we would be excellent hosts but not a chance. it will be in germany or italy. dissapointing really

Savman

Wackiest idea ever. I'd say we're about 10 million light years away from hosting a tournament of that scale.

pepsicokeacola

Savman wrote: »

Wackiest idea ever. I'd say we're about 10 million light years away from hosting a tournament of that scale.

or another boom with smart goverment spending. its not impossible but for the long forseebale future it wont even have a chance ofhappening.

oh and we should resist any joint bid with anyone else other than the north.

aierlan1000

I put the thread into this section because it's already appeared on sports sites like eleven a side and An Fear Rua. http://www.anfearrua.com/db.asp?a=topicdisplay&tid=587046&xpos=0

I've been getting a good response that's for sure but the running theme from most of the replies is that it is unrealistic or even wacky. It's also been suggested that I am a wind up merchant or an idiot.

It's just an idea though and I want to know what ideas people think. In spite of all the comments I still think it's possible mainly because I don't think the country has any other options. We have to do whatever we can to get the economy moving again. We need a project to work towards.

The things I keep coming back to are that it costs the Government €11 million for every 1000 out of work and unemployment has increased by 72% in the last year. This bid would create jobs. Sure the Government might lose money but they squander every penny they have anyway so what difference does it make plus a bouyant economy would mean they'll make it back indirectly.

There is no outstanding bid on the table. South Africa, a third world country have been given the World Cup. Poland are co-hosting the tournament in 2012 even though Ireland provided an economic refuge for thousands of their citizens for the last ten years and we still have an inferiority complex.

DubTony

On that basis this should be in the Economics forum. But be careful over there, those guys bite.

I think you're proposing something like what Eisenhower *(I think) did in America to get the country working. So they built a load of roads. Unfortunately, this country doesn't even seem to have the resources to do that anymore. We pissed away billions in EU (EEC) money in the 80's when we had massive unemployment. We're not getting that money now and the state can't even meet its' needs. So now we're borrowing to pay the bills. But then that's hardly surprising; we built major infrastructure from our "cash flow" over the last 15 years, instead of borrowing at the cheapest rates available to any country.

Sorry, little rant there.

*edit: Actually I think it was Roosevelt.

Savman

pepsicokeacola wrote: »

smart goverment spending.

So, yeah....

me wrote:

10 million light years away

an_other

Great idea for job creation to stimulate the economy and give the country a lift. But would you honestly put the FAI in charge of such responsibility?

Plus all the GAA grounds you mentioned are totally unsuitable. They don't have the car parking, public transport, corporate facilities never mind the seating, roofing, floodlights necessary.

We would need to look at building maybe 6 or 7 "stadia" at strategic locations around the country including the north.

What would we then do with them when the competition was over?

We would need the FAI, GAA & IRFU to be willing to all use these new grounds and give there old grounds over to urban regeneration.

Great dream but we would never get the finances together to even make a bid possible never mind actually host it.

It would be great to see the whole country get behind something as ambitious as this as I do think uefa would love to give it to us if we had the ability to host it.

aierlan1000

I think an_other raises some good and sensible points. There is undoubtedly a dreamlike quality to this whole idea and I wouldn't bring it up except there is nothing else going on in the country at the moment. There is no business being done here and that is a serious problem. What we have are stadiums (unsuitable at the moment but they are there and they have big capacities), a massive workforce with all the skills developed in the last 15 years (I'm talking about builders, lawyers, engineers, architects, marketing people, people whose job it is to make things happen) sitting on their hands right now because they have nothing else to do.

The Government would lose money investing on the stadiums but they would make it back in a bouyant economy. It costs €11 million for every 1000 people on the dole. Unemployment and emigration are about to explode. It would generate other business as well. We wouldn't use the stadiums for much afterwards, GAA matches I suppose. That's not important because hopefully the country would have made a lot of money out of hosting the tournament so we could absorb it. The other infrastructure would remain in place thereby attracting investment for years to come.

Ireland would be in the worlds shop window for 6 weeks in the summer. Everyone in China, India and Japan watches this....it can only be good for buisness. It would mean real cash coming into the country too, not the makey-uppy stuff we've been getting from the banks which has caused this mess.

The FAI would have to front it but essentially what I'm is a three pronged approach by the Government, The GAA and the FA in the national interest.

an_other

Something like this would give the country a real kick up the arse. Get the north invloved get the big money men and all the sporting groups together. Keep our skilled workers here and in steady enployemnt for the next 7 or 8 years. The effects of this would last well beyond 2016.

Plus we would actually qualify for a tournament as hosts

Savman

Would hosting such an event be good for us? Undoubtedly.
Do we have what it takes to pull it off? No.

The UEFA Bureaucrats won't have green tinted glasses on when laughing off our attempted bid.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

eZe^

Savman wrote: »

Wackiest idea ever. I'd say we're about 10 million light years away from hosting a tournament of that scale.

A light year is a measure of distance, not time... :pac:

noodler

We couldn't handle the numbers of tourists/fans involved in such an ordeal. Not in Dublin and certainly not outside of Dublin.

Savman

eZe^ wrote: »

A light year is a measure of distance, not time... :pac:

Figure of speech bud.

pedantic sonofa....

dfx-

eZe^ wrote: »

A light year is a measure of distance, not time... :pac:

And Ireland are currently covering this distance at 0.5km an hour..and running out of petrol.

Savman

dfx- wrote: »

And Ireland are currently covering this distance at 0.5km an hour..and running out of petrol.

Where are we actually going though?

eZe^

Savman wrote: »

Figure of speech bud.

pedantic sonofa....

You know I love you right? :pac:

Tomthepost

I think this is a fantastic idea. The country needs a boost mentally and economically and this would do both.
I also agree the GAA stadia wouldnt need a pile of adjustments to meet the safety criteria.
If the GAA are to open up the HQ where the Brits murdered innocent people then I don't think it would be a great deal of hassle for them to open the other grounds.
If nothing else it would be a wonderful way of celebrating the 100th year aniversary of the 1916 rising.

Savman

Tomthepost wrote: »

I think this is a fantastic idea.

Of course it is. That don't make it feasible.

Tomthepost wrote:

The country needs a boost mentally and economically and this would do both.

As does every other country in Europe. It's not like UEFA owe Ireland any favours, there are a dozen better equipped nations that can wipe the floor with us as a host nation. It might happen if we had a pioneering football association to impress the bigwigs, but instead we've muppets who can hardly arrange training bibs at a world cup.

Listen, I more than anyone would love to see this happen but it's pure fantasy, based on a whim of an idea.

dfx-

Savman wrote: »

Where are we actually going though?

It looks suspiciously like around in circles..

The Rooster

Fantastic is right!

Lets host an international soccer tournament in a country with one soccer stadium!!!

Nuts.

And then I have to laugh at the suggestion that the GAA calendar isn't anywhere near full so the championship can be moved around or maybe put off for just one year to help facilitate a soccer tournament. Like Jeez Louise are you for real?

Lets pretend for a second that rugby union in England had been run so incompetently over the last 30 years that they only had one stadium, and they wanted to run an international tournament using soccer grounds, but unfortunately it clashed with an important time in the soccer season, say April/May. Do you think the Premier League would say: - ah no problem lads we'll totally re-arrange our schedules to accommodate you.

The GAA off season is in November and December. If you want to run Euro 2016 in Ireland using GAA stadia, then you move it to November/December. The GAA regard their championship as far more important than any soccer tournament, so if you need to use GAA grounds and there's a clash, then its the soccer calendar that needs to be rearraganed, not the GAA calendar.

CiaranC

This is the most retarded idea ive read on the internet in a long time. WUM.

As if UEFA would give the tournament to a country with a football infrastructure like ours.