GAA Infastructure

I haven't been to Armagh yet but will be heading there for my first time next month for Mayo league game.It looks class and should be the blueprint for a lot of GAA stadiums.Lovely stand and crucially the terrace opposite has some sort of covering which is a major bugbear of mine at most grounds.Nice neat standard terraces at each end for days when you need the bigger capacity.

Wexford Park is decent but no bucket seats in the stand and exposed concrete benches opposite, not something to aspire to if you're upgrading a stadium in this day and age. Never be full of course but i imagine a nice spot on a fine summers day to watch a game.

Wexford Park isn't great. Main stand is wooden benches and there's only around 200 seats with a back. It's covered at least even if there is a leak in at least one part of the roof. Other stand is just concrete benches with no cover and behind the goals are uncovered terraces. The new floodlights are a welcome upgrade but it's not the most comfortable ground for fans. It definitely not should be used as a template for upgrading grounds.

That's crazy that for whatever reason they didn't take that cash and make something happen.That ship has probably sailed now and these chances don't come around often.

Beginning to feel like unless the Ballyroe oilfield finally starts pumping that there isn’t the public desire to have anything other than relics as stadiums.

It's not the public that don't have the desire. I would say very much the opposite.

If anyone does build something they will end up needing a bailout for HQ anyway so might as well skip the middle man and have HQ take over from the start.

If it was ok to have a grand vision for the building of Croke Park why can we not now have an ambitious plan for the next era of the GAA.

i would not agree that the public have the desire. It’s not something that comes up for TDs seeking election, you won’t hear senior politicians being questioned about having a stadium infrastructure that is embarrassing. It just doesn’t come up. Irish people see the costs involved with major works on stadiums and consider them too high. When projects like pairc ui caoimh run over cost while using public money they are branded “white elephants” and the media fan the outrage. A country that took sports stadiums seriously would never allow dalymount; the supposed “home of Irish football” fall into the state it’s in. No stadiums get built in Ireland. Tallaght is the one exception and that came about slightly by accident from what I heard recently from an executive member of the DCC at the time.

I could go on and on but I just see Ireland as a country that loves sport but has a very small time disorganized approach to it. Strangely most Irish people don’t even seem aware of how bad our facilities are compared to neighbours or countries of comparative wealth.

The media in Ireland are left wing orientated so will never make a big deal of **** stadiums when they are more important things to be considered.

so who do you think Irish people blame for Dalymount being the way it is?

Rightly or wrongly.

The FAI.

Ask any soccer fan about the state of the LoI and that's where all the anger and disappointment goes. Government doesn't get mentioned.

Municipal stadiums are how some countries do it. In Italy for instance the Serie A clubs are tenants in state owned stadia.

Organizations don't like it though as the gate money doesn't go to them. Italian clubs are desperate to get out or buy the grounds.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement if the clubs are desperate to escape that arrangement..

Plus that makes sense for Serie A, where you're guaranteed 19 home games a season and the average attendance will be 20000+

If Meath County Council built a GAA stadium, they're guaranteed only about 6 games a year that will draw a crowd above 1'000. How can they justify that investment?

As I said above though the GAA most likely do not want to operate out of government stadiums. The slightly more hard up LoI teams maybe but not the GAA so I don't see annoying a TD about it as a runner.

When I engage my TD next as a GAA fan it will be about the terrible lack of accessibly via public transport for many grounds.

The government do get involved through grants. If they build municipal stadia then they will will get the bar and function money which is essentially the government taking business off local pubs and hotels.

What !

You are the one here advocating it.

But what else had you in mind when you said people should be bugging their TDs about it.

They already do that. I think every stadium plan we have talked about on this thread was co-funded by government.

Most sports people know this so they might not be as "disinterested to the point of misinformed" as you think.

Obviously they do it. They do it to the extent that we are in the conversation to have the worst level of stadiums in Europe. A little better than moldova, a little worst than Albania.