Assuming it could have been built for the proposed budget and not spiraled out of control, and also assuming it continued to sell out games. We'll never know. We do know that fans are fickle, and when the good times don't last, bums don't continue to land on seats.
The Aviva is too small for probably 75 to 100% of international rugby games played in it.
Ok well in 2024, the Aviva has hosted/will host Italy, Wales, Scotland, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia and Fiji.
Of those seven matches, for how many do you think demand would significantly exceed the current supply? I'd say maybe three, four at most, and that's with the best Ireland team possibly ever and the economy riding high putting cash in pockets and money in corporate budgets.
Look at the soccer team; building a bigger stadium would have saddled them with even more debt and even more empty seats.
Croke Park is too big for most GAA games, but it would have been madness to build a smaller stadium as you are advocating.
Is that extra €2.4 million net after increased loan repayments, extra staffing, Gardai etc ?
elephantintheroom.ie/brent-pope
For those who prefer elephants of colour 😊
Whatever about our opinions on Ireland’s chances, I would expect members of the actual team to exhibit confidence they could win the World Cup.
With all due respect to you, let's look at that in percentage terms and consider the accuracy of your view.
The Aviva is too small for probably 75 to 100% of international rugby games played in it. Croke Park is full for possibly 5% of the GAA games played in it - note that for the last couple of years All Ireland Hurling Final tickets have gone on general sale, albeit a small number but it has happened, in the days leading upto the final as they were returning unsold. So yes, the Aviva is too small for most rugby games and Croke Park is too big for most GAA games. That's simply a statement of fact.
Talk about a solution looking for a problem!
Played in it quite a few times when it was grass and it was a pain. I’d say 75 games is fairly conservative. Finals weekends is 3 games on a Sunday. There are quite a few of them in a row between AIL junior and youth matches for the two clubs, all the schools games along with some representative matches I’d say it’s well over a hundred matches a year. The minis team I coach have been down twice this season as away fixtures and on the main pitch both times. It’s an advertisement in sweating your assets.
And the international football teams rarely fills it.
WTF? Munster is more than just Limerick. Dell had no effect on Munster or the attendances. They averaged above 20k in Thomond in 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12. It started to drop away after that, but they were still getting 15-16k for league matches.
Munster being shíte for a decade is the main reason that attendances dropped.
That's €2.4 million you're sneezing at there
What sunk the Bertie Bowl was the cost. The last estimate was 1 billion, and public construction projects are not renowned for sticking to budget.
Abbottstown would have been a serious pain in the hole, it's the absolute middle of nowhere, and I say that as someone who is up there every week.
A stadium out in blanch wouldn't exactly lend exactly lend itself to a great match day experience. One / two pubs within walking distance of that site? When there's a big match on in Dublin, you know about it, bars and restaurants full, town is hopping. Everyone can walk to the stadium from the city center which is reasonably well serviced by buses / trains /trams. If everyone had to make their way out to blanch, not easy.
I'll take a 51,000 seater in town any day over a 75,000 in the middle of nowhere.
Only in Ireland!
With all due respect, this is nonsense.
The Aviva is too small for maybe two or three matches per year, the other 95% of the time it's the right size. Spending hundreds of millions on a piece of infrastructure that we would only need on rare occasions would be absolute madness (see also Ahern, Bertie).
Croke Park is also exactly the size it needs to be, can you imagine All-Ireland weekend if there were 20,000 fewer tickets floating around?
The biggest issue Munster had, said this before, was Dell pulling out of Limerick. That had a huge affect on the economy. Munster started the work in 2006, opened in 2008 and Dell pulled out in 2009.
It wasn't just the people in Dell, it was the entire city suddenly didn't have the cash that was floating around from employees from Dell.
I said it before and people will laugh, but it was on a radio at the time the canteen used something like 2,000 eggs per day, that supplier had nobody to supply anymore so it was felt everywhere.
Would Munster have built it in Limerick if they thought Dell would pull out?
In reality the FAI and the IRFU should have built the stadium out in Blanchardstown which the land is now the high performance centre on. The issue with this was it got nicknamed by the press Bertie Bowl and then people fought against it because of the link with Bertie
That stadium would hold 75k people and would be fit for purpose
Instead they ended up shoving a stadium into a built up area in Dublin and couldn't get planning for one end which I think brings the capacity down by 15k
THe issue now is the FAI don't have the money anymore to move from Aviva so it would be the IRFU funding it themselves, then what would they do with Aviva stadium? Leinster don;t have a big enough following to take over it full time(yet)
You could, if the Irish provinces joined a Super League with England, then having games against Sarries/Quins etc might bump up attendance rates but not enough to fill it
From February to the end of April/Early May that pitch is in use pretty much every day of the week between Schools games , Club junior play-off and finals etc.
Back when it was a grass surface it would be completely bald at this stage of the season , covered in sand and you'd get cut to ribbons on it.
Without exaggeration, that pitch probably has 75 games a season played on it and perhaps more.
They were probably saying to Eben 'see YOU in the final'…..which was the case tbf!
The Aussies and Kiwi's manage ground shares between Cricket/Aussie Rules and Rugby/Soccer with movable stands. The adjustments needed for GAA to Rugby/Soccer are comparatively a piece of cake.
Ah thanks makes sense now Neil thanks.
Maybe a winky face at the end would help the slow guys like me.
😉
I probably should have quoted the offending post, in hindsight, but in case it wasn't clear, that was a parody. Scroll back a few posts.
That's just something you say as a sort of commiseration. Etzebeth talking shite as usual.
And there's the shark jumping........
Well done all
Leinster have absorbed close to 20 years of opportunity costs from catering, corporate hospitality and third party event rental incomes that could have been generated had they developed their own modern midsized stadium in South Dublin.
When you consider Dublin's economic growth in the last decade in particular, they could be charging absolutely stupid money for corporate suites these days. Serious opportunity missed thanks to dreadful vision and leadership.
Thankfully they at least have their IRFU sugar daddy to bail them out each year, as their operations would otherwise be terminally unsustainable.
This is the kind of thinking that has many of our posters here talking about rugby in Ireland as if it were organised in some other way than it is. The IRFU is the politburo, provinces aren't privately owned or ordinary stand alone businesses anymore than county teams of the GAA are. My local GAA club that has membership of a few hundred people and has a couple of pitches and an all weather fenced training area plus a club house and bar that can cater to a few hundred people at a time. There is no spectator seating and I'd say it would be a rare day when you'd have a hundred spectators there. It would be gone in 6 months if you looked at it as some sort of P&L oriented private business. Many rugby clubs are no different, maybe without the parish halll style club house. These are not viable businesses, but the sport is viable so its organised nationwide in a way that maximises the sporting and participation gain from what resources are available. Judging Thomond's development by reference to gate receipts over the course of a few years might be interesting but its irrelevant.
I agree with this post but it is only the case because Munster have the provincial sugar daddy IRFU to help get them out of the hole they're in.
Redeveloping a stadium with top tier facilities and it very rarely coming anywhere close to filling it would have been a financial disaster for most privately owned clubs - leaving a club extremely hamstrung, if not facing bankruptcy.
Never a wise decision to build a stadium that is only close to full on big days, but when you have the safety of the IRFU backing you might as well go big and ask for forgiveness later.
Could be mind games from Ireland, letting the South Africans know how confident they were and also trying to get the South African players thinking about the Final so they took their eye off the QF against France a bit.
Thoughts? Perhaps PR for the upcoming fixtures?
https://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/arrogant-ireland-underestimated-new-zealand-at-the-world-cup-says-springbok-eben-etzebeth/a359171887.html
If Scott Wilson isn't already better than Jager it's a close run thing, and I'd be surprised if his ceiling doesn't end up being significantly higher. The third choice tighthead isn't likely to see much (if any) actual gametime given it's only a two-Test series, so Wilson is likely to get more out of being involved than Jager would. I'd like to see Wilson get the nod to back up Furlong and Bealham - that's assuming Tom O'Toole will go more as a loosehead, but maybe that won't be the case.
Where O'Toole fits in is interesting. The three best looseheads in Ireland right now are Porter, Healy and Loughman, but will Farrell try to develop TOT as a loosehead instead of Healy or Loughman? Maybe he goes covering both sides. Farrell has selected only 5 props in squads in the past.
Yeah, it's not just a little large, it's an 86% bigger surface.
