Republican News · Thursday 11 April 2002

A stadium too far

BY CIARÁN MacANNRAOI

As a member of the GAA, and someone who is a committed volunteer of the association, I would be very cautious about how to amend Rule 42. Under no circumstances should it be open doors nationally; what I propose is to open Croke Park only

Stadiums are a very topical discussion lately and it is for the wrong reasons. We have the spiraling costs of Sports Campus Ireland (aka the Bertie Bowl), the resignation of Paddy Teahon over the awarding of the contract to run the aquatic centre to a dormant shelf company and now the spotlight will shift back on the subject again with the GAA set to consider the abolition of Rule 42 at its Annual Congress this weekend.

Most would consider this to be the last of the controversial rules; it upholds the ban on "foreign games" taking place on GAA property. Along with Rule 21, the ban on membership for British security personnel (abolished last October) and the rule on members playing foreign games, it formed the core of the protectionist rules of the GAA.

This rule was debated last year but the circumstances then were a bit more dubious, with the Taoiseach awarding £60m (€76m), to the development of Croke Park the night before the vote and the abstention of several high profile delegates at congress. However as one of these controversial issues, it is set not to go away.

The last constitutional amendment of the GAA was the abolition of Rule 21 in order to allow members of RUC/PSNI and British Army hold membership of the association; I was vehemently opposed to abolishing the ban. While accepting that it would eventually have to go purely on a human rights basis, the timing was wrong. Patten recommended it to go but the police reforms were nowhere near Patten's recommendations. There was no apology and no accountability for the deaths of numerous association members by security personnel, most notably Aidan McAnespie and Bloody Sunday 1920 and more importantly to the present day, where we have the continuing harassment of members and occupation of association lands by Crown forces personnel.

I was taken back at the way Rule 21 was abolished. Up until last October, the 26 Counties stood in solidarity with the Six Counties (i.e those living under the RUC) and generally voted in line with them. However, after a high profile campaign by GAA President Sean McCague, we had a situation where the voting block of most Southern counties (none affected by the rule), outweighed the choice of the Six Counties who live with PSNI/RUC (Down was the only occupied county who chose to abolish the rule) and the amendment was railroaded through. While it might be perfectly constitutional, it was not done in good spirit.

One could write a book on the stadium development plans that have surfaced in the last ten years and it is amazing for a country that until 1994 had no semblance of a modern stadium, we were suddenly talking of Bertie Bowls, redevelopments in Lansdowne and Croke Park, the now defunct Eircom Park, and the list of ideas went on. Until 1994 when the Cusack stand was redeveloped, we had three big stadiums, in other words venues with a capacity of 50,000 or more - Croke Park, Lansdowne Road and Semple Stadium in Thurles.

Let us consider the argument on a purely economic level. Eircom Park is now dead and current plans would result in two 80,000 stadiums, Croke Park and Stadium Ireland, combined with Lansdowne Road, all within eight miles of each other. This makes no sense whatsoever, when one considers that we would only come near filling 80,000 seats on less than ten occasions a year and only three or four matches would be complete sellouts. When faced with these facts, how could anyone justify the costs involved in building a second stadium? Originally mooted at £300m, they are now spiraling towards the €1billion mark and this when there are more important areas like health and education in which we could invest this money.

I think it is appropriate to look at Melbourne, which I hold as the most sport fanatical city on Earth bar none. It has 3.5 million inhabitants and they have two major stadiums, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG or simply the G) and the redeveloped Colonial Stadium, with capacities of 97,500 and 55,000 respectively. Over 7 million people a year pass through the gates of the MCG alone. The GAA last year broke a milestone with the new qualifying system leading to the championship attendance breaking the 1 million mark (and those games were spread nationally). Even if you combine the four major field sports together, a rough calculation would lead to somewhere in the region of 1.5 - 2 million people attending big matches in Ireland, this is around 25% of the crowd in just one of the Melbourne stadiums. What some people are essentially arguing for is that a city less than half the size of Melbourne, with relatively tiny attendances, should have more stadiums!

Building Stadium Ireland has another drawback which no one is focusing on. As the plans currently stand it would be a mini-Olympic Park but similar to Olympic Park in Sydney, it would be 20 minutes out of town by train. While Sydney has the capacity/expertise to move this amount of people, Ireland does not. While it is a drawback that Croke Park doesn't have an athletics track, or the potential to build one, would anyone argue that Ireland could host a major athletics event like the European Championship or the Olympics given our weaknesses in other key logistical areas? An athletics track certainly doesn't add to the reasoning for building Stadium Ireland.

I have been at matches in over 100 stadiums in my life, in cities spread across the world and one rule of thumb which holds is that city stadiums (ie stadiums close to the city centre) have far better atmosphere/craic around the games, the crowd is around before and after the game and it is noticeable that a game is taking place. Examples of this include Cardiff's Millenium Stadium, Croke Park, Lansdowne Road, and the MCG. On the other hand, stadiums like Twickenham, Stadium Australia and the planned Stadium Ireland are so far out of town that instead of having a place to congregate nearby, the crowd has to travel and when they start traveling they tend to go their separate ways, which dilutes the experience

It would be easy to look on this argument as purely an economic one, but to ignore that it involves deep rooted principles would be akin to treating the National Question as a black and white issue. As a member of the GAA, and someone who is a committed volunteer of the association, I would be very cautious about how to amend Rule 42. Under no circumstances should it be open doors nationally; what I propose is to open Croke Park only. The GAA, through its amateur ethos, embedded in the local community, or parish, to be more precise, has achieved what no other amateur organisation in the world has managed to do. It has a network of loyal volunteers throughout the country. In all bar a few parishes there are facilities ranging from a single pitch to clubs with multiple pitches around massive clubhouses, which were built in the most part by the toil of the volunteer.

The association should not open these up as it would let not only professional sports like soccer, a sport which has squandered its resources and achieved very little local development on the facilities side, but more importantly the 26-County government, off the hook.

The Dublin governement has invested poorly in Irish sports infrastructure; compare Ireland to the French system where a public stadium was built in every region (equivalent to county) for all sports to share. The clubs of the GAA should not have to clean up this mess.

As a republican, it would personally be hard for me to accept a partitionist sport in Croke Park, but it is something I would accept in the interest of the country - it would just not be added to the list of 50 or so matches that I attend annually.

When it comes down to the crunch, all that this country/city needs is one 80,000-seater stadium complimented by a 50,000-seater stadium in the shape of a redeveloped/modernised Lansdowne Road and a 15,000/20,000 stadium which all sports share - it would be more than adequate for demand and when one takes the different calendars into account, a clash of big matches is easily avoidable.

I would urge the Dublin goverenment to show leadership on the issue, and to consign plans for Stadium Ireland to the bin. I am confident the delegates of the GAA will play their part.