Newbridge a defining issue on future venue choices Kildare owe it to supporters, local businesses and advertisers to make a stand on venue issue
WE stand to be corrected but the last time a ball was thrown in for an inter-county match and only one team was there to contest it was the 1987 league quarter-final between Dublin and Cork which went to extra-time.
Except there was no extra-time because Cork had a train to catch, amidst claims that they hadn’t been notified about extra-time. They didn’t hang around and it was left to Barney Rock to kick into an empty net to claim victory.
What Mayo player will kick into an empty net shortly after 7pm on Saturday night next when they pitch up to
Croke Park and find their opponents are 30 miles back down the M7 in Newbridge waiting to play at a venue that’s not going ahead?
That’s the scenario that unfolded yesterday as first the GAA and then Kildare insisted that they wouldn’t be backing down from their entrenched positions on the choice of venue for the third-round qualifier. Kildare at home to Mayo was the one fixture that the Central Competitions Controls Committee didn’t want in the knowledge that St Conleth’s Park just couldn’t accommodate the expected crowd. There’s history there too. In 2012 a qualifier game with Limerick that Kildare were entitled to host after being drawn first was shifted down the road to O’Moore Park in Portlaoise to accommodate the crowd. Some 12,000 showed up, 4,000 more than the approximate 8,000 that remedial work had got Newbridge up to after some of the terms of the Slattery Report were adhered to.
But with promotion to Division 1 that year, Kildare lost further home games in 2013, agreeing to play then All-Ireland champions Donegal on an opening double-header with Dublin and Cork before conceding home advantage to Dublin later on in the campaign. There was little resistance, especially as Croke Park had ridden to the rescue with some significant financial bail-outs at the time. The county had to play ball.
There was acknowledgement at the time that a major refurbishment of St Conleth’s Park would have to take place but financial restraints on the county have limited that scope until recently when planning for a 15,000-capacity revamp was submitted.
They’ll need all those supporting businesses and advertisers whose brands may not be seen around the ground on Saturday night to get that project up and running.
The hope is that at a cost of €7.5m it will be ready by April 2020. And it can’t come soon enough because the facility is poor for inter-county standard. For now though their will to resist is being tested and so far they’ve stood up to it.
Mayo fans travel. No other county, with the exception of Dublin, reaches their maximum number of season tickets as they do.
With a capacity of just over 9,000, according to the GAA, reduced by 10pc because of all-ticket status, the limit for Newbridge is 8,300.
That’s not enough to satisfy demand with the added safety headache of supporters without tickets thronging the town and gathering outside the ground. Those in charge were not prepared to sign off on a safety statement with that in mind.
But Kildare have backed down once, maybe even twice, before on this issue and they weren’t prepared todoitathirdtime.
There is much merit in that, even sympathy from those that had to make the decision in the first place.
Many sporting events see demand far outweigh supply. When Manchester United played Yeovil Town in the FA Cup earlier this year 9,195 watched it at Yeovil’s home ground, Huish Park.
You can imagine that demand was much higher than that but Yeovil had home advantage and were going to extract the most they could from it.
The GAA has always sought to facilitate the maximum crowd possible who want to attend a fixture so Laois had to go to Kilkenny for a Leinster quarterfinal with Dublin two years ago while Wicklow went to Portlaoise for their game with the Dubs this year because Joule Park in Aughrim couldn’t accommodate the anticipated crowd.
But sometimes that flies in the face of the promotional value of a team playing a big championship match in its own home town.
That was one of the selling points of the ‘Super 8s’, that qualifying counties would have home advantage, provided the committee in charge deemed the venue appropriate.
The GAA insist the decision to fix this game in Croke Park was not motivated by finance or TV and that if Kildare had nominated Portlaoise or Tullamore the game would have been played at either venue.
Kildare’s stance appears to have won firm approval from its support base which has found a strong rallying point in the face of a difficult season.
While accepting concerns over safety and capacity was it impossible to restrict the capacity to 8,300?
Portlaoise is a potential ‘out’ for both at this late stage but much less so for Kildare who had the option of nominating it in the first place. For either party it will be difficult to back down now and the outcome will be a real test case or future venue decisions.