Drogheda was kept

LAST week’s hastily-arranged county board meeting to confirm the collapse of the Gaelic Grounds redevelopment plan was rather aptly described as the project’s ‘funeral’ by Louth chairman, Des Halpenny.

For those who sat at the coalface of negotiations over the last 30-plus years, and more, that’s probably how it felt.

There’ll be sadness, a sense of loss and plenty of recriminations, but to paraphrase the great Socrates (the philosopher, not the Brazil soccer star), this particular ‘death’ is probably a ‘blessing’.

For the wider GAA family in Louth, the passing of this terminally-ill plan is undoubtedly for the best, but it does beg the question:

Why on earth was the doomed project kept on life support for so long?

The answer, of course, is complicated, and a little bit of blame probably lies on all sides.

For longer than anyone cares to remember, the big ‘ownership’ conundrum stymied countless attempts to revamp the Gaelic Grounds.

Without trawling through history with a fine-tooth comb, the story roughly goes as follows:

The O Raghallaigh’s club responded to an SOS call from a cash-strapped county board in the 1970s, leaving their existing base to become tenants on the North Road.

As part of that arrangement, ownership of the grounds passed to a new company, the Drogheda Gaelic Athletic Grounds Company Limited, and was then made available to the O Raghallaigh’s club on a long-term, rolling lease.

‘Improvements’ (if we can call them that), were made over the years. Most notably, the construction of the oft-maligned main stand, which was rumoured to cost in the region of half a million old punt,