If you build it they will come. When it comes to the GAA that is without question, supporter loyalty is unwavering, but will they regularly come in the quantities required to fill all these stadiums?
In 2015 an average of just 0ver 17,000 attended football championship matches, with just under 25,000 the average crowd at a hurling game.
Football is the more widespread code but those counter-intuitive numbers can be explained by the percentage of hurling championship matches that are major events.
With fewer counties the hurling season is shorter and thus, a larger proportion of the summer is taken up with provincial finals and All-Ireland series matches in Semple Stadium and Croke Park.
Anyway, we digress, our point is the Gaelic Athletic Association is well-served by its existing stock of stadiums. Croke Park (82,000), Semple Stadium (46,000), the Gaelic Grounds (50,000), Fitzgerald Stadium (43,000), MacHale Park (42,000), Clones (36,000) and O’Moore Park (27,000) – the country is littered with GAA stadiums that are rarely full.
Croke Park is guaranteed to be full twice a year. Provincial finals will sell out most years, but Ulster, Munster and Connacht are all served by multiple stadiums that are currently up to the job.
However over €150 million is to be spent on the redevelopment of Casement Park and Páirc Uí Chaoimh. No complaints about the second and third biggest cities on the island having GAA stadiums, obviously, but do they need to be quite so big?
The new, reduced Casement will still hold 34,500, if and when it gets off the foundations, while the hope is PáircUí Chaoimh will be ready for this year’s Munster provincial finals.
Remember to book your place at every game you can contact our sales team by calling (021) 4963360 or (085) 7535456 #PaircUiChaoimh #Cork pic.twitter.com/6vtIZF3d4X
— SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh (@PaircUiCha0imh) January 3, 2017
The stadium’s website promises the new ground by the Lee will “provide 45,000 spectators with the most comfortable yet intimate stadium in the country”.
Parnell Park is intimate, Drogheda is intimate. This is a stadium any Premier League side would be delighted with, as this picture taken Thursday shows.
Pàirch Uì Chaoimh this morning from the Blackrock End. The stadium will be magnificent. #GAA #Cork #Ireland pic.twitter.com/8Hv9ijYI87
— Kevin – Co.Cork 🇮🇪 (@AncestryIreland) January 5, 2017
It will be a stage fit for the 2016 Munster finals, but does a province of six counties and 1.25 million people need four stadiums (Semple, Limerick, Killarney and Cork) with capacities north of 40,000, all within two hours drive of each other?
It will be of benefit to the 2023 Rugby World Cup bid but do the GAA really need a herd of potential white elephants scattered all over the country?
Atmosphere benefits from a crowd – that is a mass of people crowded into a confined space. Atmosphere does not benefit from giant, half-empty stadiums.
Páirc Uí Chaoimh, the building, might be a great legacy for Cork GAA administrators, but will it stand the test of time as a sporting ampitheatre? I’m not so sure.
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