Originally Posted by
Jicked
It's just the attitude the FAI have towards everything to do with the stadium. Take the fixture fiasco, Delaney was willing to gamble our chances of qualifying so not to risk getting a crowd of 48,000 or so for Andorra if we had to play them towards the end of the group when the novelty factor had worn off. Thats instead of looking long term and realising if we qualified for 2012 they'll shift a whole load of vantage club tickets, and reinvigorate the whole international scene back to the glory days of before. Here they've got one of the very best stadiums in Europe and instead of treating it like a bloody palace they're going to start with stuff like this. What could be run like and have the reputation of a stadium like the Emirates, may well end up as our version of the Reebok Stadium. I simply wouldn't trust these guys an inch to run the stadium in a competent way.
And dodge I know they're obviously in partnership with the IRFU, but things like this have the grubby fingerprints of the FAI all over it (a stadium's version of the eircom blob) , and Aviva would probably be more interested in the FAI's events then the IRFU's. I'd certainly think hosting the Europa League final at Lansdowne would be a bigger draw for sponsorship then say the Heinken Cup Final which they're bidding for to host in the same week.