It is perhaps fair to say that the football grounds of Dublin's Premier division teams are drastically sub-standard. Dalymount Park is a crumbling concrete edifice. Inchicore is minute, and Shamrock Rovers have struggled for years to build an extremely modest 6,000 seater ground in Tallaght. Only Tolka Park is half decent, and even it is somewhat delapidated. I cannot think of one ground in the country that has an electronic score board, which is surely pretty rudimentary at this level?
Huge numbers of people in Dublin attend matches every week. They go to Old Trafford, Anfield, Parkhead etc. When they've seen grounds like those, they see eL grounds in a whole new light.
My point is this: Instead of trying to maintain these empty husks of football stadia sperately, shouldn't a number of clubs pool their resources and build one decent modern stadium in which to play? Nothing fancy, not a Bertie Bowl or an eircom Park, but a 20,000 all seater ground with all the stands covered, under soil heating plus perhaps decent training facilities adjacent ie the basics in professional soccer? Dublin is so small that no fan would be too far away from a well located ground. Funding could be raised by selling the old grounds for development, with the proviso that there not demolished until the new home is complete. Just an idea. Any opinions?
I was trying to suggest 2 grounds last week on the eL msg board. One on the north side for Bohs/$hel$ & another on the southside for Pats/Rovers.
A lot of dublin eL fans seem to think their grounds are part of their heritige though. Its unfortunate as Bohs & $hel$ in particular have got very good land for property developement which would fund most of a new 12-15,00 all-seater stadium.
I think Dalymount is quite a nice ground, the Jodi is definately the best stand in the league. It'd be criminal to sell off Dalymount for building with its history.
Shels and Longford have scoreboards BTW.
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
I mentionned this in another post but it is approproate here...
Bournemouth where I'm in uni built a new stadium recently for about STG£6million. Capacity must be approx 12-14k.
Photos of Dean Court
It's only completed on 3 sides, they ran out of money to finish the 'away end' but is a very pleasant spectating experience...
and they are able to make money from corporate boxes (see bottom 2 fotos], bars and food counters under the stands, a club shop etc...
For a club now in the third division it shows you what can be done with a bit of imagination, commitment and determination. oops sorry i forget i was talking about the eL.
how about something for the rest of us. dublin dublin dublin............... blah blah blah
Thanks for the feedback. As far as Dalymount is concerned, the Jodi stand does stand head and shoulders above any other stands in the league, but what about the rest of the ground? I don't think that one eL club on it's own has the resources to do the whole job properly, that's my point. If Bohs could entice a couple of other clubs to join them in Dalyer, and put the equivalent of the Jodi stand on the other three sides using their combined resources, then that would be the perfect solution. Obviously there is alot of history connected with the place. You can't take the past away, the question in my mind is, what future do such clubs have?
I know that shels have a scoreboard, but I didn't realise it was electronic. Can't speak for Longford. Two out of Twenty-two is a dreadful return, though.
And why Dublin, Dublin, Dublin? Because I was trying to get a debate going on the numerous woeful facilities up here. Pointless having the same debate about Cork, because you have one club in the city, and you actually seem to be doing things well down there, certainly if the size of the home crowd is anything to go by. Turner's cross has come on alot over the years, thats clear.
The other reason why so many people post messages concerning Dublin is that so many more people actually live there, compared to any other part of the country.
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