QuoteOriginally Posted by D24Saint
UEFA are trialling safe standing areas i fully expect standing to be allowed in Europe within a couple of years...although contrary to what most people think safe standing doesnt increase capacity.
Why?..
UEFA are trialling safe standing areas i fully expect standing to be allowed in Europe within a couple of years...although contrary to what most people think safe standing doesnt increase capacity.
£7m-ish was given at some point.
Have you ever won the treble?
Maybe even this year, along with capacity, media, etc. requirements.
Safe standing can increase capacity of an area, but would require retrofitting exisitng seating areas for it to happen.
Have you ever won the treble?
Seats weren’t in great knick
It can, it just depends what setup you're using. A purpose built terrace up to modern safety standards would generally hold more people than an equivalent sized seated stand. If it's a seated area converted to rail seating/terracing, in most cases, it seems clubs are keeping the same capacity. Most of the standing areas at top clubs in England seem to have the same capacity as an equivalently sized seated area.
It doesn't look like it will add capacity in Sligo though, unless they're planning on doing additional work and adding rows - which I doubt given the proposed redevelopment. I like the Showgrounds but that stand and the seats in it are in a bad way.
I saw this posted somewhere, not sure if it's been posted on foot.ie yet: https://www.independent.ie/regionals...030152820.html
In England, you can only install standing instead of seating on a strict 1:1 basis. They also require that if in operation for home fans, away fans must also be provided with standing too. I suspect that these are both influenced by post-Hillsborough concerns.
In Germany, however, the ratio of standing to sitting can be up to 1.8:1.
Either way, it's not just a question of how many people you could physically cram in standing in a given space, H&S requires that there be adequate access and egress in an emergency - turnstiles, exits, walkways, steps, concourses etc.
A bit of a sickner too see an Taiseach giving 50 million to Casement Park. At the end of the day this is money going into another state, unfortunately but be that as it may. But more of a sickner is that it is investment into the already well resourced Gaa.
The laughable bit about the 50 million allocation was that it was toward enabling works, which is basically a start and he was 'hopefull' of the Uk coming on board soon.
Imagine what 50 million would do if invested in the new Finn Harps stadium, The Showgronds and Weaver Park. It would be a game changer to football facilites in this country.
LOI fans need to be on to their TDs about this. Particularly the TDs from coalition parties. The obvious question being why are they funding sport in a different state in preference to football/soccer in their own jurisdiction?
There's council and European elections in the next couple of months, so use the heightened political sensitivity that creates to send a message to your TDs.
Funding a GAA stadium in Belfast is probably more politically advantageous than giving anything to the LOI,that’s just the way things are in this country…..
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
My thoughts also. Give 20 clubs 2.5 million each to improve facilities. Not necessarily to increase attendances but to make the experience a better one for those who do go to games. If a club can increase attendances and improve facilities all the better. To give the money to the wealthiest sporting organisation in the country who are only providing 15 million of the funding is outrageous. If the GAA had put in several million each year over the years it wouldn't have been in the state it descended to.
The pressure on the state to assist with facilities does seem to have more weight attached to it these days though. I know we need to see real action in this regard and I may just be living in the LOI echo chamber but there's a flicker of light there. SDCC's commitment to Tallaght has hopefully paved the way for more successful public funding. Who knows... but I hope
Maybe. But the other side to being able to use capital investment for political gains is to provide the money into the cross border/ peace fund. Finn Harps, Sligo Rovers in this state and Derry, Ballinamallard, Newry up North are located in border counties. All would be rubber stamped for cross border initiatives.
Provide these clubs and communites with infrastrutural upgrades would see far more political gain that giving it to the Gah imho.
Manager: Fergal, have you your boots with ya?
Fergal: Ya, I have them here.
Manager: Ah good stuff, well give them to this man so, he forgot his!
Are any FF, FG or Green voters really going to be that positive about a load of money given to a stadium in Belfast? At best I'd say they probably don't care. Though ones I know are starting to ask questions about it (especially when it's raised with them). €50m would build you more than 200 social housing apartments for a start (minus the land cost. But sure the State is sitting on a load of that). And that's before we get onto the LOI, and people like Damien Duff saying in the media that the money should have gone to domestic footbal/soccer instead.
Last edited by EatYerGreens; 21/02/2024 at 3:37 PM.
Since when was Sligo a border county?It's about as near to the border as North Meath is.
Allocating €50 million to fund a stadium in another jurisdiction, for a football tournament co hosted by a separate “country”, which post Euros will be then used by an organisation who generally don’t allow other games to be played in their stadia, has to be the most Irish solution to an Irish problem ever.
Not for me to determine how you should react in your jurisdiction over your money (obv), but yeah, it must stick in the craw.
While it's all part of another buggers' muddle on this side of the border, as follows:
When the £140m+ Maze Stadium (for GAA/IFA/IRFU shared use) collapsed under the weight of its own idiocy (the Finance Dept at Stormont accepted that it could never pay its way as originally promised), the money was reallocated to the three bodies thus:
1. IRFU to get £20m (I think) to rebuild Ravenhill;
2. GAA to get £62m to rebuild Casement, with £15m of their own = £77m;
3. Football to get equal funding to GAA, from which the IFA allocated £26m to rebuild Windsor, and when the 3 main projects were completed, the remaining £36m to go to "Sub-Regional" stadia (i.e. Irish League and Derry City etc).
Both IRFU and IFA rebuilt their stadia within budget, while the GAA screwed up right from the very start (design, Planning Permission, H&S, local opposition etc). This mixture of incompetence and vanity etc, along with Stormont getting suspended by both SF and DUP walkouts, meant that 15 years after it was promised, the IFA still hasn't seen its £36m second tranche received.
Meanwhile, the GAA is complaining that construction inflation means that the original £77m is now inadequate, so they are playing the poor mouth and demanding that somebody else must bale them out. That is, no way they'll increase their own £15m, naturally, nor any chance they'll scale back their plans to suit their budget. Regarding this latter, they originally demanded 40k capacity, since reduced to 32k as the maximum to receive PP, yet their own prospectus envisaged one, yes, one 32k sell-out GAA game per year, the Ulster Football Final. (Antrim currently play their county games at the 4k Corrigan Park, btw).
All of which means that if Football and Rugby don't at least get an equivalent increase to their £36m/£20m, then they will effectively be being punished for their own competence, while the GAA gets rewarded for its own incompetence.
But hey ho, we might see 4 or 5 garrison games between the likes of Romania and Czechia at the Euro's in 2028, which will make it all ok.
While schools, hospitals and roads etc can hang on another while for a few quid, since they're well used to waiting by now...
Last edited by EalingGreen; 21/02/2024 at 4:15 PM.
There is an irony in this that Louth GAA are having a sh1t show with funding of our county ground. There is no shortage of messing going on, most likely impacting on phased funding and progress but an outright grant that pays for a project from start to finish would eliminate a lot of the messing. I dont like Louth GAA or indeed the GAA, as organisations with certain eccentricities eg bigotry, elitism and protectionism but yet Id want to see taxpayers from this country benefit from funding from the national purse. The A5 funding is different in that there is a need to traverse another state to improve conectivity of the North West to the rest of the country. With Casement I dont see value for money to the Irish taxpayer, giving money to a well funded organisation that could more than make their own way on such a project (when did old fashioned bank loans for capital projects become a no go for GAA). I think there is greater political capital earning potential in NI and RoI, that could be mutually beneficial, than Casement....maybe setting some foundations for an All Island football league that is likely less contentious than driving GAA expansion?!
Er, when they lost over €30m on SuperValu Pairc Uí Chaoimh and interest rates quadrupled?
Well at least Cork GAA wont have to go through Hibernian/Celtic/City/Foras phases to cope with losses! Casement, Louth County Ground, maybe SVPUC look like they're straight out of the Stranrolar playbook...
As an aside, its an expensive way to bolster unifiction credentials for the current government parties in what is very likely to be a general election year and prevent Shinners from making that contribution in future or calling for evidence of a commitment to the future possibility of a border poll and what could happen after. Or am I looking far too deep in to the reasoning.
€10 or even 20 mil with a guarantee of matched funding from London, considering the joint Euro bid, a GAA contribution of index linked original proportion of funding would be more palatable - a lot of the issue is with, as EG outlined, the way GAA messing fallout is being covered finacially. When Louth GAA approached Croke Park about the inflationary pressures on the budget of the new GAA stadium in Dundalk they all but pulled the plug, are having the project recosted and have asked others for more (IIIP was beautifully exploited by the former county chair and local TD (Genune question, did Harps look at this element of potential funding? Dundalk FC should have beeon on that gravy train also!!). The county board has lodged €1.6mil with GAA HQ as their contribution (groundworks done and materials are all on site) yet Croke Park just isnt willing to get things moving again with some central funding. I should have added hypocrisy above as an eccentricity of the organisation! My rant over...
Last edited by Nesta99; 21/02/2024 at 6:35 PM.
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