Reading in his morning paper about the reluctance of the Australian Rules football team to play outside Dublin due to the lack of facilities in provincial venues, An Moltóir distinctly detected in the background the cackling of a large flock of chickens coming home to roost. Several times in the past, this column has denounced the GAA’s senseless behaviour in not only tolerating, but actively encouraging (through grant aid) the proliferation of oversized and underequipped stadia throughout the country.
Munster leads the way with four grounds capable of accommodating crowds of over 40,000, even though there are rarely more than three games in any one year capable of attracting a crowd of this size. And apparently the Clare county board are intent on increasing the capacity of Cusack Park to a similar size. Waterford are the exception here, but only because of a perverse decision made some years ago to develop (again with the blessing and assistance of the provincial council) two half-stadia in Dungarvan and Waterford, neither of which can take a decent crowd.
While the main grounds in the other provinces are not as big as Munster’s white elephants, they too are rarely filled to capacity, and most games played in them are watched by small crowds lost in the surrounds of steel and concrete. This means that none of them generate the kind of regular revenue required to provide decent facilities for either players or spectators. Dressing rooms tend to be cramped and spartan; treatment and warm-up rooms are frequently non-existent; and team baths are figments of the imagination.
Meanwhile, public toilets tend to be smelly concrete enclosures (for the men) or grossly inadequate (for the women). Restaurants and bars (which would encourage fans to come early and stay on later, thus easing traffic pressures, while also generating extra revenue) are virtually unknown in the main provincial venues.
If the GAA was an economically rational organisation, it would have concentrated its resources on the development of a single decent stadium in each of the provinces. All big matches would be played in these stadia, with the regular revenues used to install the kinds of facilities which both players and spectators deserve. County boards would be encouraged to develop a single cosy stadium in each county capable of accommodating up to 20,000 spectators in comfort. However, on no account should they have been given grants to erect the concrete hulks which now populate the land. The millions of euros wasted on these useless monstrosities should instead have been invested in the development of coaching facilities and structures throughout the country.
The GAA has a long-standing tradition of treating both spectators and players like dirt, despite the fact that, without them, there would be no GAA in the first place. Yet people have tolerated this treatment down through the years, perhaps because they have never known anything better. It was probably inevitable, therefore, that it is professional sports players from another country, accustomed to facilities which, from the point of view of the GAA, might as well be from another planet, who have drawn attention to the dreadful inadequacy of our provincial grounds. It would be typically Irish if the GAA was now to do up a couple of these grounds, not because of a genuine concern for the needs of its own members and supporters, but in order to avoid the embarrassment of being shown up by a foreign sporting organisation.
Talk of inadequate stadia brings to mind the Cork county hurling final played in the Bog By The Lee last Sunday. Tony Considine, in his column in De Payper, questioned the competitive structures which led to one of the showpieces of the GAA calendar being played in such dreadful conditions. At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that the weather in Ireland over the last couple of weeks has been unusually bad for this time of year. But what struck An Moltóir particularly forcibly was the almost complete inability of both teams last Sunday to cope with the conditions.
Any coach will tell you that in wet and mucky winter conditions, direct first-time hurling is almost always the best option. We saw almost none of that in Páirc Uí Chaoimh last Sunday. Instead, players on both sides persisted in their attempts to lift the ball even in the most congested of situations. This led to recurring pile-ups and stoppages. In the second half in particular, when Cloyne were unable to make any impression on the Piarsaigh halfback line, it should have been obvious that first-time hurling was their only hope, but they showed no adaptability at all.
One wonders if ground hurling is being coached systematically out of young hurlers down by the Lee. In the Munster semi-final against Limerick earlier in the year, the entire Cork team between them played just four ground strokes over the 70+ minutes of play. One wonders what Tom Cashman and John Fenton, two great exponents of the ground stroke, think of this. One could say that their running game suits the current Cork team, and they have the All-Ireland medals to prove it. But there are also occasions when this type of game simply isn’t appropriate, and last Sunday in Cork was one of these occasions.
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