The farcical saga surrounding Eircom Park is almost beyond belief…

Here we have elements in the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) proposing to spend huge sums of money on a development which will never pay for itself and won't even be used for major soccer internationals. Meanwhile, most Eircom National League clubs are tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. Hopefully sanity will prevail, with Stadium Ireland becoming the venue not just for for all home soccer and rugby internationals but also for major athletics meets. Suggestions that Croke Park should become the national stadium fall on one simple consideration: you can't fit a full-size GAA pitch inside a running track, and surely any national stadium worthy of the name will have to incorporate a running track?

No doubt, there are many GAA people who are currently chortling at the mess the FAI has got itself into, while the magnificent new Croke Park moves towards completion. Such complacency is misplaced: all over the country there are GAA mandarins who have similarly lost the plot and are currently laying lunatic plans for major stadium developments. A particularly virulent form of this stadia mania appears to be rampant in Munster. Here we have the Limerick County Board proposing to raise the capacity of the
Gaelic Grounds to over 40,000, while their Tipperary counterparts have plans to expand the capacity of Semple Stadium to 60,000.

Meanwhile, the Clare board want to raise Cusack Park in Ennis to a 30,000 capacity and the people down by the Lee are to extend the stand and install terracing at Páirc Uí Rinn. Perhaps the craziest situation of all is over in the Déise, where extra land is to be acquired at Dungarvan's Fraher Field with a view to expanding its capacity to 20,000, even though the recently half-developed Walsh Park can take 16,000 and probably a good deal more if
basic terracing was intalled.

If ever you wanted evidence that the GAA is an amateur organisation, then you need go no further than this shambolic stadium development frenzy. No group run on commercial lines would even consider developments on this scale, as clearly they make no commercial sense whatever.

Take the plans for Limerick's Gaelic Grounds. If these come to fruition, Munster will have four grounds capable of taking crowds of over 40,000. In any given year, no more than three games will attract an attendance of these dimensions in the Munster championships - Cork v Kerry in football (itself no longer a hardy annual), the Munster hurling final and perhaps one of the semi-finals. With the Cork/Kerry encounter alternating between Killarney and Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and the Munster hurling final more often than not going to Thurles, one is left with the prospect that the redeveloped Gaelic Grounds might be filled once every two or three years. How could any sports organisation justify this kind of expenditure, when clubs are calling out for better facilities and equipment and more coaches? But then what can you expect from the
those wonderful folks who gave us the infamous Mackey Stand, where most of the
seats do not give a proper view of the entire playing pitch?

We know that the Munster counties are almost rabidly jealous of their separate identities and status, but this is no excuse for the wanton waste of resources going on in the province. Years ago, the canny men of Ulster made the wise decision to develop Clones as the sole venue for big games in the province. Munster should have done the same with respect to Thurles, which in turn should have been developed as a province-wide venture, rather than leaving it to the locals to bear the brunt of developing and maintaining this marvellous venue.

However, wonderful and all as the venue is, it still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of available facilities. Another classic indicator of the amateurishness of the GAA is its inability to exploit the commercial opporunities created by the heightened popularity of Gaelic games in recent years. If you go to a big game virtually anywhere in Ireland, you will be offered little more than the "apples, oranges, pears, bananas, sweets, cigarettes and chocolate" that were proferred by the hawkers when An Moltóir first began frequenting Thurles back in the early 1960s. If Semple Stadium were in America, the area under the stands would be full of franchised outlets offering everything from Mexican tacos to crubeens. There would also be sit-down cafeterias and a couple of bars. This would encourage crowds to come earlier and hang around after games, thus easing the massive traffic jams created by these fixtures. Of course, if all big games in Munster were played in Thurles, the provision of decent facilities for supporters there would make a lot more economic sense, and thereby generate significant extra income for the GAA.

The situation in Waterford is the ultimate indicator of the absence of rational decision-making in the GAA. Here the county board has two grounds, Fraher Field in Dungarvan and Walsh Park in Waterford. However, instead of developing one of them properly, some years ago the board decided to half-develop both of them. Walsh Park currently has a capacity of 16,000 and was filled once, when Waterford played Tipperary in the Munster championship in 1996. Fraher Field has a capacity of 8,000 but has rarely come near an attendance of that number. The Waterford GAA should have made the courageous decision to do a proper job on one of these venues. With its central location in the county, its much bigger pitch and far superior playing surface, Fraher Field should have been the choice.

With the likelihood that the All-Ireland championships will evolve to a round-robin system with home-and-away fixtures within the next few years, most counties will require a home venue capable of accommodating 15-30,000 spectators. Thus, the proposed development of Cusack Park in Ennis makes some sense. Waterford will have to make a decision to raise the capacity of one of their grounds to this level. The other four Munster counties already have grounds with the required capacities. However, one wonders if the Cork county board, rather than making relatively minor improvements at Páirc Uí Rinn, should go the whole hog and develop it in place of the highly unappealing Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

The original decision to redevelop the old Athletic Grounds at this site was ill-advised, given the virtually permanent boggy nature of the playing surface. (Corcaigh, translated from Irish means, of course, a boggy or marshy area). In addition, the cramped conditions under the covered stand are downright dangerous and could give rise to a disaster of Hillsborough dimensions if a panic situation develops. An Moltóir is continuously amazed that the health and safety authorities continue to allow big games to go on here, while – if we believe the GAA top brass – quibbling over fans coming onto the pitch at Croke Park !

So, maybe it is time to move up the hill to the old and beautifully named Flower Lodge, where the playing surface is still as good as it was when the equally beautiful Miah Dennehy and company used to attract huge crowds to watch the late and much-lamented Cork Hibernians…