Reply To: The Bertie bowl revisited

american football may be more foreign than soccer or rugby but the perfectly valid reason the gaa have for not allowing them to play in croker is that they don’t want to promote sports that are competing for their players
– most recent examples graham geraghty and brendan devenney . Why should they help their competitors? They’re not hypocrites in my opinion. If they do let soccer and rugby in it will be because they either want/need the money or they bow to public/peer pressure as all politicians do be they heads of government or heads of the gaa.
The real villain in my view is bertie – not mary harney who is showing common sense both in a public finances kinda way but in a the-brief-is-all-wrong anyway kinda way – who wants a f**king 80,000 seater in the middle of nowhere which we need another dart/luas built for just to get to, costing oodles more unnecessary tax payers money!
Bemoaning the fact that the plug has been pulled is idiotic cos it was an arse plan anyway!
It would have been the original white elephant built on a big field near the meath border! A stadium in the middle of nowhere is never going to be remotely self-sustainable.
Any private developer would need a stadium in the city somewhere where economic spinoffs for the stadium and the area can happen allowing them possibility for a return.
Bertie gave the gaa 60 million the day before they voted to keep rule 42 in place – the 60 million removing any financial reason for having to remove the rule and allow other sports in. The greatest piece of bribery seen in Ireland ever and no brown envelopes in sight here, all in the open, the man is a genius and we are sheep with the wool over our eyes!
No soccer or rugby in croker of course meant that his ‘bertie bowl’ (a title which probably really appeals to his ego in private where we don’t know about) thus had a legitamcy and a ‘need’ to be built – for the irish sporting public’s sake of course!. Suited the gaa fine to take the money, why wouldn’t it? And I have no problem with giving the gaa public money to fund croker either cos they have a record of raising money unparalleled in this country and then doing something useful with it. They are entitled to their success – more people watched 4 dublin matches than the semi-finals, 3/4 playoff and final of the soccer world cup this summer! I personally am sick of togging out beside a ditch for my soccer team here in dublin.
Bertie has lead us all a merry dance, he whistled up the pipe dream and hasn’t delivered it in any sense. All the olympic village, velodrome, testing facilities crap that surrounded the stadium in behnischs masterplan were never going to be built, they were just in at the start to be pared back later with just bertie’s monument to his own professed love of irish sport remaining.
Personally I would favour a stadium for each of the three sports allowing them to have their own business plans unreliant on each other and giving each their own independent sources of income.
Croker in the north cith centre, landsdowne in the south and eircom park seemd good to me.
Anyone seen vitesse arnhems stadium in holland where they wheel the pitch in form outside the stadium allowing it to be used for concerts, exhibitions and the likes. A 40,000 odd seater built for approx. 100 million quid if I remember correctly would make a nice eircom park. And all this fuss will only get worse when the swiss come to town and people realise the bucket seating in landsdowne is now banned by uefa and we have only 28,000 in two full stands and two empty terraces watching.
I would also favour turning the axis of landsowne for a new stadium there too while we’re at it……but in my lifetime? I dunno……as long as we keep getting the rulers we deserve I doubt it!