Re: Re: National Stadium
“Alas, stadium deesign in ireland has been almost non-existent. Apart from the notable exception of Croke Park, which is my view is the best stadium of its size in Europe”
I suggest you do some travelling.
As regards the soccer crowd being a joke. I think you need to be reminded of how the GAA got so popular, mainly through a sporting aparthide called The Ban. The whole notion that the GAA are a genius organisation and FAI are total morons is something else I do not get.
For starters the GAA does nothing for Ireland on the world stage – it is a regional oddity that the rest of the world has no idea about. The people of Cork may think that Setanta or Christy Ring are great spoting ledgens, but I can assure you that more Europeans are aware of who plays in midfield for Shelboure or Bohemians than have ever heard of hurling, let alone DJ Carey.
This begs the question, why does the government plow staggering sums of money into an organisation which does not and will never serve Ireland on the world stage? Does this funding of a regionalised idiosyncratic oddity such as the GAA rob Ireland of sportsmen and women who could bring international recognition to Ireland on the world stage if there was no GAA?
The FAI, despite having to compete with GAA and Rugby still managed to win two European Championship and a team of League of Ireland players almost won the Youth World Cup in Malaysia in 1998. The FAI overseas one of the largest and most internationally respected youth sporting organisations in Europe which gave us the likes of Damian Duff and Roy Keane. This is why other European soccer federation come here to see what makes the FAI so good. Nobody comes to Ireland to learn how to develop a sport based around parish rivals bashing each other up.
The FAI are not perfect, but they have managed to serve Irish soccer fairly well all things considered. Look how many World Cup we have qualified for in recent years. The GAA just fosters this notion that ones county is more important than being a citizen of a nation called Ireland. Also, the FAI in its history never banned members for life for standing at the side of a river watching a rowing regatta, sorry “other codes”.
Croke Park is way ahead of any soccer stadium in Ireland but all the other GAA stadia are depressing run-down shitholes. Longford Town FCs Flancare Park is better than any of them. And speaking of Longford Town have a read of Eamon Sweeney’s “There is only one Red Army” and the GAA informers who used to stand outside soccer matches in Longford writing down the names of everybody in the towm who was present. That’s the roots of the GAA my Cork friend, the Orange Order of the south.
