Irish Sporting Heritage

@ISH wrote:

…..Is there an identifiable vernacular style in Ireland’s sporting architecture?

Well in my time, the traditional football Dressing Room facilities were heavily inspired by freight container design.::o

Most Irish football grounds, of any code, were formed of earth embankments cast with rough concrete terraces, and stand roofs were usually just versions of agricultural structures, there wouldn’t have been much design input I imagine. I think the corrugated shelter at one end of Richmond Park [ – The Stadium of Light – ] is still called ‘The Shed’.

Handball alleys would have been every bit as undesigned, but more interesting from a scale and often a streetscape point of view.

I recall a great little cartoon in L’équipe around the time that Ireland beat France 1 – nill [with a Liam Brady goal] in a world cup qualifier [when they had the likes of Platini and Rocheteau etc.], depicting the French rugby coach [some pocket-sized Nepoleonic type] who had just master minded beating us in rugby – again – a week or so later at the same venue. The rugby coach is shown taking the soccer coach by the hand and bringing him down to Lansdowne Road with the caption ‘I’ll show you how it’s done’ – or something similar in French. Lansdowne Road was rather accurately depicted as a miserable little recangular arena with two unequal shed roofs facing each other. This would have been at the time that France had developed the new Parc des Princes stadium, predecessor to the even more magnificent Stad Francais.

p.s. the cartoon must have been reprinted in the Irish Times, one doesn’t buy L’équipe after a large French win.

There is plenty online regarding the history of Dalymount park. The Bohemian Footbal Club’s historian Stephen Burke could easily point you in the direction of other sources of historic data regarding the home of Irish Football if you wish to follow through.

The terracing of Dalymount Park was designed in the 1940s/50s by Archibald Leitch – the preeminent stadium architect in Britain at the time. Whilst tragically the Stadium is falling down on itself these days, the Connaught St terrace still has one of the finest sightlines I’ve ever come across from which to watch a game.

I recall a college lecturer back in the day reeling out regularly the old quip that along with the Round Tower, the Handball Alley is one of our only unique contributions to world architecture..

Crackin’ site this! http://irishhandballalley.blogspot.com/

@trace wrote:

Crackin’ site this! http://irishhandballalley.blogspot.com/

Cracking site indeed. Cheers for the link. Surprised the Dublin section misses out on the alley in Grangegorman.