Post by BIGMAC on Jul 18, 2006 13:42:34 GMT
Croker threaten invasion action
Tuesday July 18th 2006
CROKE Park is facing a major safety hazard that could result in heavy duty fencing being erected around the pitch unless patrons refrain from dashing onto the playing surface at the end of games.
There were dangerous scenes at the end of last Sunday's Leinster football final as fans streamed down from Hill 16, in particular, even before the referee blew the final whistle.
As stewards attempted to keep them off the pitch, two had to be taken to hospital for treatment. One steward was headbutted while another sustained an injured arm. As crowd pressure grew, an instruction to stewards to resort to Plan B (the code to open all perimeter gates) was flashed onto the large screens. Video footage will now be reviewed by the Croke Park authorities, the Gardaí and safety experts.
Stadium director Peter McKenna warned the public that unless they desist from dashing onto the pitch, the matter would be taken out of the GAA's hands.
Unacceptable
"What happened on Sunday was unacceptable. It's fine to say that coming onto the pitch at the end of games adds to the pageantry of the occasion but it's a different matter when innocent people get caught up in it. Blind exuberance is not a great spectacle. This is an accident waiting to happen unless people start to act responsibly," he said.
A number of children were separated from their parents in the chaos and McKenna said that while thousands of people on the pitch may have looked great on TV, the manner in which they got there was, in many cases, extremely dangerous. The stampede from Hill 16 was the most frightening aspect of what McKenna described as a "stressful and unpleasant day" for those who were trying to keep order.
"This is a health and safety issue and if anything goes wrong it will be taken out of our hands. We could be instructed to erect security fences that would make it impossible for anybody to get onto the pitch.
"That would change the whole complexion of Croke Park and take away part of its great charm but safety has to come first. We don't want to find ourselves before a tribunal," he said.
McKenna explained that it's the norm on Hill 16 for children to take up vantage points near the front which left them in danger when the big push came on. "When you have a stadium with a capacity of 82,000 people, there are two ways of policing it. You either erect security fencing to stop people getting onto the pitch or you expect that people will behave responsibly," McKenna said.
"We have to think very carefully about where we're going on this because it's too dangerous to allow a repeat of what happened. Placing a phalanx of stewards and police all around the perimeter wouldn't necessarily solve the problem because it's difficult to cope when thousands of people make a dash at the same time." Apart from the safety issues, a major controversy would have arisen if it had been a close match on Sunday as fans dashed onto the pitch before the final whistle.
It would have been impossible to clear the pitch if more time had to be played.
Martin Breheny
Tuesday July 18th 2006
CROKE Park is facing a major safety hazard that could result in heavy duty fencing being erected around the pitch unless patrons refrain from dashing onto the playing surface at the end of games.
There were dangerous scenes at the end of last Sunday's Leinster football final as fans streamed down from Hill 16, in particular, even before the referee blew the final whistle.
As stewards attempted to keep them off the pitch, two had to be taken to hospital for treatment. One steward was headbutted while another sustained an injured arm. As crowd pressure grew, an instruction to stewards to resort to Plan B (the code to open all perimeter gates) was flashed onto the large screens. Video footage will now be reviewed by the Croke Park authorities, the Gardaí and safety experts.
Stadium director Peter McKenna warned the public that unless they desist from dashing onto the pitch, the matter would be taken out of the GAA's hands.
Unacceptable
"What happened on Sunday was unacceptable. It's fine to say that coming onto the pitch at the end of games adds to the pageantry of the occasion but it's a different matter when innocent people get caught up in it. Blind exuberance is not a great spectacle. This is an accident waiting to happen unless people start to act responsibly," he said.
A number of children were separated from their parents in the chaos and McKenna said that while thousands of people on the pitch may have looked great on TV, the manner in which they got there was, in many cases, extremely dangerous. The stampede from Hill 16 was the most frightening aspect of what McKenna described as a "stressful and unpleasant day" for those who were trying to keep order.
"This is a health and safety issue and if anything goes wrong it will be taken out of our hands. We could be instructed to erect security fences that would make it impossible for anybody to get onto the pitch.
"That would change the whole complexion of Croke Park and take away part of its great charm but safety has to come first. We don't want to find ourselves before a tribunal," he said.
McKenna explained that it's the norm on Hill 16 for children to take up vantage points near the front which left them in danger when the big push came on. "When you have a stadium with a capacity of 82,000 people, there are two ways of policing it. You either erect security fencing to stop people getting onto the pitch or you expect that people will behave responsibly," McKenna said.
"We have to think very carefully about where we're going on this because it's too dangerous to allow a repeat of what happened. Placing a phalanx of stewards and police all around the perimeter wouldn't necessarily solve the problem because it's difficult to cope when thousands of people make a dash at the same time." Apart from the safety issues, a major controversy would have arisen if it had been a close match on Sunday as fans dashed onto the pitch before the final whistle.
It would have been impossible to clear the pitch if more time had to be played.
Martin Breheny
>:(Cant agree at all, fencing is a backward Irish solution that says, "we'll treat yis all like children and animals". That just brings about more of that behaviour, not less, as well as creating a lethal hazard for people trying to escape a crush or some other crisis. 
::)Yes Realist, we do have some scumbags. I would hazard a guess that every county has some, we probably have most due to the numbers at some of these championship games. No need to use it to get on the hobby horse about "Dublin fans" though. 
) Will it get to the sitaution like the soccer players who often have to leg it off the field hardly able to shake the hands of their opponents after a game as they fear for their safety. This unfortunately is the year 2006 and it is only a matter of time before there is a seriuos situation at a maor game. The GAA disciplinary procedure is a joke which will allow players to take the law into there own hands as is now their stewarding of the GAA supporters(many of whom are kids!) ........It just gets worse and worse. Can people not see this, can the players not see it, can the genuine supporters not see it?
