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Post by kerrygold on Oct 25, 2007 9:13:03 GMT
I wonder will the gym be only for use by Kerry teams. Would make a nice bit of money if they allowed membership to the gym etc. Be a nice money earner for the county board The kerry county board should be looking to make a substantial yearly income from the new proposed developements instead of looking for extra funding from croker. a situation should be targeted where they could afford to make it worth while fanancially for retired players such as seamus moynihan etc to be employed as full time gaa coaches within kerry in the schools and in the new proposed academy and training grounds. it will be intersting to see if the brand name "kerry football" is still to be viewed as purely a sporting organisation or as also a business venture to generate serious income, in the form of an events centre/corporate venue/leisure centre,etc,to drive on kerry football with serious financial clout,strenght and means into the new centuary under the management of an an events manager/business manager.
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Post by Mickmack on Nov 2, 2007 22:54:00 GMT
By Eugene McGee Monday October 29 2007
Is it time for the GAA to stop building ? For the past 25 years in particular the GAA has been one of the biggest contributors to the success of the Irish cement business as they built stadium after stadium and thousands of miles of concrete walls.
After half a century of antiquated GAA grounds the association took on the massive task of providing adequate playing facilities in every county and later in every club in the country.
It would be impossible to tabulate the amount of money spent by the GAA in all this ground development but it would certainly run into hundreds of millions, the vast majority of which was raised by the GAA units themselves although in the past 20 years a lot of government money also became available through the lottery and other funding.
But the GAA needs to ask itself: 'How much more in the way of elaborate facilities do we want?' And the obvious follow-on question is: 'Could we be spending our money in a better way than building another new stadium, stand or concrete wall?'
This question arises now in particular because of the recent development of GAA units doing deals with developers to sell long-established GAA venues situated in the centre of provincial towns for vast sums of money in return for moving to more spacious facilities out of town. We have had a string of examples recently, such as Austin Stack Park in Tralee, Cusack Park in Mullingar and Oliver Plunkett hurling club in Mullingar. Also said to be under negotiations are St Conleth's Park, Newbridge and Cusack Park in Ennis.
And last week we had news of a proposed major development in Cork that would turn Páirc Uí Chaoimh into a Croke Park of the south with an all-purpose stadium and concert venue capable of holding 60,000 but in which soccer and rugby games would not be allowed. Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney also announced plans to upgrade to a 50,000 stadium. On the surface all these reports seem to be good news for the GAA and an indication of the ever-growing confidence of the organisation that its domination of Irish sport will continue indefinitely.
But in all the hoopla about the millions becoming available to county boards and clubs for development of grounds, has common sense gone out the window?
The GAA's interpretation of 'forward planning' in relation to building stadiums has been less than brilliant in recent times. For instance, many millions were spent redeveloping the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick but the ground has never been nearly filled to its 60,000 capacity.
Portlaoise has been developed into an outstanding middle-sized ground with floodlights but will it ever be filled either? The Leinster Council will never play a Leinster final in Portlaoise or hardly even a Leinster football semi-final nowadays, such is the rush to get into the new Croke Park and reap the extra financial bonanza a 30,000-- 70,000 will produce.
It is hard to remember the last time Killarney was filled to capacity because that can only happen for a Kerry-Cork Munster football final, and the crowds to recent such finals are closer to 30,000 than 50,000. Breffni Park in Cavan and Wexford Park are two other grounds that have been developed at great cost but will either of them ever be filled?
Arena
So why does the GAA need all these arenas around the country if they are never going to be filled and more often than not are only filled to a capacity of 50pc to 60pc?
The reason we have all these under-utilised stadiums is because county boards acted largely on their own when they decided to redevelop them. They cannot be blamed for that because it showed great courage and pride in their own county, but all the building of stadiums developed willy-nilly in an unstructured manner now looks to have been a costly luxury for the GAA. In Munster for example there will be four stadiums with capacities of over 50,000 in a province of six counties with about half a dozen major championships games a year.
In Leinster, despite all the development in Wexford Park, Portlaoise, Longford, Kilkenny, Mullingar and Tullamore there is still no ground capable of holding a crowd of 50,000. Does that make sense? The same situation applies in Ulster where tremendous work has gone into grounds yet when they have an attractive football final they want to play it in Croke Park.
Development at club level has been even more dramatic than at county level and all over Ireland there are club grounds worth anything from €10m to €50m. In this case the spending has been more judicious than at the higher level.
Clubs with extensive facilities are in the main making full use of them and in the case of some huge Dublin GAA clubs, where they field anything up to 60 teams on a weekend, they still need more and more facilities to cater for their huge numbers.
The GAA is awash with money at the present time. I heard lately of a county GAA ground where €300,000 was spent adding further to an already very adequate venue. Of that figure €150,000 came from a GAA grant and the same figure from Lottery funding so the locals had nothing to pay.
But the big question for the GAA is whether spending countless millions on building bigger and presumably better stadiums on a largely unplanned basis is the best way spend their new-found financial clout. There are many other areas of the GAA's activities which require urgent attention the most serious being the question of young boys aged 18 to 22 or so where the dropout rate is astronomical.
A lot of time, effort and money has been spent by clubs in coaching and motivating these young people for the previous 10 years in the local GAA club, but when they reach their late teens and achieve "social independence" a huge number of them turn their backs on the GAA. I hear this all the time from dedicated club officials wherever I go and they are all very disheartened about the trend which seems to be growing all the time.
Of course very few GAA officials at higher level ever refer to this leakage of young people. I am amused to listen to the many GAA people who keep on moaning about a handful of young players going off to Australia, when in any one year more young men drop out of the GAA at home than travel to Australia.
Whether some of the money being spent on elaborate stadium development could be better spent on seeking ways of retaining young players in the GAA is a question officials should be asking themselves. Better coaching and other facilities for clubs would certainly go some of the way and that would cost money.
But surely the GAA's priority above all should be to continue to expand its player base.
The provision of still more elaborate stadiums can wait.
- Eugene McGee
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