Sunday will see the first Waterford county final played at the remodelled Walsh Park. Phase One was completed on time with upgraded seating for 8,500 at a cost of €3,500,000. For all the new surroundings, the hurling final is eminently familiar.
Former All-Ireland champions Ballygunner are in pursuit of a 10th successive county championship. Their ninth, last year, drew them level with Mount Sion and Erin’s Own but, this weekend, they are odds-on to set a new record on their own.
Their run of success is being challenged by De La Salle who the champions have twice beaten during their current sequence. There are half a dozen survivors from Ballygunner’s starting victory in 2014 when they beat Mount Sion.
Overall the champions are averaging 12-point wins in their last nine county finals.
Ballygunner, All-Ireland champions in a sensational finish in the 2022 final against Ballyhale, also have the opportunity if successful on Sunday of becoming the first club to win three-in-a-row Munster hurling titles.
The new surroundings were unveiled for De La Salle’s semi-final against 2021 finalists Roanmore and will though have positive impacts for the county in the future, as they guarantee home championship matches in the Munster round robin. To date Waterford have been unable to take full advantage of the home venue potential because of the dilapidated state of the old venue.
“The biggest impact is lack of income from rent,” according to county treasurer John Jackson. “It doesn’t affect match programme sales because they are pooled by Munster at this stage. There’s also catering and shops. If you’ve two Munster championship matches you’re obviously making more from those sources than if you’ve no matches.
“Before the round robin, the only home fixtures were if we had a home-and-away arrangement with another county and we’d no arrangements with the bigger counties because of the capacity issue.”
That problem will be remedied now with Sunday’s winners returning in a few weeks.
“The county champions will have a home game in the Munster club championship so that’s another showcase as well as rent and if matches are televised, you get a share of that as well.”
The need to improve the ground was obvious when it wasn’t passed as acceptable in 2018 and the county hurlers had to play “home” fixtures in Limerick and Thurles, and although sufficient improvement was made the following year and on resumption post-Covid in 2022, this year’s championship reverted to playing in Thurles while improvement works went ahead.
Walsh Park was one of a variety of reconstruction projects being pursued around the country but it has delivered its first phase on time and in budget.
Jackson pays tribute to county’s specially appointed oversight committee, which has kept a tight grip on the work and its costs.
“We have a great oversight team drawn from different business and administrative disciplines. They held regular meetings on site and monitored the progress so that they could intervene early if there were any hiccups.
“Costs are hopping all over the place for various reasons – you could blame whatever you want – but that made it all the more important to keep an eye on the budget. The oversight group was constantly on their toes.”
Although funding still has to be finalised, the next phases are planned out.
“Phase two will be the Keane’s Road embankment and the new dressingrooms will be going in underneath that block. The plan is that the office building will go down to the far [City] end.
“The reaction from people last week was very, very positive and commercially it has gone down well.
“I was in a business during the week in Waterford and was approached about putting up some advertising. We’ve been missing out on that because with development in the pipeline we would have been taking down signage.”
The city venue is more valuable as an advertising pitch than the smaller, second venue in Dungarvan because of the potential for broadcasting, according to Jackson.
“You can double the price in Walsh Park because of television. If we both stay in the same division, we are down to play Kilkenny two years in a row – to balance our playing down there the last couple of years. You can rely on 5,000 to 8,000 for a Kilkenny league game depending how the teams are doing.
“When you have the facilities properly developed, you’re looking at naming rights and more advertising and signage around the grounds, scoreboard sponsorship, et cetera.”
Improvements haven’t just been made to the spectator facilities. There is a new media area and the playing surface has been extended, which can benefit the county team who in the opinions of some, have suffered because of the constrained dimensions of the pitch.
“That argument was ongoing,” acknowledges Jackson.
Waterford SHC final: Ballygunner v De La Salle, Walsh Park, Sunday, 2.15pm
