Casement Park in Belfast will not host any games in Euro 2028, and that’s the end of that. Only of course, this is still just the beginning. The stadium was announced as a venue for the tournament in April 2023, with assurances given time and again by the Conservative government in Westminster that the stadium would be built.
That, like much of what that iteration of the Tories said, was just an answer to get them through to the end of that particular day without stepping on a rhetorical rake. The GAA was more circumspect, and raised the alarm earlier this year when it appeared to despair of ever getting the project started.
Hopes had tentatively been raised again in recent weeks, with the possibility of a new Labour government being more amenable, but last Friday the decision was made to remove Casement Park from the list of Uefa stadiums and to leave Northern Ireland out of the loop again.
This should obviously be a source of anger for the (association) football fans of the North, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Many of the match-attending fans at Windsor Park had already made their feelings clear – they would rather not host the tournament than have games at Casement Park.
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The pork barrel politicking has begun already, of course. Communities minister Gordon Lyons was on the radio last week saying that Windsor Park could potentially host one of the four games that would have to be reallocated even though its capacity of 18,500 falls way short of Uefa’s minimum capacity of 30,000.
“Perhaps an exception could be made, and some extra work done, to ensure that we might be able still to host a game at Windsor Park,” he said.
This extra work done, one presumes, would be pro bono, because the idea that money could be found to redevelop Windsor Park (again) before any British government or Stormont money is handed over to Casement Park would appear to be the dictionary definition of a bad joke.
We’re not immune to that sort of thing here in the 26 counties either of course, with Michéal Martin suggesting that Páirc Úi Chaoimh be a possible venue for the games previously pencilled in for Belfast. This nonsense is why Fifa has stopped giving World Cups to functioning democracies.
The GAA is back to where it was with this project two (or four, or eight, or 10…) years ago, which is trying to get a major piece of infrastructure built against the headwinds of Northern Irish politics and rising infrastructure costs. Jarlath Burns talked in recent days about losing a year “to pantomime”, which is a fairly accurate description of what has gone on since last April 12 months.
The absence of Euro 2028 games does not absolve the British government of its commitment to help Casement Park get redeveloped. Rugby and soccer have got their stadiums so it would be ridiculous to suggest that Belfast would not also get a GAA stadium. But what scale of stadium makes sense now for Antrim GAA, Ulster GAA and the GAA nationally?
None of those GAA units now need to factor in Uefa minimum capacities and standards, which are far more overbearing than a GAA stadium requires. They can build the stadium they want. But what do they want?
There is no compelling reason to build a stadium with a capacity over 22,000. There just isn’t. The reason people will give is that the stadium must be able to hold every single person who wants to attend an Ulster final. For the last few years the Ulster final has sold out Clones, with crowds well in excess of 28,000 people. But the average crowd at a regular Ulster championship game is dipping lower and lower. Only one of the first five games in the Ulster championship this year got a crowd over 10,000. Even the most novel or high-profile of Ulster semi-final pairings struggles to get over 20,000 people.
And what will the Ulster final look like in 10 years’ time? Will we still be playing provincial championships that have a direct, major impact on who wins the All-Ireland championship in a decade? If the Ulster championship is diluted even a small bit will the crowds hold up?
Building a smaller stadium might mean the planning clock gets reset to zero. That would constitute a serious delay. But ploughing ahead with a stadium bigger than you need could be a potentially disastrous financial decision. And the GAA’s thinking around national infrastructure has been woefully shortsighted for years.
Another debt-riddled stadium must be avoided at all costs. It would not take much for the new Casement Park to be built to a standard beyond any other stadium outside Croker. A 22,000 all-seater capacity will put it in a bracket all of its own. It would be the nicest, most comfortable, most atmospheric ground in the GAA.
A 33 per cent reduction in capacity doesn’t equate to a 33 per cent reduction in the cost of construction but it is a more realistic undertaking. Belfast absolutely deserves to have a GAA stadium that is fit for purpose, and not just because “the other crowd” got their stadiums redeveloped.
It’s the second biggest city on the island, and the GAA needs a presence there. But a re-evaluation of what it’s for, and what will be played there, and how big it needs to be, can happen now – and it should.
