St Conleth’s Park will forever be associated with “Newbridge or Nowhere” but this weekend Kildare GAA fans will finally have somewhere to call home again.
After 19 months of bulldozers and diggers, the revamped and rebranded Cedral St Conleth’s Park will push open its new turnstiles as the Kildare senior football final between Naas and Celbridge (2pm) takes centre stage as the first game at the new venue since Kildare beat Meath at the old one in the National League on March 26th, 2023.
The final capacity of the redeveloped stadium will be approximately 15,000, including 3,000 seats in a newly constructed stand, with the total cost of the project estimated to be €18 million.
The new stand will also include dressingrooms for players and match officials, hospitality facilities, shops, a Club Kildare Lounge and VIP meeting areas. A new playing surface has been laid and the pitch dimensions widened. State-of-the-art floodlights have also been installed.
The Naas and Celbridge players were afforded a walkaround of the pitch ahead of Sunday’s final but there was no kickabout or training sessions permitted – there has yet to be a football or sliotar struck in anger at the new venue.
“The plan was always to be ready for the end of October,” says Kildare chairman Mick Gorman. “We would see ourselves as the foremost sporting organisation in the county. Like in every sport, members and supporters need to have a home they can be proud of, and this is something we think Kildare people will be very proud of when they get to see and experience the venue.”
There is no curtain-raiser to Sunday’s senior football decider, instead there will be an official opening before throw-in, which will be attended by GAA president Jarlath Burns.
Kildare could host National League games under lights at the venue next spring, but with the county’s footballers operating in Division Three, it limits the opportunity of a genuine glamour tie.
The old St Conleth’s Park was due a makeover long before it happened but the “Newbridge or Nowhere” saga managed to rally Kildare people around the cause of their senior footballers in the summer of 2018.
The Lilywhites were drawn at home to play Mayo in round three of the All-Ireland senior football qualifiers that year, but due to a capacity restriction of 9,020 at St Conleth’s Park (reduced to 8,200 for all-ticket matches), the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee fixed the game as a double-header in Croke Park alongside Cavan v Tyrone.
Incensed at having home advantage stripped away, then Kildare manager Cian O’Neill went on RTÉ and insisted his team were not for moving and they would be in St Conleth’s Park the following Saturday, not Croke Park.
The “Newbridge or Nowhere” moniker was coined and Kildare’s refusal to budge left the GAA in a quandary.
The controversy garnered huge publicity and eventually Croke Park succumbed to Kildare’s stance and the game was refixed for St Conleth’s Park.
The icing on the cake was still to come for Kildare – on a sunny June evening in Newbridge they rose to the sell-out occasion and beat Mayo 0-21 to 0-19.
“Newbridge or Nowhere was a moment in time,” recalls Gorman. “We needed to assert our right to play at home. But it was very much time Conleth’s was developed, I wouldn’t say Newbridge or Nowhere was the spark, rather it was something we were conscious of for a long time, it was in bad need of redevelopment.”
The main contract with Elliott Group was for €12.9 million, plus VAT. Kildare received support from the Government’s Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund with a total allocation of €6,031,960 while there was also €4 million from the Government’s now discontinued Immigrant Investor Programme. Croke Park and Leinster Council also made contributions to help fund the project.
“We had some really great people involved, we were fortunate to have good people from construction and business, and we are quite confident that the project will be brought in on budget and on time.
“We’d be very confident there will be no millstone around Kildare GAA’s neck going forward.
“There are many standout memories from Conleth’s over the years. I can remember the league victory over Dublin [in 2022] and afterwards the Curragh of Kildare ringing out around the ground.
“But we have a lot of very good young players now and so we’d hoping with this new stadium we can create many more memories.”
