The only way the Leicester City/Connacht rugby "dream season" analogy could become any more linked in Irish sports-fans' minds is if Michael Lyster announced that he would present the first Against the Head of next season in his underwear in the event of a Connacht win this Saturday.
Make no mistake, Connacht rugby has been the most compelling and uplifting Irish sports story of the last six months.
On the crest of a wave last week, they announced plans to increase the capacity of their home ground – the consensus being that they had outgrown the 7,500 capacity they can currently accommodate. Their plan for the future? A 10,000 capacity ground, either at their current home at the Sportsground, or at a different site. In light of a string of sold-out games in recent months, the increase in capacity might seem pretty modest.
But this shines a light on one key difference between the GAA and rugby. To the GAA, "sold out" are the two dirtiest words in the English language. Everywhere you look in the GAA, vast stadia abound. Pearse Stadium in Salthill – a couple of miles along the Galway coast – hasn't once been filled to its 26,000 capacity since it was re-opened in 2003. Even last year, when there was uproar over the playing of the Connacht final in Roscommon's Dr Hyde Park, there were still almost 2,500 spaces on the terraces.
Atmosphere
The only sell-out in the GAA championship thus far will be in Ruislip on Sunday for Mayo and London, bizarrely enough . . . and if London operate to the same rules as every other county board, that should be all the encouragement they need to move their Division Four league games to Wembley next year. Hard as it may be to fathom, for GAA folk reared on the idea that there is no such thing as a stadium that's too big, demand outstripping supply has its advantages.
For instance – if Connacht had played Glasgow in Pearse Stadium last week, would the fans have been in an hour beforehand? Would they have been able to create an atmosphere as good as any experienced by this parish's rugby correspondent in years? And rather more pertinently from a business perspective, would the storyline of a province seized by the possibility of a fairytale coming true on their own doorstep be as easy to sell if there were still 10-15,000 empty seats for the penultimate stage in the journey?
If you asked me for really rollicking hurling qualifiers from the last few years, a couple of examples spring immediately to mind. Wexford beating Waterford in Nowlan Park on a Saturday evening two years ago . . . Kilkenny against Tipperary the year before in the same ground; Dublin against Clare in Cusack Park in 2012; all brilliant occasions, all sell-outs. This obsession with getting every last possible customer of a 25,000-person crowd into Thurles or Croker robs us of more nights like that.
Connacht understand that just a modest increase in capacity ensures that the current brilliant atmosphere in the Sportsground can be maintained – because even the most optimistic Connacht rugby fan knows there's a ceiling to the interest. If you look at the provincial papers this week, a telling comparison can be made. The Mayo News carried a 12-page supplement with talk of pre-match ticket scrambles, flights across the Irish Sea, and accommodation updates . . . for their footballers' trip to London . Connacht/ Leinster this Saturday was worth half a page.
The Roscommon Herald carried seven full pages on their win over Leitrim in the Connacht championship last Sunday . . . and not a dickie-bird on the Pro 12 final. And lest we forget – these games are not the pinnacle of the GAA summer. No media organisation knows its audience better than a rural, local newspaper. If people were really interested in it, they'd be writing about it.
This is not to demean the importance of Connacht’s season in any way – rather it’s an attempt to put the enormity of their achievement into perspective. This is a GAA-mad province, and in that environment they’ve managed to win over vast swathes of the GAA community. The Connacht hardcore support might be 3,000 or 4,000 people, mainly from Galway City.
The people bumping those numbers up to sell out Sportsground crowds are GAA fans from around the province, who are attracted by the team, by the coach, and by the prospect of a successful professional team on their doorstep. Connacht’s ability to create a buzz that’s lit up the Irish sporting year is something the GAA could learn from.
