If all the plans and propositions for sporting stadiums in Dublin were to come to completion we might yet make a tidy tourism dollar in the future bringing visitors from one to the other, snapping pictures of our wonderful white elephant graveyard. It would be a tourism experience on a par with viewing toppled statues of Lenin in old eastern bloc cities.
The poorly thought out announcement this week by the Government that it intends to conduct a feasibility study into the possibility of constructing an 80,000-seater stadium on a 300-acre greenfield site merely emphasises the lack of cohesion and communication between sports bodies in this country and the weak grasp the Government has of the imperatives of modern sport.
Does the city need another major stadium added to the holding pattern of big ideas just waiting to land? While the development of Croke Park accelerates into the second stage and beyond, Cork property developer Owen O'Callaghan waits in the long grass with planning permission for his own 40,000-seater soccer stadium, the FAI are insistent on developing their own plans, the IRFU have the option to develop Lansdowne Road or to use their considerable resources to go their own way and the BLE are developing Santry to fit their own needs.
Is there any other city of comparable size which would aspire to have so many stadiums while retaining no regular professional club side to fill any of them regularly? Paris, bigger and served by professional soccer, managed for a long, long time with Parc des Princes. The World Cup served as justification for the construction of the magnificent Stade de France. Do we have any such justification?
The strange irony of the current matter is that the FAI are in the unique position of being in the right place in principle, but the wrong place politically. Unfortunately, with so much private money and political vanity floating around in Government buildings, the people who run soccer in this country may be railroaded into the Government's bloated plans. Pity. The FAI's modest proposal makes sense.
Having talked at length with their landlords, the IRFU, in the last two years, the FAI have decided to go their own way and build their own home. In the wake of the Government announcement last Tuesday, Bernard O'Byrne of the FAI was adamant that his organisation would be pressing ahead with its own plans for a stadium of 40,000 to 50,000 capacity. The FAI has options on "four or five" sites at present and would like to narrow that down.
The soccer-loving Taoiseach is unlikely to bankroll such schemes, but in terms of size and specific use O'Byrne's plans are superior to those unveiled by the Government. A massive multi-purpose stadium dumped on the outskirts of Dublin as a monument to the egos who bankrolled it will do little to alleviate the problems facing sport in Ireland at present. It would also be an opportunity missed in terms of urban regeneration. The thrust of stadium planning and philosophy has moved away from the greenfield model in the last 10 years.
Before considering where the stadium will be built, however, the Government might pause to consider who would use it and how often. With a flowerchild's dippy simplicity it was announced on Tuesday that the stadium would be for "everyone".
Rugby is so little played at international level that for the IRFU to go their own way and build a stadium for three, perhaps four, internationals a year makes little sense. Neither in truth could the Government justify partly financing such a stand-alone project.
The IRFU would be candidate tenants in the dream stadium, but the planned capacity there is daunting and the Government's plans are long-fingered and aspirational. Lansdowne Road is the slum tenement of international rugby grounds just now and Irish rugby's need is most urgent.
Nobody from the IRFU will comment publicly on the possibility but it would make immediate sense for the IRFU to reap the immense financial benefits to be had from the burgeoning facilities in Croke Park. The rugby and GAA seasons complement each other perfectly. The sports have no historical enmity, indeed just the opposite. And Croke Park is ready and waiting.
Dermot Power, who has overseen the development of the GAA's ambitions in terms of Croke Park, is studiously neutral on such possibilities, but recognises that the corporate market is far bigger than was anticipated before Croke Park began exploring the territory.
"I don't know about the plans of other organisations, but in terms of corporate facilities the experience would be that the market is far bigger than we thought. The experience we have had with the first phase, with people coming and enjoying watching a major event in that way, has meant we have taken deposits for the Hogan Stand phase of Croke Park already. "We would have thought that it would be a harder slog than that when we started out. When you begin to talk about sports like rugby and soccer I suspect they would find that their sales would have an international dimension."
Soccer sees more large-scale activity than rugby does, although the statistic used by Bernard O'Byrne on Tuesday to the effect that the FAI had teams involved in 77 internationals a year is scarcely relevant - there have been four senior soccer internationals at Lansdowne Road this year (Argentina, Mexico, Croatia and Malta), in a busy year there might be twice that.
The possibility still exists of course, as O'Byrne said in Arklow on Tuesday, that in the event of a shake-up of soccer in Europe the FAI might be involved in entering a Dublin-based team in a European league. In this case, the number of matches played by such a club would mitigate against their home ground having serious multi-functional possibilities anyway.
As matters stand now, soccer and rugby together would avail of the proposed Government facility on less than 15 days in the year. Neither body requires a ground with a capacity of 80,000.
And athletics? The showpiece is the national championships, that badly-attended and poorly-promoted summer ritual.
Even if Dublin were to be added to the European Grand Prix circuit for a once-a-year meeting, an 80,000-seat facility would be gross overkill. Nowhere else in Europe does it. Why would Dublin?
The BLE intends developing Morton Stadium to present Irish athletics with a perfectly suitable facility for its needs. The vanity of having a virtually redundant running track in an 80,000-seater stadium should be forgotten about. Not only would the track be a useless adornment it would also dilute the atmosphere other sports generate by distancing the crowd from the playing area. Jim Kilty, the director of coaching at BLE, is pragmatic about the Government proposal to include athletics in the package.
"With a view to actually using the seats in the stadium, the only time 80,000 would ever be needed here was if we had a European or a world championships. For athletics you are talking once every four or five years at the very best, probably a lot, lot, less than that.
"Santry fulfills our main needs at the moment. We can get 3,000 or 4,000 people in. Our blueprint from a couple of years ago, which the Government have, suggests raising seated capacity to 6,000 so we could apply for the under-23 Europeans or world juniors or world youth games. "Our plans have been handed to the Government and we co-operate a lot with Fingal County Council. We want eventually to have a warm-up track adjacent, complete with a throwing area, an extension of the indoor facility and further along the line to build a headquarters for athletics in Santry stadium.
"We would in principle be interested in going in with soccer and rugby, but logistically I don't see how we could have Gaelic games there, that's almost impossible, just because the track won't go around the pitch or the pitch won't fit inside the track. However you put it, athletics would have to opt out or the GAA would have to opt out before it would be feasible."
Mondo, the Italian firm who are the world leaders in laying tracks, point out that the notion often mooted in Ireland that a temporary track might be laid in Croke Park for a big event is also impractical unless a large amount of time is to be sacrificed.
The tracks need two to three months to set up adequately. Lifting sod, laying down an asphalt base, pouring the surface on stage by stage at precisely the right temperature, setting up the lanes and throwing areas and jump pits. Time consuming and expensive. Irish athletes need more permanent track and field facilities to train on not a pretty eight-lane oval in an ever-empty stadium.
And where would the national stadium be sited? The buzz word of about a decade ago was "greenfield" sites. The Government was clinging to that notion this week. Modern stadiums are more likely to be found in towns as part of urban renewal programmes and the rainbow coalition who comprise the feasibility committee should look at areas like the docklands. Dermot Power has noted the move towards exploring the full economic possibilities of sports infrastructure.
"The entire trend has moved away from the greenfield sites where the stadium is placed in acres and acres of car parking to the concept of urban renewal. If you look at places like Denver or Baltimore and the projects going up in other cities, they are putting stadiums where people live and building the community with business and having people flowing through the area. There are advantages in that people can walk to them, they stay around before and afterwards, business can grow around the facility."
That is all nitty gritty, light years from realisation. This week's Government announcement was probably aspirational in all aspects except one. Having contributed to the GAA's building fund, Bertie Ahern has no intention of dishing out similar amounts to soccer, rugby and athletics for their own projects.
That much at least makes sense. Now about that 50-metre pool. . .
