GAA: As more facts emerged yesterday regarding the crowd control problems at Wednesday's club finals at Croke Park, stadium director Peter McKenna admitted the mistakes had run wider than initially conceded.
Information about what seats would be available had not been properly communicated and the cash-only policy at the turnstiles was doomed to failure with such a major underestimation of the attendance.
With 38,500 showing up for the games that were expected to attract between 22,000 and 25,000, there was more than momentary chaos outside of Croke Park, and around 2,000 people ended up being admitted free through the open Canal End gates.
Yet McKenna insisted it was "a long way away from being a dangerous environment" and the crowd's safety was never in question. Detailed discussions took place with Garda officers after the game, and yesterday morning with fire safety officers. A more detailed review will be made early next week when McKenna receives the submissions from various individuals with responsibilities on the day, but in the meantime, he said, several lessons had already been learnt.
"We still have to get our facts fully straight on a few things. But just reviewing the issues this morning it does seem that notification about what stands were available wasn't sent out as would normally have been the case, and certainly that didn't help.
"And clearly the ticketing situation at Croke Park is something we'll have to revisit, and how far down the chain we go before we allow cash at turnstiles again. Paying cash at the stiles does work very well for small numbers. And in terms of numbers we would be talking about 20-25,000. And that's been discussed at length with the gardaí.
"But, of course, it is a slower process. The rate of through-put goes down about 30 per cent. And when you get more people coming at the same time, such as after the St Patrick's parade, then it is often a lot slower than just a ticket situation. The other big difference is with all-ticket matches we get a better sense of how many people are coming. And there is also better crowd control external to the stadium."
Many spectators raised further issues in the aftermath of the games, including concerns about the lack of stewards, the limited number of open turnstiles, and about the true levels of crowd control. One spectator told The Irish Times yesterday of a "real pressure situation" and said that having arrived at Croke Park at 1.25, he was eventually seated at 2.31. The hurling final had started at 2.0.
McKenna admitted the problems weren't helped by the decision to only open the Hogan and Canal End stands. Yet the number of stewards on duty was, he said, "more than adequate", and the number of turnstiles open - 30 in total along the Hogan Stand side - would have easily coped had their crowd estimates been more accurate.
"We know we disappointed a lot of people who travelled from all over the country. And in terms of crowd management people were annoyed and agitated. But they were never in an environment where they were unsafe.
"We had 325 people on duty on Wednesday. That includes the stewards and our own staff, as well as security, gardaí, and first aid. If it was an All-Ireland final the numbers on duty would not even be double that. But the attendance would be a lot more than double.
"In fact in many ways the easiest game to operate is the All-Ireland final. We know it's full, and most people come in early. It's when you get down to smaller games and you don't know how many show up that you have the problems. I mean we were criticised last year for having a triple-header in Croke Park when only 17,000 people showed up. So it is hard to gauge these things."
On the issue of crowd safety, McKenna rejected any suggestion there had been a genuine threat: "I was outside the stadium with senior gardaí observing the situation for 10 or 15 minutes before we decided to open the gates. But you have to be very careful too when you open gates, you don't create a stampede.
"So the opening of the gates was in anticipation of more people arriving, and so to relieve the number of people at the turnstiles. So we had to control the crowd at the top of Russell Avenue, and when we had people in an orderly fashion we could then open the gates at the Canal End."
"But the crowd was a long way away from being in a dangerous environment. There would be far more people on Grafton Street on Christmas Eve without any stewards and very few gardaí. It was just that people wanted to get in, and that created anticipation and an agitation. So of course it's understandable some people might have perceived a danger. And people were upset and we all feel bad about that here. But the judgment call was monitored very closely."
The popularity of the finals themselves was also reflected in the television figures released yesterday by TG4, who provided live coverage of both the football and hurling finals.
The broadcast drew the station's biggest audience on a day when TG4 posted its highest daily audience share, 9.9 per cent, according to Nielsen Media Research, the official television audience measure for Ireland. It follows the last week's record audience ratings for a single programme on the station (220,000 for live coverage of the Celtic v Barcelona UEFA Cup match).
