Connacht Gaa Centre

[Syferus]

This thing won''t be of much use to an awful lot of Galway, Sligo, Laythrum, Roscommon or indeed many parts of Mayo.
If each County had been given 20% of what was spent on this to develop their own then they'd all be happy.

It's on the feckin' Roscommon border. It's of plenty of use to Roscommon inter-county teams and plenty of the clubs in the county, especially after we apparently showed no interest in buying some time at Athlone IT's facilities and Westmeath swooped in and close that door shut.

It was obviously a money sink but we of all counties stand to benefit more than any outside of Mayo from it. Sligo made plenty of use of it too in the run-up to the championship. Bekan is as central a spot as you can get for something that is intended to serve most of Connacht and you were never going to make everyone happy with the location. What's been built is impressive.

Think before you spray your bullets all round the shop next time, desperado.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

This thing won''t be of much use to an awful lot of Galway, Sligo, Laythrum, Roscommon or indeed many parts of Mayo.
If each County had been given 20% of what was spent on this to develop their own then they'd all be happy.

It's on the feckin' Roscommon border. It's of plenty of use to Roscommon inter-county teams and plenty of the clubs in the county, especially after we apparently showed no interest in buying some time at Athlone IT's facilities and Westmeath swooped in and close that door shut.

It was obviously a money sink but we of all counties stand to benefit more than any outside of Mayo from it. Sligo made plenty of use of it too in the run-up to the championship. What's been built is impressive.

Think before you spray your bullets all round the gaff next time, desperado.

Roscommon is probably the county with most of its county close to the site than any other, including Mayo. The likes of Louisburgh, Kiltane, Achill, Burrishoole, Belmullet, Westport, Lahardane, Kilmeena, Ballycroy, Ballycastle are probably as far or much farther away than any part of Roscommon.

[ross4life]

Can't imagine it will be used much from a Galway perspective. The footballers already have their own very similiar centre of excellence (no jokes please) in Loughgeorge. The hurlers wouldn't go near the place to be honest. It's way out of their jurisdiction.

Will north Galway clubs use it who knows? I doubt it considering it's still out of their way no matter what. Might be used more at underage level maybe. For the odd match. Not sure that warrants the expense.

Hard to disagree with the thesis that this is a Prenty led Disneyland. I mean why not split the funds between the counties and let them do their own thing?

exactly
the centre will be used for underage county blitzes, college games, third level games

if there was a smaller centre in each county, they could cater for all of these.

Maybe not every County can afford to spend "big" or any sort of figure with the way the economy is. Hence having one in each Province so it can cater for all Counties. Obviously it would be more beneficial if each County had one.

Sligo are half way through developing theirs
Roscommon have already bought the land for one, but nothing else done.
Galway have one for football, the hurling one was abandoned due to the financial constraints (they have the land though)
Leitrim have built theirs in Annaduff

So, the only county that had no plans or land bought were...... Mayo
And where was the Connacht Centre built??? MAYO!

In a few years it probably be renamed Mayo Gaa centre or Prenty palace  i don't think Donegal had any centre of excellence to win this year's All Ireland

This thing won''t be of much use to an awful lot of Galway, Sligo, Laythrum, Roscommon or indeed many parts of Mayo.
If each County had been given 20% of what was spent on this to develop their own then they'd all be happy.

It's on the feckin' Roscommon border. It's of plenty of use to Roscommon inter-county teams and plenty of the clubs in the county, especially after we apparently showed no interest in buying some time at Athlone IT's facilities and Westmeath swooped in and close that door shut.

It was obviously a money sink but we of all counties stand to benefit more than any outside of Mayo from it. Sligo made plenty of use of it too in the run-up to the championship. What's been built is impressive.

Think before you spray your bullets all round the gaff next time, desperado.

Roscommon is probably the county with most of its county close to the site than any other, including Mayo. The likes of Louisburgh, Kiltane, Achill, Burrishoole, Belmullet, Westport, Lahardane, Kilmeena, Ballycroy, Ballycastle are probably as far or much farther away than any part of Roscommon.

According to google maps

Westport to GAA centre - 53.2 km, 51 mins
Achill to GAA centre - 96.0 km, 1 hour 37 mins
Belmullet to GAA centre - 110 km, 1 hour 39 mins

Kiltoom to Gaa Centre 1 hour 6 mins

A number of our senior,U21 players are living in Dublin i can't imagine they will be using this centre very often. Minors,U16,schools etc certainly will make use of it.

[Rossfan]

It's a long effin way from Arigna or Croghan over poor roads.
Syferus  - you're still as silly as ever - just because you might live near Ballyhaunis doesn't mean the rest of us Rosfolk do .

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Can't imagine it will be used much from a Galway perspective. The footballers already have their own very similiar centre of excellence (no jokes please) in Loughgeorge. The hurlers wouldn't go near the place to be honest. It's way out of their jurisdiction.

Will north Galway clubs use it who knows? I doubt it considering it's still out of their way no matter what. Might be used more at underage level maybe. For the odd match. Not sure that warrants the expense.

Hard to disagree with the thesis that this is a Prenty led Disneyland. I mean why not split the funds between the counties and let them do their own thing?

exactly
the centre will be used for underage county blitzes, college games, third level games

if there was a smaller centre in each county, they could cater for all of these.

Maybe not every County can afford to spend "big" or any sort of figure with the way the economy is. Hence having one in each Province so it can cater for all Counties. Obviously it would be more beneficial if each County had one.

Sligo are half way through developing theirs
Roscommon have already bought the land for one, but nothing else done.
Galway have one for football, the hurling one was abandoned due to the financial constraints (they have the land though)
Leitrim have built theirs in Annaduff

So, the only county that had no plans or land bought were...... Mayo
And where was the Connacht Centre built??? MAYO!

In a few years it probably be renamed Mayo Gaa centre or Prenty palace  i don't think Donegal had any centre of excellence to win this year's All Ireland

This thing won''t be of much use to an awful lot of Galway, Sligo, Laythrum, Roscommon or indeed many parts of Mayo.
If each County had been given 20% of what was spent on this to develop their own then they'd all be happy.

It's on the feckin' Roscommon border. It's of plenty of use to Roscommon inter-county teams and plenty of the clubs in the county, especially after we apparently showed no interest in buying some time at Athlone IT's facilities and Westmeath swooped in and close that door shut.

It was obviously a money sink but we of all counties stand to benefit more than any outside of Mayo from it. Sligo made plenty of use of it too in the run-up to the championship. What's been built is impressive.

Think before you spray your bullets all round the gaff next time, desperado.

Roscommon is probably the county with most of its county close to the site than any other, including Mayo. The likes of Louisburgh, Kiltane, Achill, Burrishoole, Belmullet, Westport, Lahardane, Kilmeena, Ballycroy, Ballycastle are probably as far or much farther away than any part of Roscommon.

According to google maps

Westport to GAA centre - 53.2 km, 51 mins
Achill to GAA centre - 96.0 km, 1 hour 37 mins
Belmullet to GAA centre - 110 km, 1 hour 39 mins

Kiltoom to Gaa Centre 1 hour 6 mins

A number of our senior,U21 players are living in Dublin i can't imagine they will be using this centre very often. Minors,U16,schools etc certainly will make use of it.

Did you not just prove my point, Westport was the closest club I chose. The rest are clearly further away. All the counties in Connacht have players in Dublin, if it was a few kilometres across the border in Roscommon it wouldn't be much closer to Dublin.

Have you seen the roads in West and North Mayo!!!

[ross4life]

MGHU you were trying to tell us that Mayo was Russia like in size "hours away" yes i know West/North Mayo roads afterall i have traveled them frequently & the road on the way to the Connacht GAA centre isn't much better.

Every county in Connacht has players based in Dublin but i'd be surprised if we didn't have the most based there & John Evans will more than likely set up training close to Athlone than bekan.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

MGHU you were trying to tell us that Mayo was Russia like in size "hours away" yes i know West/North Mayo roads afterall i have traveled them frequently & the road on the way to the Connacht GAA centre isn't much better.

Every county in Connacht has players based in Dublin but i'd be surprised if we didn't have the most based there & John Evans will more than likely set up training close to Athlone than bekan.

Clare Island and Inishturk are hours aways  & we both got Gas reserves.

[Syferus]

It's a long effin way from Arigna or Croghan over poor roads.
Syferus  - you're still as silly as ever - just because you might live near Ballyhaunis doesn't mean the rest of us Rosfolk do .

When that's that best you can spring you know you're trawling the depths for examples. The location is perfectly fine for Roscommon, more so than almost any other county that'll be using it. You'd try and find reasons to complain about the location if they built it in the centre of Roscommon and painted it primrose and blue. 

Obviously the seniors and maybe u21s won't be able to have collective training there very often (the same as everyone else's, then) but almost any club or underage team can get a whole hell of alot of use out of it.

[brianboru00]

A ridiculous white elephant.

The only clubs getting benefit will be the handful around Ballyhaunis. Most clubs around struggle to get 8-9 players midweek for training and damn all more for weekends. Having to travel to training will hardly improve this situation. As well as this - I can't think of a club in Connacht that doesn't have at least rudimentary floodlighting for training.  The top clubs which might have good numbers already have excellent facilities and arent going to be adding to their current expenditure

Counties wise- Mayo are the only beneficiary here.
Galway already have their centre in Loughgeorge, while its at least an hour travel from Hurling country down there.
Leitrim already train outside their county in Westmeath as most of their players are based in Dublin.
Sligo may find some benefit but will hardly impose extra travelling on their players.
Roscommon also have a large portion of their players in either Galway or Dublin.

Previously Galway trained in Ballinasloe which still meant a four hour roundtrip for the likes of de Paor and O Domhnall for example - to accommodate Dublin based players.

for sure Colleges games and the odd Sigerson fixture but a simple set up with two good pitches and basic dressing rooms and meeting space could have been put together for a lot less than 1m.

This is as stated elsewhere - nothing more than a Prenty vanity project - One of the most dispicable "Celtic Tiger" decisions within the GAA. 10 flippin million???
2 million would go a long way towards a cracking setup in each of the counties.

[SLIGONIAN]

It has to one of the biggest disgraceful vanity projects in the history of the gaa. All the counties in connacht are building their own centres and this disgrace has taken money funded for them away into this. All the connacht counties should of got 2 million each simple as that. Sligos is currently being built in strandhill. Prenty should be held to account but that man holds so much power in the gaa, he single handed got the stupid handpass rule through congress and he gets 8 million for a waste of space when other counties within his jurisdiction are trying to build there own and have to somehow fund some of it themselves...

[rodney trotter]

It would have made a lot more sense alright if the money was split for each county. I wasn't aware that the other Counties had one in place or in the developing stages. There is nothing like this in Cavan, training base is at Breffni and that is the training pitch and a 3g pitch,  but its nothing compared to Meath, Monaghan etc.

[rodney trotter]

Cavan were actually the First county in Ireland to have a 3G pitch, but its hardly a Centre of Excellence when most Counties have 4/5 training pitches.

[Rossfan]

It . All the connacht counties should of got 2 million each

FFS this is reacing epidemic proportions - now even got as far as Sligo

[Itchy]

Was down in ballyhaunis at a match few week ago, its a fantastic pitch and its huge however no one there could figure out who was really going to get the use out of it.

[Itchy]

Cavan were actually the First county in Ireland to have a 3G pitch, but its hardly a Centre of Excellence when most Counties have 4/5 training pitches.

Cavans 3g pitch is no different than what's in ballyhaunis. Its just a pitch and plenty of games have been on the 3g in breffni so its not just a training pitch.