O'Donoughue starts ranting again...

[neilthemac]

but you have profoundly missed the point. SDCC originally had it as a soccer only facilty and under pressure from the 6 local clubs the councellors changed their mind. JO'D told them that he wouldnt fund this so they changed their minds back again.

TD are appealing the legality of the second change of mind. but the first one is grand. so its ok for the GAA to have their say but not the minister funding it?

this entire thing is madness.

and who elects these Councillors? Yeah, the GAA playing people of Tallaght. They know their constituents wishes better than anyone. They are not going to be unpopular with either the GAA or soccer public.
I doubt if there are many Rovers fans in Tallaght in the first place

[dublinfella]

SHAMROCK ROVERS PAID NOTHING -FACT

you are lying. TD arent even suggesting that in the High Court.

but you have profoundly missed the point. SDCC originally had it as a soccer only facilty and under pressure from the 6 local clubs the councellors changed their mind. JO'D told them that he wouldnt fund this so they changed their minds back again.

TD are appealing the legality of the second change of mind. but the first one is grand. so its ok for the GAA to have their say but not the minister funding it?

this entire thing is madness.

and who elects these Councillors? Yeah, the GAA playing people of Tallaght. They know their constituents wishes better than anyone. They are not going to be unpopular with either the GAA or soccer public.
I doubt if there are many Rovers fans in Tallaght in the first place

so why hasnt one elected representitive of the area supported TD while one FF TD has gone as far as taken out membership of Rovers? There is zero support on the ground, both within the GAA and outside it for this move. WE DO NOT HAVE THE POLITICAL CLOUT WE USED TO HAVE. reality check lads. FF and SF are siding with soccer over the GAA.

soccer is a far bigger game in Tallaght than Gaelic games. lets get real here. hence the panicked reaction from TD at the last possible point they could object. not during planning etc.

this is all irrelevant. TD are splitting hairs to find a very pernickety poing of procedure to stop this.

[Rossfan]

SHAMROCK ROVERS PAID NOTHING -FACT

you are lying. TD arent even suggesting that in the High Court.


the panicked reaction from TD at the last possible point they could object. not during planning etc.

Point one - I'm not lying -why was the builder only paid the amount of the Lotto Grant and left being owed €400k.All he got was the amount of the lotto grant.They might have given a few bob to whoever drew up plans/Engineers or whatever but to the building itself -NOTHING.

Point 2 -you can't object in the normal sense when a Local Authority is proposing something. They advertise and seek public submissions. Either Thos Davis alone or all the GAA clubs in Tallaght(I'm told there are 5 ? a good lot of votes there !!! and one of them is SF "friendly" I believe) wrote in saying that a municipal stadium should be also available for GAA games which led to the Councillors original vote to amend the plans to make the pitch big enough for football/hurling.
Then enter the Kerry  ******ks with his Sham Rovers/Soccer only  - followed by the application to the Courts by Davis's.

[dublinfella]

SHAMROCK ROVERS PAID NOTHING -FACT

you are lying. TD arent even suggesting that in the High Court.


the panicked reaction from TD at the last possible point they could object. not during planning etc.

Point one - I'm not lying -why was the builder only paid the amount of the Lotto Grant and left being owed €400k.All he got was the amount of the lotto grant.They might have given a few bob to whoever drew up plans/Engineers or whatever but to the building itself -NOTHING.

Point 2 -you can't object in the normal sense when a Local Authority is proposing something. They advertise and seek public submissions. Either Thos Davis alone or all the GAA clubs in Tallaght(I'm told there are 5 ? a good lot of votes there !!! and one of them is SF "friendly" I believe) wrote in saying that a municipal stadium should be also available for GAA games which led to the Councillors original vote to amend the plans to make the pitch big enough for football/hurling.
Then enter the Kerry  ******ks with his Sham Rovers/Soccer only  - followed by the application to the Courts by Davis's.

I dont know where you are getting your figures, but you seem to be the only one saying SRFC have brought nothing at all to the table. No-one in the press or the courts has stated this, so you can understand why I quite frankly think you are pulling numbers our your arse because the mantra of a 'free stadium' is falling apart.

The point SSCC are making is that at no point in a: the original planning process or b: the section 8 process of the council taking ownership of the site did TD or the other clubs pipe up. It was later they lobbied councellors to amend the county managers plans. there was never any formal application from TD, the DCB or the GAA to get into the ground. the council then reverted to the original (and this is the key legal point) decision after JO'D reminded them that the soccer facility was part of the county development plan and that he would be funding it on that basis only. the GAA were asked did they want to be part of this development plan, and chose not to submit a project.

JO'D didnt 'enter' with a soccer only stadium, it always was such until an informal approach to the councellors from the local gaa. thats very disengenious of you considering for two weeks only this facility was designated multi sport before a unanimious decision of the council to revert to the original proposal.

TD are arguing a very specific technical point about the timescale of amendments to the county managers proposals. thats all they have.

who is funding this case?

[mick999]

Humphries talks sense yet again ...

  Minister sours the sweetest moments
Tom Humphries

Locker Room: If there is one small fly in the ointment of joy that the wonderful and novel achievements of our cricketers in Jamaica have given us it is the suspicion that our Minster for Sport will demand any day now that GAA grounds be opened for the playing of cricket.

It has been a grand week for the Irish sports aficionado. Steve Staunton's droll press conference was followed by Ruby Walsh's glory and then the cricketing revolution. The rugby boys scored 50 points because they needed to; Sunderland won again; the cricketers became a great story; Ballyhale - the epitome perhaps of the possibilities and potential of the GAA - returned to eminence; and the Dub hurling evolution continued apace.

And all the while lurking behind the blue skies like a storm front was the grim, vinegar puss of John O'Donoghue, the last mealy, free-roaming mouth and curmudgeon still in existence outside of this column's acreage.

There were some who thought that when O'Donoghue made his comments a while back about the Solheim Cup and fashion for the ladies perhaps he had the brains of a rocking horse. We realise now of course that he has the heart of a lion. In a move distinguished by both electoral bravery and crass stupidity the Minister has chosen this time to put the boot into the GAA.

Fortunately, Kerry is not a GAA county or it might have cost him votes.

Thomas Davis, a GAA club whose volunteers have been working for the people of Tallaght since - well, since 1887 actually - are in the throes of a High Court petition seeking permission to bring a legal challenge on a decision that the new Shamrock Rovers stadium in Tallaght should be a soccer-only venue. Thomas Davis want to overturn South Dublin County Council's decision of February 13th, 2006, that the 6,000-seat stadium at Whitestown Way should be completed for the purposes of soccer only.

Readers with long memories will recall that back in 1995, when this saga began, South Dublin County Council had ambitions for a 20,000-seat stadium in Tallaght which would be multi-purpose and have James's Gate soccer club as the anchor tenant.

James's Gate were soon supplanted by Shamrock Rovers, the itinerant club who have never quite recovered from selling their splendid ground in Milltown a couple of decades ago.

Down through the years as Rovers changed hands and became involved in a variety of different deals the complexion of the Tallaght deal has changed repeatedly.

The stadium lies like a ghostly monument to incompetence. After a public-consultation process, and following a recommendation by the Tallaght Area Committee in November 2005, the county manager's proposal for a single-purpose venue was altered, getting everyone back to the idea of a multi-sport stadium involving the development of a larger pitch suitable for Gaelic games.

On December 12th, 2005, SDCC unanimously adopted a resolution in favour of this proposal.

Rovers seemed happy. The GAA seemed happy. John O'Donoghue? Not happy.

Extraordinarily, he announced he would only fund a soccer-only stadium. The SDCC, having little choice, passed a resolution on February 13th, 2006, which reverted to the soccer-only scheme.

By now most people will have their own opinions about the relative claims of the parties to the dispute. The GAA clubs (there are five other local clubs backing Thomas Davis) have been rooted and seeded in the community for generations. They have worked hard for what facilities they provide. Sometimes they have benefited from grant money and Lotto money; all the time they have worked themselves to the bone for the community.

Shamrock Rovers are a professional soccer club, a commercial enterprise. They chose to sell the best ground in the country. Through extraordinary mismanagement they have lacked a ground of their own since. Despite the lustre of their name and history they have proven themselves incapable of providing facilities for their own use.

For some reason John O'Donoghue has leapt in and promised to fork out millions of taxpayers' money to come to the rescue of this commercial organisation. This is generous, not just because of Irish soccer's long, prodigal history of squandering and blowing cash and failing to provide for drizzly days. It is generous because the Minister apparently feels the pain of every surrendered penny as if he were paying for it by sale of his own organs.

Heroically unembarrassed by recent criticisms of the physical-education facilities offered our increasingly obese children, the Minister instead rounded on the GAA, a body which on a volunteer basis provided for generations what passed for a sports policy in this country; the GAA, which has worked to be at the heart of every community; the GAA, whose clubs from Thomas Davis to Laune Rangers provide football, hurling, camogie and women's football for anything up to 50 teams week in and week out.

The Minister had the unfeasibly large cojones to suggest that because the GAA received some money from the Government in the last few years it should just shut up about Tallaght. The Minister suggested Lotto funds (set up for arts and sport, but ransacked by successive governments for health funding) were actually all part of his money from selling his kidneys.

In fact, it was Lotto funding which made up all but 19 million of the 114 million given to help build Croke Park (192 million is promised to Lansdowne Road, but we suspect that will never get built and rugby will go out on its own down in Ringsend).

Croke Park is the sort of infrastructural project the Lotto was designed for. O'Donoghue appears to think Lotto funding is a grace-and-favour scheme which might buy him the rights to the GAA's silence on all issues.

Warming to his theme, the Minister chose to ignore the spirit of the times we live in.

"I also find it quite extraordinary," he said, "that the GAA should wish to play Gaelic games in a soccer ground given their outright opposition to soccer being played in their own grounds."

Wow! Now the ignorance on display here is quite profound. It becomes us though to scorn the man's simplicity. It means either he hasn't noticed Wales will be playing Ireland in soccer at Croke Park on Saturday or he expects GAA clubs all over the country to begin throwing their overused, over-mortgaged grounds open to soccer.

The Minister, we are sure, knows this would be an arrangement which could never be reciprocated given the dimensions of the various pitches involved and the existing overuse of every GAA pitch in the land.

The Minister apparently wants the GAA, a community-based, volunteer-based cultural and sporting body, to carry the can for the long history of squandering and mismanagement which has blighted the world's greatest professional game as played in this country. Soccer, which once thrived here domestically, professionally and entertainingly, has become a grim sideshow of foreclosures and receiverships.

In Tallaght, the argument isn't against Shamrock Rovers, although John Donoghue planting Rovers there will inevitably hurt the GAA population. The point is that nobody feels Rovers have given enough to the community to merit the amount of State aid being allocated. There is an unfairness at the heart of the concept and the Minister's crass comments underline that.

The GAA has already been quietly hurt by the Government's decision to renege on an earlier promise that the rebuilt Lansdowne would have a pitch configured to permit the playing of the occasional GAA game.

The whispers are, though, that when the planning people get back this week the news will be that the stadium's proposed capacity will be whittled and the IRFU, a little surprised perhaps at the sweetheart of a deal the FAI were handed in the redevelopment master plan, will opt to cash in their chips in D4 and build elsewhere on their own steam (with, one hopes, appropriate Lotto funding to help). The Irish Glass Bottle Company in Ringsend would be the perfect site.

And so Irish professional soccer, a commercial enterprise which retails a genuinely beautiful game, but is domestically incapable of running its own business, will be homeless again. Will Minister O'Donoghue be able to find a way to blame it on the GAA? Of course he will.

© 2007 The Irish Times

[snatter]

Excellent piece by Humphries.

Fortunately, Kerry is not a GAA county or it might have cost him votes.

To ensure future fair play for the GAA, the good GAA folk of Kerry need to vote this moron out

[armaghniac]

To ensure future fair play for the GAA, the good GAA folk of Kerry need to vote this moron out

even non-GAA people should vote him out, because who wants an eejit representing them.

[johnpower]

Spot on the Minister for fun he is some clown . He has lost touch with reality .

[Onlooker]

As Del Boy used to say "what a plonker".   How can this guy be a Government Minister?.

[Rossfan]

Excellent article as always from TH.
I think Mr Humphries makes my points much better than I ever could.As for "Dublin"fella(Maybe Shamsfella be more apt???) when are you going to stop spoofing that Shamrock Rovers put money into  the Stadium?

[dublinfella]

So Tom Humphries point is that because TD have been around Tallaght forever they are entitled to dictate to the Govt how they fund other sports? TH convieniently ignores all the Rovers youth teams in Tallaght, their scholarships in the secondary schools and the IT etc. To say they contribute nothing to the sporting culture of Tallaght is a tad offensive to them.

But this line is a classic: The Minister, we are sure, knows this would be an arrangement which could never be reciprocated given the dimensions of the various pitches involved and the existing overuse of every GAA pitch in the land. The argument the Dos, SDCC, and SRFC make is that sharing with the GAA would reduce the capacity to 2,000, which would render the project useless. Its not an ideological thing, just the pitch doenst fit on the site. To ignore this while arguing that soccer grounds dont fit on GAA pitches is at best disengenious. Soccer pitches cant fit into GAA ones, but GAA ones can on soccer ones? Good logic Tom. 

To say that a quid pro quo of CP being rented to the FAI is them allowing us free access to a stadium that doenst fit our needs in an area we never bothered looking for one before is farcical.

He is quite right that soccer in this country is appalingly badly run, but the suggestion that Rovers as a club gained from the sale of Milltown is palin wrong. Say that to a Rovers fan, or any LoI fan and see the reaction. TH is around long enough to remember KRAM and the literally riots that met the Kilcoynes skullduggery.

The entire tone of the piece suggests JO'D just decided to turn a shared facility into a soccer only one. Thats just wrong. It always was soccer only until the 6 clubs lobbied the councellors, a decsion the councellors reversed. Can the GAA clubs feel hard dome by? yes. Is it illegal? no. but again, there was never any formal approach to SDCC from the GAA for inclusion. but TH didnt bother with that.

Interesting he never once touched on any legal reason why TD are right, just some 1950's notion of the GAA holding a torch against thise evil foreign games. From a man who saw kids playing rugby in his estate a few weeks ago and joked about running them over. Hilarious. He was a lot better a writer when he wasnt a mouthpiece. This whole episode os bringing up attitudes to other sports i thought we had long abandoned.

[Hardy]

It's interesting to contrast the official attitudes of the British and Irish governments towards GAA access to government-funded sports infrastructure.

The British government proposes to fund a multi-sports stadium in the North. It has made it clear it's a non-runner unless the GAA is willing to use the stadium.

The Irish government proposes to fund a multi-sports stadium in Lansdowne Road, but defines multi-sport as two-sport and specifically excludes the GAA from it (having originally undertaken to include it as a ploy to get the GAA membership to vote for admitting soccer and rugby to Croke Park and then changing its mind when that was achieved in a brass-necked official "f*** you", when "thank you" was what we were entitled to expect) .

The Irish government further proposes to fund a single-sport stadium in Tallaght and again specifically instructs the local authority concerned to reverse its decision to include the GAA.

Maybe we should rejoin the union. Then we could look forward to parity of esteem from officialdom and a decent chance of securing reasonable funding to develop our sport. (Better put a little smiley yoke here -  )

Of course that would deprive us of the entertainment provided by the ever-reliable uber-buffoon from Kerry. What sort of a gold-plated gobshite chooses the very week when the first soccer international is to be staged in Croke Park as the occasion for a gratuitous attack on the GAA for its "outright opposition to soccer being played in their grounds"?

[Bogball XV]

DF, why don't you write a letter to the Irish Times pointing out the various inaccuracies?  God knows you do love to vent your opinions on the issue.

[Hardy]

Dublinfella – all that bluster doesn't obscure the central question that you have continually failed to answer. Why should the government fund capital projects for private commercial entities? What possible justification can there be for this in any circumstances? What does the spending of taxpayers' money effectively for the exclusive benefit of a private sports-entertainment company contribute to the community?

How do Shamrock Rovers qualify for this largesse? Why them and not any other soccer club in the country, or any other club of any description – even genuine community-based, amateur, non-commercial ones?

What would say, Newtown Blues in Drogheda be told if they approached Louth County Council and asked them to build a stadium for their exclusive use? Even if they promised to contribute 25%-odd (whether they ever really did or ever really intended to)? Even accounting for the fact that they have been contributing to the local community for over a century? Even allowing for the fact that they are not the third or fourth incarnation of a tax-defaulting, asset-stripping, failed commercial entity that serially liquidates to dodge its debts and tax liabilities?

How did Shamrock Rovers pull this off and how does my club apply for the same treatment?

[dublinfella]

Dublinfella – all that bluster doesn't obscure the central question that you have continually failed to answer. Why should the government fund capital projects for private commercial entities? What possible justification can there be for this in any circumstances? What does the spending of taxpayers' money effectively for the exclusive benefit of a private sports-entertainment company contribute to the community?

How do Shamrock Rovers qualify for this largesse? Why them and not any other soccer club in the country, or any other club of any description – even genuine community-based, amateur, non-commercial ones?

Rovers arent a 'private commercial entity'. They are a members club with an all volunteer staff off the pitch and a group of part time local players. They are not Man Utd ffs. All profits are put back into the club. How are Rovers less community based? They have been in Tallaght more than 10 years. Its this kind of innacuracy that doesnt help the discussion

I dont know what Rovers have done. Im not here to defend them. I presume the minister agrees with the FAI about 2 decent grounds in Dublin on either side of the Liffey with Bohs/Shels in one and Rovers/Pats in the other like the contenentials do it. But thats not the point. Even if Rovers get a gold plated stadium with a diamond pitch the dept are entitled to fund other sports, even if the elite are professional. Are you saying no funds for atheltics, boxing, swimming, golf etc because there are professionals at the top?

What will the reaction be if TD win and the FAI decide to retaliate and return the favour? Rule 42 could be deemed illegal if public funds are involved.