Casement Park in line for major overhaul - 40,000 all seater Stadium.

[Tony Baloney]

They appear to have been looking for a blank cheque, which is mind blowing.

In 2010, they had £62.5 million from Stormont and they added in £15 million of their own.

In additional funding, Westminster has offered £50 million, Dublin has put forward about £40 million and it seems Stormont will give about £40 million additional funding to compensate for inflation.

Original funding = £62.5 million
Additional funding = £130 million
GAA additional funding = £0

There are people who genuinely believe that the GAA are being hard done by here. Insane.

100%. They had more than enough money secured to build a great stadium, but instead of building what they could afford, they wanted someone, anyone, to fund the gap between what they could afford and what they wanted. Someone used the term "hubris" earlier in the thread and that's what it was. 

[RadioGAAGAA]

I can't comment on the merits of seating vs terracing in the original plan (though iirc the GAA were opting for all-seater from the beginning?).

Anyhow, by the time the GAA were hoping that Euro2028 soccer would save them (by justifying extra government funding), that could only ever have been all-seater, since that is/was a mandatory UEFA requirement.

While a nice, tidy 10,000 (County-standard) ground would NEVER have qualified as a "regional" stadium to receive government funding from the original Maze money.

They were (all-seater) - which was a big mistake IMO.
Given the good state of the terracing, they could have built a really good (and big) new stand to replace old one, put a new roof over the terracing on far side of ground and called it a day.

~30k capacity, covered standing, covered seating and likely well within budget.


Euro28 should never have been in the conversation. A millstone.