You need to understand this issue from an Irish perpective in its full historical and cultural context.Note the parts I've put in bold.quidgybo wrote: ... Given the GAA mainly plays in summer Croke Park sits largely unused during winter. The few big RU and soccer events likely to draw more than 40k (no more than 6 or 7 a year) could quite happily be played there without inconveniencing the GAA in any way. The only thing missing is some lights. Of course the reverse is true with the new Lansdowne available for the GAA to use for smaller weekends in summer or in the event of bad weather (again with the roof). Of course it'll never happen like that. The GAA would never be that sensible or unselfish and the Irish Government don't have the balls to force common sense to prevail. Reminds me a lot of Queensland.
Leigh.
1) The plans for Lansdowne Rd will not allow for either of the GAA sports to be played there. Both hurling and gaelic football require fields 150m length, 90m wide. Landsowne Rd will be too small.
2) I've said this before on another thread. There are strong cultural reasons why the GAA insists on its own exclusive stadium. I won't on this post go through all the history and its still current resonance with many GAA followers about how the English games were promoted by 19th century English rulers - whilst the native gaelic games (along with the language) were long banned until the 1880's as part of an (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign of cultural genocide to try and turn the Irish into compliant 'Englishmen'- and gaelic sport was still strongly opposed by the ruling English ruling establishment (that continued to strongly promote and assist the English codes) until the Irish finally gained their freedom in 1922.
Suffice to say Croke Park has a history that is more than just sporting and has as a result become a symbol of Irishness and nationalism. Keep in mind, it was the scene of the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1921, when the British auxiliary Black & Tans burst into the stadium during the Dublin v Tipperary match and proceeded to machine-gun the crowd and players! The Black & Tans (British terrorist auxiliaries) who conducted this massacre were prominent in RU circles. It was in honour of one of the players shot that the original Hogan Stand got its name. Hill 16, meanwhile, named after the Easter Rising of 1916, was actually constructed from the rubble remaining in O'Connell Street - then Sackville Street - after that insurrection.
The behaviour of the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence, most of it secretly sanctioned and approved, helped turn the Irish public against the Crown. Some British politicians and the King made no secret of their horror at the behaviour of Crown forces. The mass murder of men, women and children, both spectators and football players, made international headlines, damaging British credibility.
The indiscrimate Bloody Sunday Croke Park massacre of men, women and children (one child was even bayoneted to death) caused such international outrage and revulsion as well as in Ireland itself, that British rule in Ireland was fatally undermined, leading to freedom to most of Ireland the following year. The events of Bloody Sunday have survived in Irish public memory.
With this sort of history and background, which has been neither forgotten or forgiven by many Irish, its hardly surprising that many Irish (namely the majority that support the GAA) are most reluctant to allow any English sports onto their sacred Irish turf.
