Hurling to return to St Brendan's Park

[Buck Face]

It's great to hear that the recent debate over whether or not the County Hurling Finals or Inter County matches should or would return to Birr was finally put to bed at the County board meeting last night.

The Birr delegates reported, following on from their long standing minuted request to temporarily move the County Finals to Tullamore, that the development work will be finished by the end of August and that they will be ready in time to host this years County Hurling Finals.

They also kindly reminded us of the Croke Park directive in place that recognises Birr as the home ground for hurling in the County. So we can all look forward to Inter County games also returning to Birr.

Good news indeed!

[Lone Shark]

You'll pardon my confusion, but that essentially reads as:

"The county final will return to Birr, because the Birr delegates said so".

Did the Offaly County board agree with this, or was that just part of the debate? I'd be amazed if one statement like that "put the issue to bed" as you put it.

[townman]

Yes Yes Yes hope this is right great to see the hurling back in Birr, now lets get a good new manger for the hurling team
and watch the gorly days of the 80'a and 90's come back again...... it will be great to have the county final back in Birr lets hope Birr are in it..

[Plain of the Herbs]

The ability of people to read one (simple) thing and interpret it as another will never cease to amaze me.

[bracknaghboy]

Great news. All the countys hurling problems will now be solved!

[townman]

Great news. All the countys hurling problems will now be solved!

yes now all we need is a few Bracknagh boys on the senior football team and we will do the leinster double

[llkj]

In other news... LLKJ has announced that all finals will be moved to his back garden for the foreseeable future. His drive to push this through has been a fully integrated above-and-below-the-line PR campaign, with his reps advocating the cause in online chat forums and high profile spokespersons taking care of national sportstalk airwaves and TV punditry. The crux of the arguement is that the 'back garden', as it is affectionately known, will be easier to get to for all of his neighbours, who have promissed that they will indeed bring buns and cakes to the next game, despite having not been seen at any game since Sept 2000. Also, the garden was the scene of many's the great game between the 3 neighbouring families during its peak and it is thought that if more games can be played at the venue that it will encourage some of the other neighbours to produce 7 fine sons each and solve the crisis that would have meant that the cosy arrangement of only allowing those who were born between the 2 65s to compete on the surface.

[Buck Face]

LS - Firstly, sorry if the element of tongue in cheek in my post was not clear enough.

Anyway, I do believe that there is more substance to my post than 'because the Birr delegates said so'. I note that you failed to comment on the directive from Croke Park. Do you not believe this exists or do you believe the Birr delegates 'just said so'?

Also their minuted clarification that the finals were temporarily moved to Tullamore does show that the wrong issue was being debated as it's now clear that the initial intention was to move hurling back to Birr after the development was completed.

The actual issue is 'Will the County Board seek to permanently move hurling to Tullamore'. Something that in my opinion would be of absolutely no benefit to hurling in the county. Unfortunately there does seem to be a push to move hurling out of Birr and it is something that astounds me.

[blue biffo]

Can St Brendens park hold the crowd for a county final it holds 6000 and the last few years the smallest crowd was 7000 and over 10000 for tullamore and kilcormac in 2009 and that was just people paying not including kids and oap.

[KingLurk]

Can St Brendens park hold the crowd for a county final it holds 6000 and the last few years the smallest crowd was 7000 and over 10000 for tullamore and kilcormac in 2009 and that was just people paying not including kids and oap.

I believe it's somehwere around 13,000 once the terraces are finished this summer.

[Plain of the Herbs]

Well, we know it can hold the water . . .

Can St Brendens park hold the crowd

[townman]

Well, we know it can hold the water . . .

Can St Brendens park hold the crowd

at least the county team will be let on it if they want to train unlike tullamore

[Lone Shark]

LS - Firstly, sorry if the element of tongue in cheek in my post was not clear enough.

Anyway, I do believe that there is more substance to my post than 'because the Birr delegates said so'. I note that you failed to comment on the directive from Croke Park. Do you not believe this exists or do you believe the Birr delegates 'just said so'?

Also their minuted clarification that the finals were temporarily moved to Tullamore does show that the wrong issue was being debated as it's now clear that the initial intention was to move hurling back to Birr after the development was completed.

The actual issue is 'Will the County Board seek to permanently move hurling to Tullamore'. Something that in my opinion would be of absolutely no benefit to hurling in the county. Unfortunately there does seem to be a push to move hurling out of Birr and it is something that astounds me.

Indeed you have my apologies, I missed that element! Fair play, plus welcome on board and all that....


My understanding was that there was a directive from Croke Park referring to second county grounds which also incorporated funding for such grounds, and that those county grounds were for counties where the primary county ground generally looked after the primary sport in the county, but there was an end of the county not catered for by this. Grounds such as Ballinasloe, Páirc Chiarán and Birr were envisaged to fall under this, but my understanding was that the funding, and thus the spirit of this directive, thus ceased to exist.

Now I'm completely unsure of that so I'm very open to correction, that's pieced together from various bits of secondary information that came my way, so anyone with the wording is welcome to correct me.

With regard to the wording of the minutes, I would suggest that for Birr to play disingenuous games with the wording of minutes is the wrong way to approach this issue. By all means argue the merits of moving hurling back to Birr on both sporting and monetary grounds (and you have to argue both - not just one and ignore the other!) but don't try and weasel out of it by saying that it was only temporary. After all if that kind of Frank-Murphy-esque trickery is the best they can do, then the county board would be well justified in turning around and passing a new motion. Argue the merits, not the rules, and you'll get the floor to follow you.

[Buck Face]

Thank you LS, delighted to be on board.......

Is is certainly not disingenuous of the Birr delegates or anyone else to refer to the written request to temporarily move matches to Tullamore. Surely the reason to minute meetings is to decipher fact from perception? The accurate recording of actual proceedings have made it clear that the move was 'temporary'. Something that was not disputed at this weeks meeting.

So, by all means feel free to argue the merits of moving hurling permanently to Tullamore on both sporting and monetary grounds (I would argue that sporting grounds carry much more weight that monetary grounds but money does seem to carry a lot of weight around the top tables these days so no harm to dispel both arguments when we are at it).

As for the directive, I don't have the actual wording of it either but the simple fact is that the Birr delegates reminded eveyone of the 1999 directive that granted St Brendan's Park the status of home ground for Inter County hurling and again nobody present corrected it.

Like most things, it is open to correction but to surmise that the directive was to 'also' incorporate something that now no longer stands and that because of this the directive would cease to exist seems to me to be a weak position to be starting any correction on.

Anyway LS, would it not be a good thing for Offaly hurling if the directive was bullet proof?

[Lone Shark]

When I say it's disingenuous to exploit old minutes, I'm thinking about the end game here. If Birr try to dig up such recordings as justification for why the county final should be in St Brendan's Park, then they might temporarily win a battle, but they will lose the minds of the delegates on the floor. Then a new motion gets presented by someone saying that we should now make a permanent move, and in the minds of the delegates, the nub of Birr's argument was a technocratic one. People didn't expect the county finals in Tullamore to get such big crowds - but they did. People did not expect hurling in Tullamore to gain as much traction, but it did. Ignoring that fact rather than tackling it head on does Birr's cause no good.

I'm not saying they mightn't have the rules on their side for now, but I just think it's a dangerous game for Birr club to be playing since the rules can be changed. The people of Birr seem to passionately believe in the idea that hurling should be based in Birr, so I would suggest that they should take that passion and harness it, and make a case. Tullamore GAA club is powerful, but it is not so powerful that it will carry the floor against a good and cogent argument.


With regard to the Croke Park directive, I think we'd have to see the wording of the directive itself before digging too deep into this. I certainly would feel uncomfortable arguing about it too much in the absence of such information. However I will say this - as an Offaly man, I am uncomfortable with the principle of Croke Park issuing a "directive" telling us where our hurling should be based. Where Offaly chooses to play county finals, underage matches and county matches should be a decision for the Offaly county board to make, within the parameters of Fire, Health and Safety regulations. I've no doubt that if this directive suggesteed that Tullamore should be the home ground, Birr wouldn't simply roll over and accept it, so neither should they use this to declare the matter a fait accompli.


Finally, on the whole sporting vs monetary issue, again I'm speaking from the point of view of an Offaly GAA citizen who does not have any vested interest in either side here, but you can't just ignore one aspect of that debate. It might be ugly to have to attach such significance to the bottom line, but it's the harsh truth. An awful lot of the arguments I've heard in favour of hurling being relocated to Birr is that "our first priority should be the welfare of Offaly hurling" as if that's a legitimate case for writing cheques we can't cash. For the vast majority of readers of this board, there are a lot of things that would be the right thing to do, if only they could be afforded. I should be contributing to a pension plan for example - it's the right thing to do. The problem is I can't afford to, so I pay rent and bills instead. Just because the right thing to do might be to move hurling to Birr - and I'm not agreeing that it is or isn't - is moot if it costs the Offaly county board thousands extra each year.

Also, the spectre in the room here is that Birr GAA club have spent a lot of money renovating their grounds. Now I was contacted by a member of their sub committee responsible for co-ordinating the renovation and I was told that Birr GAA club is in a very healthy position financially, with no debt, even after all this expense. Needless to say I was delighted to hear that, and I have no reason to doubt that person. However Birr needs to get that information out into the public domain, and to take the monetary issue off the table by saying that Offaly county board will not lose out financially by moving the hurling to Birr. There are many ways in which they could do this, but if they did, that would then mean that the debate would be held on the terra firma of what's best for Offaly hurling, and only what's best for Offaly hurling. Until they do that, the nagging thought will hang around in the back of people's minds that the only reason Birr GAA club wants big games in St Brendan's Park is because they want the revenue. That's human nature, and cannot be avoided.