County Board Is A Joke

[Offalys Future]

ggg

[Bord na Mona man]

Unruly supporters and attacks on the referees can't really be pinned on the county board. Barring a lot is spent on barriers, fences and security, you'll always run the risk of the lunatic supporter causing trouble.
A worse problem would be if the clubs themselves didn't co-operate in identifying the culprits in any investigation.

Ideally someone in Padraig Horan's position would attend all the minors games, but he hardly missed much that day against Wicklow.
You never know what personal reasons he might have had for not going to the game?

There are a lots of problems with Offaly at underage level. While the county board have been guilty of neglecting these for some years now, I suppose we all have to look at ourselves and see if we could contribute more.
I don't think anyone who is willing to help out with running a club, training or preparing teams in Offaly would be turned away if they offered their assistance.

[Lone Shark]

One aspect of the stadium debate - the terracing - was covered already on this site. You'll find the thread here - Keep off the grass. Having said that, our existing structure was a joke within the association, and was in dire need of reconstruction. To relate that back to your argument about investing in the playing future of the county, part of that is about creating the conditions whereby O'Connor Park is a good place to go for familys and young kids. A rake of awkward concrete benches built around the war era was not really the way to go.

Bord na Mona man covered most of the points you raised, but just to add one more - it's particularly harsh to blame the county board for the Birr/Crinkle issue. The very fact that this debate is going all the way to the DRA if I'm not mistaken shows how determined both sides are. I won't pretend to be well enough informed to take one side or another, but it's difficultg to blame the CB for this either.

[Offalys Future]

hhh

[Lone Shark]

I hate to be going out all guns blazing on a new member (welcome aboard by the way!! ) but you can't honestly be suggesting that Birr should have been developed sole ground in Offaly for big intercounty games? For a start the stand might be a relatively recent development, but if you were to compare it with the feature stand in any of the grounds you mentioned above, it would fall way short. As for your comment about 4,000, well the health and safety recommendation for championship games was around 2,000, so that would hardly cut it for big league games, never mind championship. It does the job fine now while Offaly hurling is at a 40 year low, but if we ever got back to being in the top six again it wouldn't. As for converting the far side of the ground to a proper terrace, I'd question whether or not the room is there, at least without taking the dressing rooms out of it.

Incidentally, you've picked a very select list of counties there. Think of some counties that would consider themselves genuinely "dual" counties:

Galway: Pearse, Tuam, Ballinasloe
Cork: Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Páirc Uí Rinn
Limerick: Gaelic Grounds, Kilmallock

As for the Carow example, the main stand there is fine but nothing special - our county board chose to go for a top quality development that would be ahead of it's time and not be outdated in 10 years, and for that I'd say good call. Secondly Carlow did their redevelopment in pre-construction-boom Ireland - hardly fair to compare costs.

Tullamore is the county town in Offaly, is the bigger population base, and it's the town where there was a lot more to be got by way of sponsorship and support for a relatively large scale development. You appear to be unhappy with the way Offaly has to try and keep up two venues, but surely it's fair to say that if it was to be reduced to one, there would be very little contest about which would be the winner. And we've seen how happy Offaly hurling people are with playing in Tullamore, seeing as they were willing to cost the county supporters and revenue not to play there in a league game.

[Offalys Future]

gggg

[Lone Shark]

Whether we like it or not, as long as we continue to try being a dual county, it's the counties with the big populations that we will be dealing with. It might be raising the bar, but unless we want to become no better than our neighbours Laois and Westmeath, it's what we have to do.

With regard to the development in Tullamore absorbing all the cost, I would stress that it isn't a zero sum issue - a lot of the cost of the development was met by local businesses in Tullamore, many in the hope of a return when bigger games were played there. This is money that would never have been available for Birr. Likewise there was no point in building a stand that was going to be outdated in ten years time. By that logic we may as well have left things as they were.

Finally, Birr is the natural heart of the hurling area of Offaly, but it's not on a train line, and even if it was capable of hosting 10,000 supporters - something not even a full terrace along the roadside sideline would allow - it still would miss out on a lot of games for that reason.



The comment on the Clare game was about how the hurling delegates on the county board were very adamant that the game couldn't be played anywhere other than Birr, despite the obvious cost in support and revenue to the county. The point was that Tullamore doesn't feel like home to them. How our championship home venue ever will with that attitude is another matter.

[Treasurer]

how the hurling delegates on the county board were very adamant that the game couldn't be played anywhere other than Birr,

Em.... how did you come to that conclusion?

[Lone Shark]

My apologies Treasurer - that was a bit of a generalisation. My "understanding" (i.e. firsthand report) was that from when the fixtures were nominated, there was regular tabling of questions and motions making sure that the game would be in Birr.

As the game approached I believe Padraig Horan was the main cheerleader. Feel free to correct me as to what actually happened though!!

[Treasurer]

Hmm... .well my only recollection was a delegate (from Birr) asking where the hurling game was to be played and the answer was Birr.

There were some calls quite a while back for hurling to stay in Birr, but on this particular occasion that was all that happened (unless I missed a night, but I don't believe I did).

[Bord na Mona man]

I think Tullamore would have needed millions spent on it regardless.
If the ground had been owned by the county board, it wouldn't have fallen into such bad repair and needed a major overhaul at the same time. The hit on the county finances would have spread out over more years.

The problem with building the stand was that when it was done, the capacity of the ground was still very limited because of the draconian health and safety restrictions put on the grass standing area.
So for all the millions spent on the stand, the capacity of the ground was still only around the 10,000 mark.

Perhaps if the terracing was built first, it would have given the capacity boost required, so as Offaly wouldn't be losing home advantage, like against Westmeath in 2004.
However the stand was in such bad repair, I'd say it would have been condemned soon enough. If any insurance person saw how people were vaulting from one concrete bench to another in order to take and leave their seats, they would have lost the plot.

Also for very wet days, you would better off having a good sized stand. At last year's county final there were about 5,000 people there on a wet day. A small stand would have left a considerable amount of them out in the rain.

[Offalys Future]

Hmm... .well my only recollection was a delegate (from Birr) asking where the hurling game was to be played and the answer was Birr.

There were some calls quite a while back for hurling to stay in Birr, but on this particular occasion that was all that happened (unless I missed a night, but I don't believe I did).

See every person in the county is under the illusion that the hurlers want to hurl in Birr, how can Padraig Horan or a delegate from Birr make this judgement? They cant.
Offaly hurlers train in O'connor park and would have no problem playing their games there.

At the end of the day its up to the county board and the Pat teehan to decide where Offaly hurlers play.

Lone shark can you give me an example of the following
" a lot of the cost of the development was met by local businesses in Tullamore, many in the hope of a return when bigger games were played there. This is money that would never have been available for Birr. "