MOSTLY FOOTBALL: Laois hard done by on venue

The decision to bypass O’Moore Park in Portlaoise for a potential Laois v Dublin game next summer reflects poorly on the GAA in general, writes MICHAEL HANNON.

One of the recommendations made by Paraic Duffy’s recent report has been the abolition of replays, with games instead going straight to extra time if they finish level after normal time. It hasn’t garnered as many headlines as some of the other more eye-catching recommendations.

I agree absolutely with it - 100pc. Replays cause far too much chaos to fixtures, and if it means we lose out on the opportunity to witness another battle between two evenly-matched sides for the benefit of the greater good, then so be it.

In addition, it might unintentionally improve refereeing standards up and down the country. Some of the dubious time-keeping and soft frees awarded at the closing of a contest, undoubtedly witnessed at some stage in the life of anyone who has attended GAA games regularly, may also come to an end.

That’s not meant to question the character of GAA referees; rather, to say something about human nature. When a draw is on the cards, it can send everyone home happy.

However, soccer and Gaelic games aside, not too many other sports operate on this basis, where games can end level. Tennis and handball, for example, has the tie breaker. Hockey has overtime and after four periods, a shoot-out.

Basketball also goes into over-time, which sometimes lends itself to more drama than regulation time does. I was in New York in February 2013 when a marathon College game between Notre Dame and Louisville caught the national headlines after it went to five periods of over-time.

It dominated every sports channel broadcast that night, with many reporting on it as the game had yet to draw to a conclusion. It lasted for an epic three hours and 36 minutes. Of course, from a GAA point of view, the Mayo v Kerry All-Ireland semi-final of 2014 would be a thing of the past.

Both those games will live long in the memory of anyone who attended them.

However the very fact that the replay had to be fixed for Limerick only highlights how replays play havoc with the best laid plans of everyone. 

The American football college game between the University of Central Florida and Penn State, which had been fixed for Croke Park some two years previously, made it impossible for that replay to go ahead in headquarters.

The alternative, then, was to delay the replay for two weeks but that would’ve encroached on the winners’ preparation for the All-Ireland final.
Long story short, replays make fixture planning a lot more complicated.

Change of venue
All of this is to the forefront of my mind for very different reasons this week. The other aspect to the replay in the GAA allowed teams who played away from home the opportunity to host their opponents back at their own venue.

In fact, this home and away relationship was a key way that our provincal championships worked for many years. Ulster dispensed with this some time in the 90s but the tradition remained when a championship game ended in a draw that the replay would change venue. In 2004, Cavan drew with Down in a game that had been played in Casement Park. If I remember correctly, Páirc Esler was being renovated at the time and Casement Park hosted the first tie.

For the replay, a large crowd turned up in Breffni Park. It is, including the International Rules test that took place a few years ago, the only time that the county grounds has been packed to its rafters, generating a partisan atmosphere among the home supporters.

It helped that Cavan came from seven points down to win by four, but it was as genuinely thrilling a GAA occasion as you are likely to witness anywhere away from a packed Croke Park.

This week, a small furore has erupted in Laois after the Leinster Council decided to fix the game between the winners of Wicklow and Laois (against Dublin) for Nowlan Park in Kilkenny. If Wicklow were to win then the general acceptance is that Aughrim is far too small to stage such a game.

Whether that’s true or not is another argument as there is a line of thought that regardless the size of a county’s grounds, they should have, just like in the FA Cup in England, the right to stage a game at home if the draw so permits.

The feeling among Laois people is that O’Moore Park, which will be redeveloped by the time the fixture comes around, would have been more than adequate to host the game against the All-Ireland champions. I happened to hear a former Laois footballer during the week saying that it was the much smaller seating capacity in O’Moore Park that worked against them despite an overall capacity similar to the Kilkenny venue of 25,000.

If that is true then no wonder the people of Laois feel like they have been slighted by the Leinster Council. Surely there has to be more to it than that but it’s a hard one to figure out.

You can’t really say it is a financial decision to opt for Nowlan Park over O’Moore Park. If it came down to pure financial reasons, then every Dublin game would be played in Croke Park.

And after a sustained period of time when a growing lobby of counties have been making noise about finally moving the Dubs from HQ, it seems a little strange that when that decision is eventually taken, for the Leinster Council to make such as a mess of it.

Let’s be honest, getting Dublin out of Croke Park isn’t just about making them travel for the sake of it, its also about giving the smaller counties in Leinster, of which the other 11 now are, a much better chance of being competitive against the Metroplitians.

Dublin in O’Moore Park is a guaranteed full house. That’s not the issue. It’s about respecting everyone in Laois GAA.

Interestingly, this game is due to be covered by Sky television and perhaps the more impressive surroundings of Nowlan Park were deemed to be more attractive to a television audience.

I would hope that would not be the case at all. After all, a rousing atmosphere, in a heaving Portlaoise populated with spectators on the terraces, would be far more impressive to a watching TV audience.

After English football tried to sanitise the sport in the face of hooliganism, much of the soccer world followed suit by making all stadia seated only.

However in the Bundesliga in Germany, many stadiums have inserted standing only sections as those canny Germans bucked the trend having realised the atmosphere generated is far superior.

We don’t have those hooligan issues in the GAA. With the possibility of replays being abolished and thus rendering the home and away tradition also a thing of the past, the people making these decisions would want to decide what sort of a GAA world we want to inhabit.

If that’s one where the average GAA supporter in Leinster is refused the right to watch their own county in action at home in championship action against Dublin, then hard questions should be asked about what it is the GAA is in danger of becoming.