GAA ruled out building alternative Waterford venue

GAA director general Tom Ryan has outlined why Croke Park was not in favour of a new Waterford stadium in WIT’s Carriganore campus.

Rebuilding Walsh Park was the long-time preferred option of the county board, a move supported by the GAA, who felt a completely new venue would have been cost-prohibitive.

“There was talk about other venues or possible facilities in the city there over the course of a few months towards the end of last year,” Ryan stated.

“We did look, actually, at other alternatives and we did look at other possible investments, but the amount that would have to be spent before you’d even see anything above the ground [in Carriganore] was prohibitive.

“It will be possible for us to do a good job on Walsh Park, but they won’t need 30,000 or 40,000, but it will be possible for us to do something that is appropriate to the needs of the county and that they can afford.”

The call on whether Walsh Park will be available for Waterford’s home Munster SHC games against Clare and Limerick this year will be decided by the provincial council, Ryan confirmed.

“We want to invest something in Walsh Park, we want to get to a stage where they’re able to play.

“Waterford people deserve to have Championship games played in the city.

“It’s directly one for the Munster Council, for them to decide, but I think everybody looking on last year, not least Waterford people, would have been disappointed that they weren’t able to play at home.

“I think some of the other things that happened over the course of the summer about venues and the choice of venues for matches would have given everybody pause for thought, to think that maybe there’s a different way to go about, not just Waterford, but venues in general.

“There’s a plan to do up Walsh Park and to invest significant funds in that and we’ll play our part in that with Munster and along with the county themselves.

“Whether it’s this year or whether it’s in subsequent years, I can’t, hand on heart, say at this point and it’s directly one for Munster Council rather than for myself.

“But certainly the will is there to make sure that games can be played in Walsh Park.”

There will be motions at Congress prompted by the eventual decision to host the Liam Miller charity match in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, sideline violence, and the discipline process needing to reflect the changes to both senior inter-county championships last year.

Ryan also explained that there will another proposal on foot of the ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ controversy.

The plan is to remove ambiguity around the powers of the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee in allocating venues for fixtures.

“We’ll have made a mistake if next summer we’re still opening rule books and looking at them to see who can put the games in where,” said Ryan.

“Just a little bit more communication around the edges of it; it needs to be a little bit more collaborative.

“But it’s a necessary little tidy-up and a little consequence of that particular exercise.”