Renowned Irish pitch builders ‘knew nothing’ of Croker job
Armagh-based Clive Richardson Ltd were awarded the contract to reconstruct the famed field after the weekend’s U2 gigs and in time for the All-Ireland quarter-finals at the beginning of August.
Sligo native George Mullen who runs Support In Sport, a company which has resurfaced pitches used in World Cup, Champions League and Heineken Cup finals, admitted to not knowing ‘anything about a tender’ for the prestigious job at GAA HQ.
“I can only speak for my own company when I say that I knew nothing about the project and I don’t know anything about a tender,” said Mullen who is currently in Angola laying 15 new pitches for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations.
“There might have been a tender but I certainly never saw one.
“We would do most of the re-turfs around Europe. To give you an example, we are doing (the Bernabeu) in Madrid this week, we were doing (the Parken Stadium in) Copenhagen last week and Sporting Lisbon and Porto the week before that.
“So generally, when these things come out you would have a tender and we would be on it but maybe they decided not to put it out.
“I don’t know. I know we certainly didn’t see much information about it.”
Croke Park stadium director Peter McKenna last night stood over the process by which the management company had gone about the job of having the pitch resurfaced.
“How we conduct our tendering process and how we selected the company is confidential. We are quite happy to engage in any correspondence with any Irish company but I don’t think it is appropriate to do it through the national media.”
The fact that the grass for the new surface is being sourced from Scunthorpe in Britain has already touched a few nerves and caused a good deal of comment given the association’s historical and cultural background, much of it “bizarre” and “ill-informed,” according to McKenna.
“We went through a very rigorous process in selecting the turf farm and there would be a number of criteria.
“The performance criteria would be the most important one from where we were looking at it.”
“The consultant would have selected a contractor for the job and we would have been happy with that.
“He would have recommended a turf and we would have been less confident of taking a turf recommendation by way of Powerpoint. We actually went to see the turf in action.”
McKenna added that the consultants used in the process, the Sports Turf Research Institute, have also been utilised by the Irish government for the Abbotstown complex, the IRFU, FAI and on other GAA projects at Wexford Park and O’Moore Park in Portlaoise.
“There is a sense that this has stepped into the bizarre. This has been a detailed process involving a number of GAA officials who would be quite happy that, that process stands scrutiny.”
It has also been revealed that, though the U2 concerts were announced late last year, the decision to replace the surface was only taken two months ago when it was very much the only option left open.
As for the focus on the surfaces British ‘roots’, McKenna said: “It is my view that we cannot get the quality-assured seed from an Irish supplier.
“The quality-assured rye grass is not available in Ireland so it is imported. All pitches throughout the country, soccer, rugby and Gaelic, are done on seed that is imported so the issue is nonsensical.”
“The technology behind this is important. We wanted to choose a turf that would match the performance and pliability characteristics that we had set for it and we looked at a number of farms.
“We studied four in depth, three of them in the UK and one of them in Slovakia. That was based on having eliminated a number of potential turf farms, both in Ireland and elsewhere that may have the ability to supply turf, but not to the standards or specifications that we required on the Croke Park surface.”
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