GAA primed for bumper weekend

GAA chiefs are counting down to one of the most lucrative weekends of the season with 10 major games down for decision and close to 200,000 expected through the turnstiles.

Provincial finals in Munster and Leinster are expected, on present estimates, to attract 85,000 people while key qualifier games elsewhere should at least double that figure overall.

Munster Council spokesman Ger Ryan suggested that Thurles’ 44,000 capacity is unlikely to be met for Sunday’s provincial hurling final between Waterford and Tipperary though a healthy 40,000 crowd is likely.

In Leinster, fans’ favourites Dublin take on Westmeath in the football final and officials have predicted at least a 45,000 Croke Park crowd.

Elsewhere, a number of crucial backdoor games will take place across the weekend with three alone in Thurles on Saturday including the hurling tie between Cork and Clare.

GAA Head of Games Administration Feargal McGill described it as “up there with the most significant weekends of the year”.

He said: “Between those two provincial finals alone you could be looking at 100,000 people coming through our turnstiles so that’s a major weekend.

“Obviously we have big weekends in early August and at other stages as well.

“I can certainly see how this weekend is catching the imagination for a lot of people because you’re talking about top teams in both hurling and football in action.”

A favourable weekend weather wise could push the overall attendance figures as high as 200,000, ensuring a lucrative couple of pay days for the GAA.

“We don’t see running our games as a lucrative activity,” said Munster’s Ryan.

“From our perspective, this weekend is a tremendous opportunity to promote our games.”

Leinster Council PRO Pat Teehan stated that while it will be a novel football final pairing, the modest population of Westmeath means a major spike in attendance is unlikely.

“There will be extra interest to a degree because Westmeath are there but the reality is that Meath or Kildare, say, would still be considerably larger counties in terms of the numbers they’d bring,” said Teehan.

“At the moment we’d be looking at 45,000 for Sunday. That would be based on how ticket sales are going at the moment and a good few years of experience.

“The bottom line is you’ll never know until the day itself, a fine day convinces people to come out that mightn’t be planning to.”

Meanwhile, Munster chairman Robert Frost has no concerns about Saturday week’s Munster SFC final replay‘ running into difficulty with a lack of daylight.

The game throws in at 7pm but there is the facility of extra-time and Fitzgerald Stadium has no floodlights.

Sunset in Killarney on July 18 will be at 9:39pm. Were the game to go into two additional periods of 10 minutes and factoring in 75 minutes of normal time, a total of 20 minutes for the two half-time breaks as well as another 10 minutes before extra-time, the game would finish close to 9:10pm.

Frost, who anticipates the game will be televised by RTÉ, has played down the significance of fading light.

“We discussed it but you’re still in July and we’d be hoping even if it did go into extra-time it would be finished around 9pm. We’d be happy enough with the throw-in time, we did consider all that.

“We also considered the Sunday but because of the need to keep a date free for a potential Munster hurling final replay and the short space of time the football runners-up would have for their qualifier we ruled it out.

"It’s happened before that when you get one draw, you get two when for so many years you wouldn’t get any. We’d be caught badly if we were to schedule the game for Sunday week and the game this coming Sunday ended up in a draw.

"We would have been taking a chance that way. A six-day turnaround would also have been very small for the football losers to recover.”

There had been talk the game might be staged earlier on July 18 but Frost said they were advised to go with a later throw-in time.

“Our advice from Garda Síochána was that if it went ahead at 3pm there would have been traffic mayhem around the town.”

Frost agreed the Munster Council’s 2015 accounts will be greatly boosted by the replay, which he believes will attract a crowd similar to the 35,651 that attended last Sunday’s draw.

“We’ve already made financial commitments to the four of the five counties for €500,000 each and Cork €3.75 million. That’s big money and this will help along the way.”

All tickets for the replay have also been reduced by €5.

Frost added: “I’d be hoping it’ll be much the same sized crowd, 35,000 or 36,000. It was a great match and there will be a lot of people wanting to go.”