Laois fuming after 'overlooked' offer to host Dublin football quarter final

Laois GAA chairman Gerry Kavanagh claims the county offered to take a €40,000 hit to host Dublin next summer.

Laois are fuming at the decision to overlook O’Moore Park base in favour of Kilkenny’s Nowlan Park for the Dubs’ June 4 Leinster football quarter-final tie.

All-Ireland champions Dublin will play Laois or Wicklow, and Kavanagh said his county were so keen on staging the game, they offered to waive their right, as hosts, to ‘ground rent’. But provincial officials still favoured Nowlan Park, which has around 11,000 more seats than Portlaoise’s O’Moore Park.

Kavanagh intends to call a meeting of the Laois Executive next Monday.

“If people were saying we wanted this game because we were greedy, that we were looking for the ground rent, people should know that we offered to forego our ground rent,” said Kavanagh.

“Depending on the gate of course, that ground rent would be worth €30,000, on the conservative lower point, and up to €40,000 on the higher point. We made it clear we were open to foregoing that.”

He suggests a worrying precedent has now been set. “When this whole issue of Dublin playing outside of Croke Park was first mooted, we always approached it on the premise that if Croke Park wasn’t being used then the other team would get home advantage,” said Kavanagh.

“It was never our intention that the other team would be brought to a neutral venue also.”