Euro 2016

Karmafaerie

So here’s a thought.
With Lansdowne road now well underway, and the precedent set for Football games in Croke Park, have the chances of a major tournament being held in part in Ireland increased?
Does anyone think it could happen?

During the recent tournament in Austria/Switzerland, UEFA gave them a directive that all stadiums would have to have a capacity of at least 30,000.

Now if Ireland and Scotland, or Ireland, Scotland and Wales even were to come together a bid would be a lot more credible that a few years ago.

Scotland has

Hamden Park

52,000 capacity

Celtic Park

60,000 capacity

Ibrox

51,000 capacity

Murrayfield

68,000 capacity

Wales have

The Millennium Stadium

76,000 capacity

And Ireland will have/has

Croke Park

82,500 capacity

Lansdowne Road

55,000 capacity.

Even if it came down to it, other options could be availed upon.
30,000 is the cut off.
The new Thomond Park in Limerick

Will be 26,500 capacity with the north and south stands earmarked for future development to bring it up to 32-35,000.
If push came to shove I'm sure that it could be increased for the tournament.


All in all, I think that looking for the Euro's in 2016 wouldn't be too far fetched.
We'd have until 2011 to put together the bid.

(I left out the other Gaelic grounds as they're all fairly inadequate to be honest.)

Guy:Incognito

Ireland, Scotland and Wales isnt a runner for a start. Theres no way they will (or should) allow 3 automatic qualifiers.


I'm sure they'd want either more stadia or abit of a spread outside Dublin to us have a joint bid with someone. Having Thomand park (is football played there?) "earmarked" for future developement would have to change immediately to "under construction".

Hampden, Celtic park and Ibrox all being in the same city is frowned upon too.

eirebhoy

You'd have to take out one of the Glasgow stadiums at least.

delija_sever029

Yeah,hard to see all 3 teams as hosts,even if you exclude Wales,than you miss stadiums coz you need to have least 8 of them and also another problem is that 4 stadiums are in Dublin and Glasgow,i dont see that as a good idea coz i supose only 1 stadium per city is allowed

Karmafaerie

There's no rule that says all no city can have three stadiums.
It's frowned upon but not actually not allowed.

The bid doesn't have to be launched until 2011, so there's still plenty of room for plans, and any work wouldn't have to start untill the bid was accepted, as there would be 5 years untill the tournament.
Even in Ireland the construction wouldn't take that long!:P

Also, Scotland were looking into redeveloping two stadiums in Aberdeen and Dundee, if they got the bid for 2012, so I'm sure that this could be done for 2016.

Even if Wales were left out, that's still a lot of stadiums and potential stadiums.

Guy:Incognito

Karmafaerie wrote: »

There's no rule that says all no city can have three stadiums.
It's frowned upon but not actually not allowed.
.

Yes but they would just give it to a different country with a better set up.

delija_sever029

I still think it would be huge mess to have games on 2 or 3 stadiums in same city,fans,teams and other things would cause a bit of mess,its just not practical,theres probably reason why games are never played on 2 stadiums in same city

Bubs101

I don't think it's a runner for the fact alone that most of the good stadiums are in two cities (assuming you'd take out Wales). Realistically, you'd be looking at a three city tournament (Dublin, Glasgow and Edinburgh) which would be an insane decision

Tom65

Euro 96, Euro 2000 and Euro 2008 all had 4 stadia in 4 different cities. According to Wikipedia, UEFA required 7 cities with 8 stadia. With the next Championships the number of teams will be expanded to 24 teams, meaning more stadia.

Scotland would have Murrayfield (Edinburgh), Hampden Park/Ibrox/Celtic Park (all Glasgow - one would have to be left out), and presumably either Aberdeen or Dundee (both were supposed to be redeveloped for Euro 2008).

Ireland would have Lansdowne Road. I'd imagine using Croke Park or Pairc Uí Chaoimh would be unlikely given that they're in use by the GAA through the summer. Unless some agreement could be reached to schedule the games so both UEFA and GAA could use them. Thomond Park is a possibility.

Even if a 3-way bid was allowed, Wales only have the Millenium Stadium.

That'd leave 10 stadia - albeit with two not built, two in the same city, two conditional on the GAA's permission, and another needing extending.

Weight that against the other countries who are bidding and I guarentee there'll be a better bid.

HalloweenJack

Never going to happen.

GAA would love to piss off football fans in the country and we have no right to expect that they'll rearrange the Championships just for our sake.

SFA won't go with Hampden Park (Murrayfield is for rugby) and one of the Old Firm stadiums for political reasons and they're not going to sacrifice Hampden.

Karmafaerie

Tom65 wrote: »

Euro 96, Euro 2000 and Euro 2008 all had 4 stadia in 4 different cities. According to Wikipedia, UEFA required 7 cities with 8 stadia. With the next Championships the number of teams will be expanded to 24 teams, meaning more stadia.

Scotland would have Murrayfield (Edinburgh), Hampden Park/Ibrox/Celtic Park (all Glasgow - one would have to be left out), and presumably either Aberdeen or Dundee (both were supposed to be redeveloped for Euro 2008).

Ireland would have Lansdowne Road. I'd imagine using Croke Park or Pairc Uí Chaoimh would be unlikely given that they're in use by the GAA through the summer. Unless some agreement could be reached to schedule the games so both UEFA and GAA could use them. Thomond Park is a possibility.

Even if a 3-way bid was allowed, Wales only have the Millenium Stadium.

That'd leave 10 stadia - albeit with two not built, two in the same city, two conditional on the GAA's permission, and another needing extending.

Weight that against the other countries who are bidding and I guarentee there'll be a better bid.

I understand all that ye're saying, and accept it all, but we have considered tabling a bid before with less.

Also Scotland bid for 2012 on their own.

Lastly, Who was expecting London to get the Olympic nod when Paris was by far the better equiped, favoured, and all but accepted winner.
Whoever they want to win, will win.

Mikeyt086

Cant have Ireland, Scotland and Wales because thats 3 host nations exept from qualifying, and that aint gonna fly.

Karmafaerie

When you look at Euro 08
They had

Letzigrund
Capacity: 30,000

Stade de Genève
Capacity: 31,228

Stade de Suisse
Capacity: 31,907

St. Jakob-Park
Capacity: 42,000

Tivoli Neu
Capacity: 31,600

Wals-Siezenheim-Stadion
Capacity: 31,020

Hypo-Arena
Capacity: 31,957

Ernst-Happel-Stadion
Capacity: 53,295

Very small capacity stadiums, and for the most part they were old stadiums retrofitted.

Now personally I can't see Any GAA stadiums outside of Croker being used.
They're not suited, and as was pointed out earlier, would be in the middle of the busy season.

Croke however would be available, at the expensive of a couple of possible games for Dublin.
and even that wouldn't be deffinate.

Even limiting it to two from Dublin and two from Glasgow, that would be

Hamden
Celtic Park
Murrayfield
Dundee
Aberdeen
Croke
Lansdowne
Thomond

8 stadiums, 6 cities.

The combined capacity would be almost twice that of the last tournament.
Adding in the fact that there are many more games due to the expansion, it'd be a lot more succesfull monetaraly.

Karmafaerie

Aberdeen
New Pittodrie Stadium

32,000 capacity

Dundee
Community Stadium

30,000 capacity

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

With an Ireland/Scotland bid, you've only actually got four cities (inlcuding Limerick). I think UEFA, while not actually having rules against it, would see that as a major fallback.

The other problem I see with this is infrastructure. With less cities, you're egoing to have more nationalities and therfore more fans congregating in the cities. The Irish public transport system simply won't be able to cope (even if we have got a third LUAS by then, what's Limerick's transport like? And are Iarnrod Eireann will need to get it's act together.)

Then there's security. Can you imagine what would happen if a riot broke out with say, English/Dutch/German/Italian fans based in the came city...?

leninbenjamin

for Ireland to paunch a successful bid we would have to get the GAA on board, which isn't going to happen any time soon.

however as the GAA stadia become more dilapidated and obsolete I think it may be possible to get them on board. i.e. offer to upgrade their stadia for the use during the tournament.

there's always the possibility too of building temporary stands, like the Austrians did. have it set at 40,000 for the tournament, and then retrofit it back to around 20,000 or something in the smaller places where large stadiums aren't viable, i.e. in the likes of my own home town Galway.

if the GAA could be got on board though, it could be quite possible, between north and south to launch an entire Ireland bid imo, in say the 2020s. that way you could have stadia in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway, Derry, Belfast and possible smaller towns the likes of Thurles, Kilkenny, or Wexford to name a few.

it would however require co-ordination on levels basically unheard of in this country before, so i will always be doubtful.

Dub13

Its also a UEFA rule that stadium's can not be used for other events while the championship is on,this IMO would rule out Croker.I don't think the GAA would like to lose it for the whole month of June,even if not to much happens in June it would be way way to much for them to swallow.

Karmafaerie

leninbenjamin wrote: »

if the GAA could be got on board though, it could be quite possible, between north and south to launch an entire Ireland bid imo, in say the 2020s. that way you could have stadia in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway, Derry, Belfast and possible smaller towns the likes of Thurles, Kilkenny, or Wexford to name a few.

it would however require co-ordination on levels basically unheard of in this country before, so i will always be doubtful.

Semple Stadium in Thurles is the second biggest in the country

Tom65

leninbenjamin wrote: »

for Ireland to paunch a successful bid we would have to get the GAA on board, which isn't going to happen any time soon.

however as the GAA stadia become more dilapidated and obsolete I think it may be possible to get them on board. i.e. offer to upgrade their stadia for the use during the tournament.

there's always the possibility too of building temporary stands, like the Austrians did. have it set at 40,000 for the tournament, and then retrofit it back to around 20,000 or something in the smaller places where large stadiums aren't viable, i.e. in the likes of my own home town Galway.

if the GAA could be got on board though, it could be quite possible, between north and south to launch an entire Ireland bid imo, in say the 2020s. that way you could have stadia in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway, Derry, Belfast and possible smaller towns the likes of Thurles, Kilkenny, or Wexford to name a few.

it would however require co-ordination on levels basically unheard of in this country before, so i will always be doubtful.

I think an all-Ireland bid (with Scotland, ignoring the problem of another team - Northern Ireland - exempt from qualification) would be the best bet. It'd give another big city, Belfast, which could be used for major matches with Dublin, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Obviously there's no stadium at the moment but there are plans, so it is on the cards.

leninbenjamin

Karmafaerie wrote: »

Semple Stadium in Thurles is the second biggest in the country

yeah, but the infrastructure of the towns also comes into it, which is why i'd rather see the larger ones like Limerick, Cork, Galway put ahead of it.

Pigman II

Scotland and Wales should try for a joint bid, just forget us.

Karmafaerie

Pigman II wrote: »

Scotland and Wales should try for a joint bid, just forget us.

Wales have one city, with one stadium, which just happen to be the best.
So Scotland would have to provide 7 stadiums, and watch as Wales get the final.

Not gonna happen.

(The Millennium stadium is a UEFA 5 star, so it would deffinately have to host the final.)

SantryRed

Euro 2016 in Ireland and Scotland?

Not going to happen.

For the sake of yous debating though. You could say Wales have two stadiums. Swansea City's new ground holds a good amount I think?

Karmafaerie

SantryRed wrote: »

Euro 2016 in Ireland and Scotland?

Not going to happen.

For the sake of yous debating though. You could say Wales have two stadiums. Swansea City's new ground holds a good amount I think?

20,000.
It's the third biggest stadium in Wales.
Cardiff City's is 21,000.
Both are small and compact though, so there would be no real way to temporaraly upgrade the capacity to 30,000, which is the minimum for a European Cup stadium.
Cardiff City could possibly rebuild the stadium if given funds, but Swansea's Liberty Stadium, is just complete.
No way they'd completely overhaul it so soon.
It's a uniform bowlish shape, so no way they'd change the layout.


As for Cardiff Citys Ninian Park.
Again that's in the same city as the Mellennium.

Which would you choose?

Wales with Cardiff only.
And a 76,000 and a 21,000 capacity stadium.

Or Ireland, with an 82,000 and a 55,000 in Dublin, and the possibility of a few other 30-40,000 seaters around the country.

Simple choice really.

Benedict XVI

oh no. not this topic again.

It's a complete non starter

Too many grounds in too few cities is the main drawback, plus would you have much confidence in the FAI selling the idea of Ireland as possible host to UEFA ?

Oh and why on earth would the GAA give over any of it's grounds to a rival sport for the month of June ?

Guy:Incognito

I doubt the fact that there isnt a land border between us and Scotland would go in our favour either.

Benedict XVI

leninbenjamin wrote: »

however as the GAA stadia become more dilapidated and obsolete I think it may be possible to get them on board. i.e. offer to upgrade their stadia for the use during the tournament.

GAA stadia becoming more dilapidated ?

I think the opposite is true, many are being upgraded, Pearse Stadium in Galway, Limerick and Thurles were both re-developed a few yers back, work started on Castlebar last week and Killarney is also up for a major overhaul.

Sure enough they will not be 30K all seater, but they will centainly be good enough for a GAA game in the middle of summer.

Karmafaerie

Stekelly wrote: »

I doubt the fact that there isnt a land border between us and Scotland would go in our favour either.

I must have forgotten about that bridge from Japan to South Korea then!;)

CHD

The tournament is expanding in the future.Ruling us out if any kind of bid IMO.

eZe^

The chances of me still being in Ireland for 2016 are basically zero, so I'd be gutted if we got to hold the Euro's when I was no longer living here...