The New Lansdowne Road

murphaph

Sponge Bob wrote: »

No way that they will finish that in 'early' 2010 , none . A very impressive stadium if ultimately too small and with rubbishy transport links . Shame the local nimbys got their way, had it 65000 capacity it would be much better but the transport links are not there. I can still see demand for Croke Park even though it is optimally a summer daytime dry weather venue .

Eh? I used to live in D15 and always travelled to Lansdowne on the Arrow/DART without a bother. I don't think the problem is that the transport links to the stadium are poor (after all the stadium sits literally on top of the DART), but rather that transport in general in Dublin is poor.No matter where you built it, it would have been awkward to get to for lots of people.

Croke Park on the other hand is near to a railway station that is closed every time there's a bloody fixture! Total joke, but again not the fault of the stadium owners, rather the transport 'providers' (CIE mostly).

It is indeed a shame the NIMBYs near Lansdowne got their way with the north stand-a 65k stadium would have been optimal-any more and it would be too empty for the 'less important' games. Having said that, 50k all seated out of the rain is a damn sight better than 32k with a good third + open to the elements. Even in the upper west stand the wind used to whip in from the north east and freeze you.

Judgement Day

Murphaph - I thought that Lansdowne Road station was also closed during Internationals? I remember the good old days (mid 1970's) when the largest of the Board's servants (CIE employees) were brought out to physically push shut the old level crossing gates against the crowds to enable trains arrive and depart. But that was in the days when we used to bring in our pint bottles and have room to put the empties on the ground beside us without them getting knocked over. The last time I was in Lansdowne Road - the East Stand had not even been rebuilt - and it was almost impossible to raise a drink to your lips such was the crush. Ahh the good old days, we had rickets, dyptheria etc.etc but we were happy.:D

murphaph

Judgement Day wrote: »

Murphaph - I thought that Lansdowne Road station was also closed during Internationals?

Nope, it's always open. The new design will eliminate all that messing on Lansdowne Road at the level crossing.

Kristian_

Alofthedunnes wrote: »

We were doing fine with the old ground which didn't even have a capacity of 50,000. Why everyone is giving out I don't know. As someone who has been to every home game in the last 6 years, I cant wait to get back to Ballsbridge. So much easier to get to for an evening kick-off than Croker.

We were never doing fine with the old ground we just had to make do with what we had, their is always a massive demand for tickets to international matches. With croke park it's sometimes easier to get a hold of a ticket because of its size at 80,000, their has been a capacity crowd at most internationals at croker. When we go back to the new stadium tickets will be like gold dust. At 50 it's just too damn small. It really is a shame the nimbys around landsdowne got their way - typical.

L1011

It wasn't ever that hard to find tickets for Lansdowne if you were 'in the know' as-was... and seeing as I'm expecting the unsold Vantage Club tickets to be offered to the block bookers / waiting list on a game by game basis, there should be enough floating around.

DWCommuter

Even Kevin Myers is in on the act now.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/new-stadium-is-an-irreversible-and-huge-tragedy-for-irish-sport-1935796.html

By Kevin Myers
Friday November 06 2009

ITYS -- I told you so -- is the acronym for the four most unforgivable words in the English language.
No court will convict a self-confessed murderer who coldly and deliberately slew the man who said "ITYS" after an entirely predictable and predicated failure has occurred. Wisdom purely after the event is insufferable; publicly stated wisdom both before and after a failure is a capital offence.
So it is with tongue-numbing forbearance that I note the request of the Oireachtas All Party Committee on Sports (oh yes, and Arts and Tourism also) that the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) should agree to play their big matches at Croke Park, because the new 50,000-seater Aviva stadium at Lansdowne Road is too small.
Too small? Too small?? But, but, but. . . I am not saying ITYS, truly I'm not. But I will gently point out that I have been publicly saying precisely just that for fully 10 years, long before the contracts were signed which committed us to the monumental folly of the Aviva stadium.
It shouldn't be called Aviva. It should be called QWERTY, as a reminder of just how powerful an early plan, no matter how ridiculous, if allowed to run unchecked even briefly, can take over an entire project. The plan then decides the outcome of the project, not the original specifications of the project or, most importantly of all, the needs of the people for whom the project is being designed to please -- in this case, the paying spectator.
No: QWERTY always over-rules all human need.
QWERTY is one of the most culturally-potent technological templates in the world: it has imprinted itself on at least a billion minds, and is more dominant today than ever before. Its beginnings were small, in Milwaukee, where the inventor of the typewriter, Christopher Scholes, was trying to create a keyboard so that the arm of a letter's type-head did not clash during the journey time from paper back home again, with the rising arm of the next letter to be typed. This meant that letters which were commonly used together were kept apart on the keyboard. Long after the technological limitations for its existence had expired, QWERTY remained a fixture, both on keyboards and in the minds of millions of typists. No one had the willpower or the political power to change how hundreds of millions of people typed. Even the most rudimentary deficiency in the QWERTY format has become permanent. For example, in English, the pairing "th" is used more often than 16 of the 26 letters in the alphabet, and could easily have merited a place on the keyboard long ago.
The proximity of "s" and "d" means that mistypes often produce viable words in English. Plural nouns and singular verbs in a legal document can easily be transformed: "deeds places and same dates", in a twinkling of a careless finger become "seeds placed and dame sated" -- and as for what was actually meant in that contract, by God, I'll see you in court.
So, like mullets or flares or pubic hair, there's almost nothing to be said in favour of QWERTY: it's simply what we've got. The primary lesson in all human planning must run as follows: do not, for short-term historical reasons, lock yourselves irrevocably into a structure which will not suit your future needs. That is precisely what the IRFU, the FAI and the Bertie Ahern government did with the disastrous decision to build a new stadium at Lansdowne Road that from the outset could never possibly meet demand.
This week's delegation from the Oireachtas whimpered that the Aviva stadium was, surprise, surprise, not big enough to cope with "big matches".
LISTEN, you chumps, all the IRFU home internationals are big matches -- which is why the capacity of all the major rugby grounds abroad, for decades, has been at least 70,000. Moreover, we know that you can easily fill Croke Park's 83,000-capacity for all Five Nation rugby matches, plus the big southern hemisphere games, as South Africa and Australia will prove. Philip Browne of the IRFU, and a primary architect of the Aviva QWERTY at Lansdowne Road, offered the dismal explanation that plans for the stadium had been drawn up five years ago, when -- presumably -- no more than two men, three scruffy urchins and a mutt ever turned up to watch Irish rugby matches. Funny that. For I seem to remember all those touts outside a packed Lansdowne Road, not much smaller than the new Aviva, able to sell black-market tickets at three or four times face value, and then going home in their Mercedes.
This QWERTY disaster will certainly make another generation of ticket touts happy. For this is the first ever stadium which has been deliberately built to supply less capacity than the predicted needs of the marketplace.
Try explaining that to the Harvard School of Business Studies. But it is in Dublin 4, which is the psychological QWERTY factor behind the Aviva debacle. A triumph of antediluvian snobbery over common sense, and a colossal -- and even irreversible -- tragedy for Irish sport.
And now look: in my clumsy attempts to finish by saying ITYS, I've inadvertently got to the heart of the matter -- WASOFW, yet again.
kmyers@independent.ie
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent

Koloman

DWCommuter wrote: »

Even Kevin Myers is in on the act now.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/new-stadium-is-an-irreversible-and-huge-tragedy-for-irish-sport-1935796.html

It depends from which sport you are coming from. For the FAI a 50,000 all seater stadium is the perfect size for football. A vast improvement on the 36,000 capacity before for soccer. They were struggling to fill Croke Park for most games plus the large playing area didn't suit the game.

For the IRFU on the other hand then Kevin might have a point. They sold out Croke Park for nearly every game. The old Lansdowne had a 49,000 capacity for rugby. 50,000 in the new ground is not much of an improvement and is too small for most rugby games, especially in the current climate with the sport.

Could it be that for once in their lives the FAI have come up trumps on this and the IRFU have egg on their faces?

Bluetonic

Koloman wrote: »

It depends from which sport you are coming from. For the FAI a 50,000 all seater stadium is the perfect size for football. A vast improvement on the 36,000 capacity before for soccer. They were struggling to fill Croke Park for most games plus the large playing area didn't suit the game.

Perfect size? There are 38k tickets available for general sale, a few thousand of these will be for the away allocation. There is a waiting list of 20k tickets to get onto the block booking. If it was perfect as you say it would have catered for all on the waiting list. It hasn't so it's not perfect.

The playing area for football is the same in Croke Park as it will be when we move back to Lansdowne, so not sure of your comment on that.

sheepshagger

You may need 50k+ for the likes of England vs Ireland and a handful of other games but thats about it. People go/went to CP becuase it was easy to get tickets (again with the execption of E vs I and the France game that was a novelty factor as the first game played in there).

The Ire vs Fiji game has yet to sell out and thats with just an 18k capacity :rolleyes:

L1011

Bluetonic wrote: »

Perfect size? There are 38k tickets available for general sale, a few thousand of these will be for the away allocation. There is a waiting list of 20k tickets to get onto the block booking. If it was perfect as you say it would have catered for all on the waiting list. It hasn't so it's not perfect.

The playing area for football is the same in Croke Park as it will be when we move back to Lansdowne, so not sure of your comment on that.

There are less than 6,000 people on the block booking waiting list. There might be 20,000 had they not closed the list some time ago.

Bluetonic

MYOB wrote: »

There are less than 6,000 people on the block booking waiting list. There might be 20,000 had they not closed the list some time ago.

So how many waiting list numbers are there and how many tickets are they waiting for?

L1011

Bluetonic wrote: »

So how many waiting list numbers are there and how many tickets are they waiting for?

The FAI does not have any idea how many tickets each person on the list wants. Theres under 6,000 people on the list.

There is also mass duplication - if I got 4 tickets it would end up taking two other people off the list at the same time. Many people are on it that would end up getting one of their mates allocations if they got one.

trellheim

The new flood control walls along the Dodder will be finished soon and the Dodder Walk reopened, on both sides of the river..


The best place to get an idea of the scale of the new Stadium is to stand on top of Ringsend bridge.

handsomecake

unmitigated ****ing disaster.idiots

Koloman

handsomecake wrote: »

unmitigated ****ing disaster.idiots

Have you actually gone down to have a look? Far from been a disaster it is turning out to be quite a spectacular looking stadium!

Kristian_

Koloman wrote: »

Have you actually gone down to have a look? Far from been a disaster it is turning out to be quite a spectacular looking stadium!

I agree it's far from a disaster, I was down there this morning for a snoop around. 3/4 of it looks fantastic.

Koloman

Kristian_ wrote: »

3/4 of it looks fantastic.

spank_inferno

Kristian_ wrote: »

3/4 of it looks fantastic.

I think thats the point most people are trying to make.

Why spend so much money on 3/4 of a stadium however nice it is?

Clanket

spank_inferno wrote: »

I think thats the point most people are trying to make.

Why spend so much money on 3/4 of a stadium however nice it is?

Because it's a definate improvement on the shíte that was there before. Also, both the FAI and IRFU can make some big money with the new corporate boxes and premium level seats.

I really don't understand why everyone is giving out about both Lansdowne and Croker. Croker's already a fantastic stadium and the new Lansdowne will be a cracker too. Come on Ireland!!!

spank_inferno

cost vs benefit.

taking rugby for example.

€340 million stadium cost.
€180 (afaik) contributed to by the taxpayer.

Benefit:
- 1,000 more fans can now be accomodated than before in somewhat better comfort.
- There is a lot more room to entertain the knobs & suits.


€180 million of our money seems a lot to me cosidering the above,


Of course it will be a handsome enough stadium, its hard to dispute that.
I just think in 5 years people will think "what might have been"

Oppertunity lost imo

D.L.R.

Alofthedunnes wrote: »

I really don't understand why everyone is giving out about both Lansdowne and Croker. Croker's already a fantastic stadium and the new Lansdowne will be a cracker too. Come on Ireland!!!

Lansdowne is too small mate, its that simple. Cyprus at croker was 55,000. New Lansdowne doesn't meet that, let alone big games or future demand. And thats not even touching on rugby.

Our national stadium has basically been curtailed by a few D4 residents, who have effectively vetoed live sport for thousands of their fellow Irishmen and women. Come on Ireland indeed.

spank_inferno

I respect that the wishes of locals have to be respected.

But the new South End (or north?) of the stadium is now lower and smaller than the previous structure.

I just hope that the designers have designed future expansion capabilities into the ground so that perhaps in time, if money alows the stadium can be increased in size

Steviemak

spank_inferno wrote: »

I just hope that the designers have designed future expansion capabilities into the ground so that perhaps in time, if money alows the stadium can be increased in size

I'm afraid not. It is not designed to be expanded.

pinkfloyd34

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Stadium_(Berlin)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviva_Stadium

ok can someone please explain to me why germanys main stadium cost €242million and aviva cost €365million, and aviva is nearly half the size??

spank_inferno

Well the olympic stadium in Berlin is still largely the same structure as the original, so it wasnt the complete tear down job that landsdowne road was.
Its more basic in its design and doesnt have a corporate box tier either.

However...... a nice comparison would be the Allianz Arena
Similar price, much better stadium

Bluetonic

spank_inferno wrote: »

However...... a nice comparison would be the Allianz Arena
Similar price, much better stadium

It was built on a green field site with little constraints, you can't compare it.

Spurs are costing their new stadium to be around £400m which wouldn't have as many constraints but would be similar to the Lansdowne Road site. Different construction method but wouldn't vary massively in cost.

Kristian_

Some seating in place from the new pics!

Kristian_

Come on Ireland!!!

Kristian_

Given
Finnan Dunne O'Shea Kilbane

Lawerence Carsley A Reid Duff

Doyle Keane

Kristian_

Please see sense Trap! Give us a chance!