Football

All-Ireland Finals likely to have attendances of 30,000 at most

Croke Park is likely to be much much more than a third full at best if the All-Ireland Finals take place this December.<br /> Picture by Philip Walsh
Croke Park is likely to be much much more than a third full at best if the All-Ireland Finals take place this December.
Picture by Philip Walsh
Croke Park is likely to be much much more than a third full at best if the All-Ireland Finals take place this December.
Picture by Philip Walsh

ATTENDANCES at this year’s All-Ireland Finals are likely to be little more than 30,000 even if the social distancing advice is reduced from two metres to one.

If that advice isn’t changed there may be no more than 28,000 spectators in Croke Park in December, just over a third of capacity.

GAA President John Horan said that no decisions on which other venues will be used had been taken as yet:

“We’re 17 weeks away from that and that’ll have to be tied down at a later stage. This is really just in terms of giving you the structure and the fluidity and flexibility will just have to be applied to all of that so, no, there’s no definites in any of those.

“Venues will be what’s suitable to get a reasonable crowd into it and the crowd situation is all dependent on the recommendations we get from the health authorities in terms of what we can put into grounds.”

Even if all goes well and all planned Championship matches take place, the GAA will still take a significant financial hit this year, explained Director-General Tom Ryan:

“The odd thing about it is that the vast majority of the games we’re talking about here happen after the end of October, which is the end of our financial year. So in terms of the current financial the [positive] impact will be as close to nil as makes no difference, really.

“Thereafter, the big imponderable is how many people can go to games. We have done exercises in Croke Park about how many people we can fit in given the social distancing restrictions in place at the moment.

“We’d be working off a capacity crowd of 25-28,000 people which clearly has a financial implication; it restricts the financial benefit to us.”

Asked what effect one metre social distancing might have, Ryan revealed: “It doesn’t go up hugely even with one metre. Depending on the households and groups buying tickets you can play around a little with the capacity but, off the top of my head, even if it’s down to 1m it wouldn’t go far north of 30,000, it’s still quite restricted.”

However, Ryan insisted that money was not the driver for planning this revised Championship schedule:

“To be honest, the financial side of things will be whatever it is; the capacity of grounds will be whatever it is, we’ll be guided by the health authorities in both jurisdictions.

“There are other things we could have done if the financial aspect was an imperative – we could have played more games than we’ve outlined, but that would have meant going back to inter-county earlier to fit them into the competition structures.

“The main imperative was to get people back playing matches, first and foremost club-wise, then follow that up with the counties.

“I think that will have a positive impact on all manner of spheres – unfortunately finance will not be the first of those.”

Christy Ring Cup (Tier Three Hurling Championship) draw:

Down v London; Offaly v Kildare; Roscommon v Wicklow; Derry v Sligo.

Nicky Rackard Cup (Tier Four Hurling Championship) draw:

Armagh v Leitrim; Warwickshire v Tyrone; Donegal v Longford; Monaghan v Mayo.