Andy Watters: We can never give up on Casement Park and let the heel-draggers win... GAA is massive in the north and Belfast must reflect that
OLD-TIMERS tell me Casement Park was largely built by volunteers. Men gave up their time to do a lot of the work at the stadium and if the fruits of their labours weren’t absolutely state-of-the-art it didn’t matter, it did the job well enough. Maybe that’s just folklore but you can’t help but wonder if Casement wouldn’t be in a better state if the volunteers could still get in and do the work. It couldn’t be in a worse state, that’s for sure. How did the GAA get mixed up with the Stormont Assembly and dragged into this mess?They went in with the best of intentions but many mistakes have been made. The original plans were too ambitious, dealings with the residents could have been handled better, the social club was an issue, the debacle over the Europeans championships…
How many years is it now? How many millions wasted? It truly is a disgrace and, amid all the finger-pointing, is anyone taking responsibility? This week brought another false dawn. With planning permission to expire in July, out of the blue came news that work would begin next week. Well, it’s not ‘work’ exactly, it’s ‘enabling work’ which means it’s work intended to get the place ready for actual building work. Gordon Lyons, the Communities Minister poured cold concrete on that. Stormont must fund “the priorities” first, he said, and you’d imagine that for Mr Lyons, who attended his first GAA game 15 months after taking office in 2024, the GAA is well down the list of priorities. There appears to be a reluctance to meet the GAA halfway and apparently no regard or respect for the good work the Association does.Even when building it would have brought in millions as a host venue at the 2028 European Championships there was a total absence of enthusiasm for the Casement project. Building a stadium in West Belfast would be seen in some quarters as a victory for ‘the other side’ and the unpalatable truth is that we live in a society in which some remain reluctant to have anything to do with ‘the other side’. For that reason and many more, people who want a better future for us all here should never give up on Casement Park. We shouldn’t allow the heel-draggers and the status quo merchants to win.The money to build the stadium has to be found. The GAA plays such a massive role in communities across the North and it is only getting stronger.Belfast should reflect that. So Casement Park should be built and it will be built, it’s just a pity we have to wait on other people to do it.Not your day... Donegal’s Michael Murphy distraught after last year’s All-Ireland final.
PICTURE COLM LENAGHAN A FEW weeks ago, I went to a Newry school to do mock interviews with sports studies students who were interested in a career in the media. The third lad on the list looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. Then I saw ‘NAB’ beside his name and the penny dropped. ‘Nab’ was short for Ballymacnab and the lad across the table from me had kicked a brilliant injury-time winner for his club against our team in a championship final a month or so previously. Little did he know that I was only starting to get my life back together after his brilliant winner. Oh, the tossing and turning at night, the hours spent running the game over and over in my head… And there he was sitting across the table grinning!I jest of course. Good luck to him, he’s a cracking player and good luck to his team who never gave up and snatched the final right at the death. That’s football. It was a gutting way for our boys (and the management) to lose but, with a new season not too far away now, you hope that everyone learns from it, works harder and does better next time. Everybody wants to get to a final and of course that’s great but they can be peculiar occasions. The build-up is more intense, there is a weight of expectation on young players and that can make them nervous in front of a big crowd and then there are the boyos who come out of the woodwork to stand on the line and make their voice (usually absent from training and league games) heard.The day after that final I happened to be interviewing Peter Canavan for the Irish News Allstars and when I got the opportunity I threw in the events of the previous day and the near-miss for our team. “Aye, you’d be sore about that,” said Peter who I must commend for hearing me out. He has been through worse, after all he finished on the losing side in the All-Ireland decider in 1995 despite scoring 11 of Tyrone’s 12 points (the late Jody Gormley got the other one).Everyone has a story to tell, even the teacher who had organised the interviews at the school. His team had lost the previous day and he had a far-away look in his forlorn eyes as he recounted the events of the game.A wide or two here, a bit of bad luck there… And then the soul-searching: Did he get the starting line-up right? Should he have made more switches or substitutions? Or less? The tactics? The team-talk? Was the training good enough?That same far-away look was in the eyes of Jim McGuinness when he was asked about last year’s All-Ireland final a few days ago. Last season Donegal did everything right and McGuinness had looked in complete control but it just didn’t happen for them in the final. Preoccupied with warming-up and hydrating, Donegal seemed too wound up before the throw-in.Kerry caught them on the hop early on, Paudie Clifford got the ball over 70 times and his wee brother David did what he always does.Regrets? It’s fair to say Jim has a few.“How long have you got?” he replied jokingly when getting that final “out of his system” was brought up. You can bet he thought of very little else for weeks and even months after it.Yes, that’s football but the good news is: There’s always next season.
